Biblical Archaelogy Feud Goes to Court

Very interesting read.

From Time Magazine (World) Online

A Feud Between Biblical Archaeologists Goes to Court

By Nina BurleighJan. 29, 2013

In the Old City of Jerusalem, no one ever went broke underestimating the proof required to help the faithful suspend disbelief — or in a modern twist, allow the skeptical to bolster their heterodoxy. A million-dollar lawsuit in Israel has become the latest vehicle in the unending quest to redefine faith as the substance of things seen.

Simcha Jacobovici, a Canadian documentary maker specializing in biblical archaeology, is suing a retired scientist and former archaeological museum curator named Joe Zias, who has accused him of publicizing scientifically dubious theories. Many of Jacobovici’s documentaries have focused on artifacts that purport to reveal new interpretations of early Christianity, including the notion that the remains of Jesus and his family were buried in a tomb underneath modern-day Jerusalem. Jacobovici claims that Zias’ criticisms are libelous and have cost him television contracts and money.

The dusty world of biblical archaeology directly affects — not to say inspires — the hopes and dreams of millions of faithful people who might buy purported relics or tune in to television shows about them. And, so, there has arisen around it a thriving industry in Jesus-era coins and lamps, and pre-Christian Judaica such as seals and seal impressions from the era of the biblical kings — and in books and movies about them.
The son of Romanian holocaust survivors, Jacobovici is an Emmy-winning journalist who has produced several films in the past decade about new finds that supposedly illuminate the true history of early Christianity. Jacobovici’s first foray into the biblical-documentary genre was a 2002 film James, Brother of Jesus that introduced the world to the James ossuary, a bone box with an ancient Aramaic inscription translated as James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus. Even as Jacobovici’s film characterized the ossuary as an authentic archaeological discovery, scholars and the Israeli authorities claimed the inscription as a fake. Discovery Channel aired the film but, in 2008, it put the James ossuary on its list of the top 10 scientific hoaxes of all time. Last year, after an eight-year trial about biblical-relic forgery for profit, a judge acquitted two defendants of fraud (one of them had been accused of faking the inscription) but declined to rule on the alleged forgery itself.

Jacobovici then made a film about the so-called Talpiot Tomb — named after the Jerusalem neighborhood where it was excavated — contending that 10 ossuaries found inside it had held the bones of Christ and his immediate family, including Mary Magdalene. That project had backing from Hollywood’s James Cameron, the director of Titanic and Avatar. Jacobovici then produced Nails of the Cross, a show that claimed that iron spikes excavated by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) from a tomb in Jerusalem in 1990 were the very nails used to pin the Saviour to the cross. Nails of the Cross aired on Israeli TV and the History Channel.

In all this Zias, 71, has emerged as Jacobovici’s nemesis. Retired from his job as a professional anthropologist, he now makes a living guiding bike tours around the Israeli countryside. He knows the murky world of biblical-relic trading as well as anyone, having spent 25 years working for the IAA, the tiny Israeli agency charged with overseeing excavations in 30,000 archaeological sites. He lives in a three-room house in central Jerusalem with his wife and daughter. He says he can’t afford to pay the lawyer he’s hired to defend him and claims he is on the verge of bankruptcy because of the suit.

Zias is well known among Near East archaeologists for blasting cranky e-mails from his blog, Science and Archaeology Group, accusing filmmakers and writers of “pimping off the Bible.” He routinely writes Jacobovici’s first name with a dollar sign in place of the S. Born in Michigan, he moved to Israel in the 1960s. He told me he was first motivated to expose fakery in the biblical-relic world when he was curating archaeology for the IAA and was approached by a pair of American pastors from the Midwest who complained that their flocks were being routinely fleeced by charlatans collecting money to search underneath the stones of Jerusalem for tangible proof of Bible accounts — like Christ’s DNA.

The contentiousness between Zias and Jacobovici came to a head in 2011. That year, National Geographic pulled out of a Jacobovici project on another early Christian relic that Zias and others were criticizing — comments that the filmmaker cites as part of the reason for his lawsuit. Reached by e-mail, Jacobovici said he is suing Zias — and not his academically affiliated critics — because Zias “crossed the line from fair comment to outright libel. Specifically, he has accused me repeatedly — verbally and in writing — of ‘forging archaeology’ … a criminal activity, and no free society allows you to accuse people of such activities, unless you can prove that what you are saying is correct. Furthermore, he has accused me of ‘planting archaeology.’ Again, free discourse does not include libelous statements such as this one.”

The other critics, however, have not exactly been soft in their commentary about Jacobovici’s work. A panel of academic experts had also assailed the basis for the film about the so-called Jonah ossuary. The film, The Jesus Discovery, which eventually aired on the Discovery Channel in 2012 and also was published as a book, contends that the ossuary, found in a tomb underneath a Jerusalem apartment building, is the earliest known example of an object bearing a Christian symbol referring to the resurrection. The chairman of Duke University’s Religion Center for Jewish Studies, Eric M. Meyers, said of Jacobovici’s claims about the National Geographic pullback: “I was on the advisory panel of experts assessing the integrity of the claims, the appropriateness of the report and the controversial claims about the tomb in which the Jonah ossuary was found, and the panel unanimously agreed not to recommend that the project and film go forward.”

Meyers, who is Jewish, told me he was troubled by the implication in much of Jacobovici’s work that there was no resurrection. According to Meyers, Jacobovici has claimed to have some of the bones of Jesus and his family, their DNA from ossuaries. “If the remains were reburied, then there could not have been any true resurrection,” Meyer adds. “You do not make scientific announcements of this potential significance in sensational films or in a trade book that has unsubstantiated and controversial claims in it.”

Zias’ Israeli lawyer Jonathan Tsevi told TIME that Zias never accused Jacobovici of criminal acts. “Joe never used the terms forging archaeology or planting archaeology, although in essence this is the method Simcha is repeatedly using,” Tsevi said in an e-mail. Zias has also taken Jacobovici to task for using CGI to enhance images of an amphora in the Jerusalem tomb he believes is engraved with the first image of the Christian fish symbol. Jacobovici makes no apology for that. “I don’t think any judge is going to accept that using CGI to enhance a photograph is tantamount to ‘forging archaeology,’” he wrote.

The bitter legal battle has also come up with a holocaust angle — albeit a rather convoluted one. “Most painful is [Zias’] accusation that I have ‘invented Holocaust stories’” Jacobovici tells TIME. “I am the child of Holocaust survivors.” Jacobovici is apparently referring to an event at a 2007 academic conference in Jerusalem, at which an award was presented to the widow of an IAA employee and Holocaust survivor named Joseph Gat. The woman said Gat knew he had found the Jesus family tomb under a Jerusalem apartment building but never told anyone about it during his lifetime for fear of Christian retribution over evidence that defies Christian beliefs about Christ’s immortality.

Zias, who worked with Gat, said Gat never mentioned the Jesus tomb to anyone at the IAA and wasn’t trained to make such an identification in the first place. “He never published one article in his long years with the IAA,” Zias says. “He was a simple but honest guy … who could not read inscriptions, but now that he’s deceased, was the one person chosen to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award for the ‘secret he took to his grave.’” Zias has charged that the award and Mrs. Gat’s comments were orchestrated by Jacobovici as part of an ongoing media spectacle. Jacobovici denies that: “I have to tell you, in Israel, accusing people of “inventing Holocaust stories” touches a very, very raw nerve … I think the judge will throw the book at him.”

What kind of evidence will be presented in court? Jesus and his disciples are unlikely to be coming forward to explain whether they had anything at all to do with all those nails, tombs, ossuaries and other bits of ancient history underneath Jerusalem. American biblical scholar James West, who also blogs on biblical archaeology, said of the lawsuit: “Disagreements are fine, but vendettas (which is what this seems to one outside the proceedings) are improper. Perhaps Zias and Jacobovici should settle their differences the old-fashioned way — in a public debate. Scholars disagree all the time, and they can get quite nasty at it. But I have never once heard of a scholar suing another scholar because their work was eviscerated.”

Burleigh researched the modern-day biblical-relic industry for her book, Unholy Business: A True Tale of Faith, Greed and Forgery in the Holy Land. For more: www.ninaburleigh.com.

Diggers Unearth 3000 Year Old Tablet, Jerusalem's Oldest Written Document

Reported at Bloomberg.com
By Jonathan Ferziger - Jun 21, 2011 8:00 AM CT

A clay tablet covered with
cuneiform script, discovered
in a Jerusalem excavation.
Archaeologists say it is a
3,000-year-old copy of a
letter that Canaanite king
Abdi-Heba wrote to the
king of Egypt.
Photographer: Meidad
Suchowolski/
Israel Antiquities Authority

Israeli archaeologists have discovered part of a 3,000-year-old clay tablet covered with cuneiform script that they say is the oldest written document ever found in Jerusalem.

The thumb-sized fragment, which is described as an archived copy of an Accadian-language letter that Canaanite King Abdi- Heba wrote to the king of Egypt, was placed on display today at the Davidson Center in Jerusalem’s Old City. It was found in excavations of a site from the First Temple period led by Hebrew University archaeologist Eilat Mazar.

The discovery closes a small blank “patch on the map of knowledge of Jerusalem,” Ronny Reich, a senior Israel Antiquities Authority archeologist, said in a speech after Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat opened a visitors center at the site.

Mazar’s work at the Ophel Wall site has been focused on finding evidence of palace activity from the Jewish Temple during the reign of King Solomon, centuries after the Canaanite ruler. The excavation lies in the shadow of the Temple Mount, which Muslims refer to as the Haram Sharif or Noble Sanctuary.

Years of digging have unearthed a four-room gatehouse that Mazar said appears to have been destroyed with the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in 586 BC. In the building’s floor she found twelve large clay jars, one of which has a Hebrew inscription indicating they were used to store wine or oil.

The excavation was funded by Daniel Mintz, managing director of Olympus Capital Holdings Asia, a New York-based private equity fund, and his wife, Meredith Berkman.

Biblical Archaeology: 'Secret Mark" Not a Fraud

Expert Handwriting Analysis Concludes “Secret Mark” Not a Forgery
Recent expert handwriting analysis has concluded that the document known as “Secret Mark” and found by Morton Smith over 50 years ago is indeed not a forgery!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRLog (Press Release) – Nov 11, 2010 – Expert handwriting analysis has concluded that Morton Smith did not forge the document known as “Secret Mark.” More than fifty years ago in a Judean desert monastery, Columbia University professor Morton Smith discovered a previously unknown letter from Clement of Alexandria, a second-century church father, which contained passages of a lost “secret” gospel of Mark. A debate over the authenticity of this document continues to this day.

A number of scholars have concluded that Smith forged the document known as the Clement letter, or “Secret Mark.” In a four-part treatment in the November/December 2009 issue, including contributions by eminent New Testament scholars, Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR) concluded that Smith, now dead, was innocent. BAR also engaged a handwriting expert to compare the handwriting in which the Clement letter was written with Greek handwriting known to be Smith’s.

Greek handwriting expert Venetia Anastasopoulou returned a 36-page report, stating that there was significant disagreement between Smith’s handwriting and the handwriting of the Clement letter, thus Smith could not have forged it. Professor Peter Jeffery of the University of Notre Dame and Princeton University responded to the forgery debate and to Anastasopoulou’s report, looking for clarification on several items.

Ms. Anastasopoulou has now provided a secondary analysis of the document stating that, not only does it lack evidence that Morton Smith forged it, the document does not appear to be a forgery at all. She concludes that Secret Mark “is written in a natural and spontaneous way and in my opinion does not have such indications so as to make us think of a suspicious writing.”

The full BAR coverage of the Secret Mark controversy, including the English translation of the text, Venetia Anastasopoulou’s full handwriting report, Peter Jeffery’s response and Anastasopoulou’s follow-up, can be read for free in the Scholar’s Study section of the Biblical Archaeology Society’s Web site at http://www.bib-arch.org/scholars-study/secret-mark.asp.

# # #

The Biblical Archaeology Society (BAS) was founded in 1974 as a nonprofit, nondenominational, educational organization dedicated to the dissemination of information about archaeology in the Bible lands.

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Did I Find King David's Palace?

Prior articles on the subject:

Women in Archaeology: Kathleen Mary Kenyon-Follow up
Women in Archaeology: Eliat Mazar

Here's a special E-feature from Biblical Archaeological Review online, with an informative photo/slide show too:

Did I Find King David’s Palace?
by Eilat Mazar

This lengthy article is worth the read for anyone interest in "biblical" archaeology in that hot-bed of controversy, where so much as rolling over a stone causes an uproar - Jerusalem.

I found three things intriguing as I read - that Kenyon and Mazar excavated in Jerusalem some 40 years apart, that women are still a rarity in the world of archaeology (though no so rare as when Kenyon was doing her field work), and those "aeolic" style columns -- are those porpoise-heads depicted in the capitals?  Or are my eyes deceiving me???  Whatever the design was meant to be - or suggest - I find it most evocative. A circular spiral is much in evidence, as is a linear triangular "delta" or "V" in the drawing of the capitals in the article -- was not able to copy it here.  Both symbols have long been associated with the goddess - and that spiral - of course it brought to mind the Fibonnaci sequence of numbers that are encoded in all spirals found in nature. 

Interesting Content in Assyrian Cuneiform Tablet

From The Ottawa Citizen
Canadian archeologists discover Old Testament-era tablet

By Jennifer Green, The Ottawa Citizen
April 8, 2010

Canadian archeologists in Turkey have unearthed an ancient treaty written in cuneiform that could have served as a model for the biblical description of God's covenant with the Israelites.


The tablet, dating from about 670 BC, is a treaty between the powerful Assyrian king and his weaker vassal states, written in a highly formulaic language very similar in form and style to the story of Abraham's covenant with God in the Hebrew Bible, says University of Toronto archeologist Timothy Harrison.

Although biblical scholarship differs, it is widely accepted that the Hebrew Bible was being assembled around the same time as this treaty, the seventh century BC.

"Those documents ... seem to reflect very closely the formulaic structure of these treaty documents," he told about 50 guests at the residence of the Turkish ambassador Rafet Akgunay.

He was not necessarily saying the Hebrews copied the Assyrian text, substituting their own story about how God liberated them from slavery in Egypt on the condition that they worship only Him and follow his commandments.

But it will be interesting for scholars to have this parallel document.

"The language in the (Assyrian) texts is (very similar) and now we have a treaty document just a few miles up the road from Jerusalem."

It was the first public announcement about the importance of the Ottawa-made tablet as Harrison tries to pitch an international consortium for creating a public park at Tell Tayinat, the archeological site in southeast Turkey.

"Many of our modern social values have ancient roots," he said. "It is important to illuminate this ancient history to discover who we are and where we might be going."

King Esarhaddon was nearing the end of his reign in Assyria when he drafted this treaty, trying to ensure a peaceful succession to the throne, Harrison said. "It was remarkable the kind of the intrigue went on." One of the reasons they made these treaties is that Esarhaddon's father was assassinated by a brother.

"So he brought together all the rulers in the Assyrian empire and essentially bound them to these treaties (to) avoid political crisis. It's a very complex document to deal with, sophisticated and intricate ... anticipating all the possibilities that might arise."

Harrison's dig at Tell Tayinat revealed tens of thousands of items last summer, including the tablet. It measured 43x28 centimetres, with 650 and 700 tiny lines of script -- and was smashed to pieces. Still, at least the pieces were all in one place. Dozens of similar smashed tablets were scattered.

The excavation, near the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea about 300 kilometres north of Damascus, has exposed a temple or religious sanctuary with ornately carved columns, monumental staircases and other remnants of a powerful kingdom destroyed by Assyrian invaders in 738 BC. The team plans to return to the site this summer.

Meanwhile, work will continue on the restoration and translation of the tablet.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

Scientists Now Say Biblical Plagues Actually Happened

From The Telegraph.co.uk

Biblical plagues really happened say scientists
The Biblical plagues that devastated Ancient Egypt in the Old Testament were the result of global warming and a volcanic eruption, scientists have claimed.
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
Published: 11:00AM GMT 27 Mar 2010

Researchers believe they have found evidence of real natural disasters on which the ten plagues of Egypt, which led to Moses freeing the Israelites from slavery in the Book of Exodus in the Bible, were based.

But rather than explaining them as the wrathful act of a vengeful God, the scientists claim the plagues can be attributed to a chain of natural phenomena triggered by changes in the climate and environmental disasters that happened hundreds of miles away.

They have compiled compelling evidence that offers new explanations for the Biblical plagues, which will be outlined in a new series to be broadcast on the National Geographical Channel on Easter Sunday.

Archaeologists now widely believe the plagues occurred at an ancient city of Pi-Rameses on the Nile Delta, which was the capital of Egypt during the reign of Pharaoh Rameses the Second, who ruled between 1279BC and 1213BC.

The city appears to have been abandoned around 3,000 years ago and scientists claim the plagues could offer an explanation.

Climatologists studying the ancient climate at the time have discovered a dramatic shift in the climate in the area occurred towards the end of Rameses the Second's reign.

By studying stalagmites in Egyptian caves they have been able to rebuild a record of the weather patterns using traces of radioactive elements contained within the rock.

They found that Rameses reign coincided with a warm, wet climate, but then the climate switched to a dry period.

Professor Augusto Magini, a paleoclimatologist at Heidelberg University's institute for environmental physics, said: "Pharaoh Rameses II reigned during a very favourable climatic period.

"There was plenty of rain and his country flourished. However, this wet period only lasted a few decades. After Rameses' reign, the climate curve goes sharply downwards.

"There is a dry period which would certainly have had serious consequences."

The scientists believe this switch in the climate was the trigger for the first of the plagues.

The rising temperatures could have caused the river Nile to dry up, turning the fast flowing river that was Egypt's lifeline into a slow moving and muddy watercourse.

These conditions would have been perfect for the arrival of the first plague, which in the Bible is described as the Nile turning to blood. Dr Stephan Pflugmacher, a biologist at the Leibniz Institute for Water Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Berlin, believes this description could have been the result of a toxic fresh water algae. He said the bacterium, known as Burgundy Blood algae or Oscillatoria rubescens, is known to have existed 3,000 years ago and still causes similar effects today.

He said: "It multiplies massively in slow-moving warm waters with high levels of nutrition. And as it dies, it stains the water red."

The scientists also claim the arrival of this algae set in motion the events that led to the second, third and forth plagues – frogs, lice and flies. Frogs development from tadpoles into fully formed adults is governed by hormones that can speed up their development in times of stress. The arrival of the toxic algae would have triggered such a transformation and forced the frogs to leave the water where they lived. But as the frogs died, it would have meant that mosquitoes, flies and other insects would have flourished without the predators to keep their numbers under control.

This, according to the scientists, could have led in turn to the fifth and sixth plagues – diseased livestock and boils

Professor Werner Kloas, a biologist at the Leibniz Institute, said: "We know insects often carry diseases like malaria, so the next step in the chain reaction is the outbreak of epidemics, causing the human population to fall ill."

Another major natural disaster more than 400 miles away is now also thought to be responsible for triggering the seventh, eighth and ninth plagues that bring hail, locusts and darkness to Egypt. One of the biggest volcanic eruptions in human history occurred when Thera, a volcano that was part of the Mediterranean islands of Santorini, just north of Crete, exploded around 3,500 year ago, spewing billions of tons of volcanic ash into the atmosphere.

Nadine von Blohm, from the Institute for Atmospheric Physics in Germany, has been conducting experiments on how hailstorms form and believes that the volcanic ash could have clashed with thunderstorms above Egypt to produce dramatic hail storms.

Dr Siro Trevisanato, a Canadian biologist who has written a book about the plagues, said the locusts could also be explained by the volcanic fall out from the ash.

He said: "The ash fall out caused weather anomalies, which translates into higher precipitations, higher humidity. And that's exactly what fosters the presence of the locusts."

The volcanic ash could also have blocked out the sunlight causing the stories of a plague of darkness. Scientists have found pumice, stone made from cooled volcanic lava, during excavations of Egyptian ruins despite there not being any volcanoes in Egypt. Analysis of the rock shows that it came from the Santorini volcano, providing physical evidence that the ash fallout from the eruption at Santorini reached Egyptian shores.

The cause of the final plague, the death of the first borns of Egypt, has been suggested as being caused by a fungus that may have poisoned the grain supplies, of which male first born would have had first pickings and so been first to fall victim.

But Dr Robert Miller, associate professor of the Old Testament, from the Catholic University of America, said: "I'm reluctant to come up with natural causes for all of the plagues. The problem with the naturalistic explanations, is that they lose the whole point.

"And the whole point was that you didn't come out of Egypt by natural causes, you came out by the hand of God."

Oldest Yet Hebrew Inscription Deciphered

From Archaeology News aggregagtor Archaeologists claim discovery of oldest Hebrew writing Thu Jan 07 2010 JERUSALEM (AFP) -- A 3,000 year-old inscription discovered at a site where the Bible says David slew Goliath has been deciphered, showing it to be the earliest known Hebrew writing, Israeli archaeologists said on Thursday. The pottery shard with five lines of text in the proto-Canaanite script that was used by Hebrews, Philistines and others in the region was discovered 18 months ago. The writing was decrypted by Gershon Galil of the University of Haifa who "has shown this is a Hebrew inscription," said a statement from the university. "The discovery makes it the earliest known Hebrew writing," the statement said. Carbon-dating has shown the inscription dates back to the 10th century BC, making it about 1,000-years older than the Dead Sea scrolls. "This text is a social statement, relating to slaves, widows and orphans," said Galil, adding that both the words and the concepts used were specific to the Hebrew language and society. The shard was found near the gate of a site known as Elah Fortress, about 30 kilometres (18 miles) west of Jerusalem, in the valley where the battle between David and Goliath is said to have taken place. Finding such an early example of Hebrew makes it possible the Bible could have been written several centuries before the current estimates, the statement said. "The inscription is similar in its content to biblical scriptures, but it is clear that it is not copied from any biblical text, the statement said. Copyright © 2010 AFP All Rights Reserved

The Great Flood Myth

A follow-up to my Monday post "Good Stories Never Die," about the Great Flood. Information from Barbara Walker's The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets: Flood The biblical flood story, the "deluge," was a late offshoot of a cycle of flood myths known everywhere in the ancient world. Thousands of years before the Bible was written, an ark was built by Sumerian Ziusudra. In Akkad, the flood hero's name was Atrakhasis. In Babylon he was Uta-Napishtim, the only mortal to become immortal. In Greece he was Deucalion, who repopulated the earth after the waters subsided, with the help of his wife Pyrrha and the advice of the Great Goddess of the waters, Themis. In Armenia, the hero was Xisuthros - a corruption of Sumerian Ziusudra - whose ark landed on Mount Ararat.(1) According to the original Chaldean account, the flood hero was told by his god, "Build a vessel and finish it. By a deluge I will destroy substance and life. Cause thou to go up into the vessel the substance of all that has life." Technical instructions followed: the ark was to be 600 cubits long by 60 wide, with three times 3600 measures of asphalt on its exterior and the same amount inside. Three times 3600 porters brought chests of provisions, of which 3600 chests were for the hero's immediate family, while "the mariners divided among themselves twice three thousand six hundred chests."(2) It seems that Noah's ark was much smaller than earlier heroic proportions. [Cubit: From Latin cubitum, "elbow"; the length of an average hand and forearm from the tip of the middle finger to the elbow (about 18-21 inches).] As long ago as 1872, George Smith translated the Twelve Tablets of Creation from Ashurbanipal's library, and discovered he earlier version of the flood myth.(3) [Ashurbanipal - King of Assyria c. 669-630 BC., military leader and statesman. He collected at Nineveh a large library of cuneiform texts, rediscovered by archaeologists in the 19th century A.D.] Among the details that religious orthodoxy took care to suppress was the point that the god who caused the flood was disobedient to the Great Mother, who didn't want her earthly children drowned. Mother Ishtar severely punished the disobedient god by cursing him with her "great lightnings." She set her magic rainbow in the heavens to block his access to offerings on earthly altars, "since rashly he caused the flood-storm, and handed over my people to destruction."(4) Old Testament writers copied other details of the ancient flood myth but could not allow their god to be punished by the Great Whore of Babylon, as if he were a naughty child sent to bed without supper by an angry mother. Thus, they transformed Ishtar's rainbow barrier into a "sign of the covenant" voluntarily set in the heavens by God himself (Genesis 9:13). The Tigris-Euphrates valley was subject to disastrous floods. One especially was long remembered: geologists have linked it with the volcanic cataclysm that blew apart the island of Thera (Santorin) and destroyed Cretan civilization. When Sir Leonard Woolley was excavating the site of Ur, he found the track of a mighty flood - a layer of clay, without artifacts, eight feet thick.(5) [Holy crap!] Such a flood may have been identified with the watery Chaos that all Indo-European peoples believed would swallow up the world at the end of its cycle, and out of which a new world would be reborn in the womb of the Formless Mother.(6) The ark and its freight represented seeds of life passing through the period of Chaos from the destruction of one universe to the birth of the next. Even in the Bible, the "birth" was heralded by the Goddess's yonic dove (Genesis 8:12). Gnostic literature preserved the older view of the flood-causing God as an evil destroyer of humanity, and the Goddess as its preserver. Because people refused to worship him alone, jealous Jehovah sent the flood to wipe out all life. Fortunately the Goddess opposed him, "and Noah and his family were saved in the ark by means of the sprinkling of light that proceeded from her, and through it the world was gain filled with humankind."(7) This Gnostic interpretation had both Babylonian and Hellenic roots. Greeks said the primal sea-mother Themis gave Deucalion and his wife occult knowledge ("light") of how to create human being from stones, "the bones of their Mother," i.e., of the earth. (8) Raising up living people from stones or bones was a popular miracle. Jesus mentioned it, and Ezekiel's God claimed to have done it in the valley bones (Ezekiel 37). Notes: (1) Graves, G.M. 1, 142; Hooke, M.E.M., 130. (2) Lethaby, 239. (3) Ceram, 314. (4) Assyr. & Bab. Lit., 357; Epic of Gilgamesh, 112. (5) Ceram, 353. (6) Avalon, 233. (7) Pagels, 55. (8) Graves, G.M. 1, 139.

Good Stories Never Die

Well, knock me over with a feather - Noah's Ark is in the news once again! It only goes to show that a really great story never dies. No wonder Moses appropriated it from the Babylonians. From Guardian.co.uk Relic reveals Noah's ark was circular • Newly translated tablet gives building instructions • Amateur historian's find was almost overlooked Maev Kennedy guardian.co.uk, Friday 1 January 2010 22.35 GMT That they processed aboard the enormous floating wildlife collection two-by-two is well known. Less familiar, however, is the possibility that the animals Noah shepherded on to his ark then went round and round inside. According to newly translated instructions inscribed in ancient Babylonian on a clay tablet telling the story of the ark, the vessel that saved one virtuous man, his family and the animals from god's watery wrath was not the pointy-prowed craft of popular imagination but rather a giant circular reed raft. The now battered tablet, aged about 3,700 years, was found somewhere in the Middle East by Leonard Simmons, a largely self-educated Londoner who indulged his passion for history while serving in the RAF from 1945 to 1948. The relic was passed to his son Douglas, who took it to one of the few people in the world who could read it as easily as the back of a cornflakes box; he gave it to Irving Finkel, a British Museum expert, who translated its 60 lines of neat cuneiform script. There are dozens of ancient tablets that have been found which describe the flood story but Finkel says this one is the first to describe the vessel's shape. "In all the images ever made people assumed the ark was, in effect, an ocean-going boat, with a pointed stem and stern for riding the waves – so that is how they portrayed it," said Finkel. "But the ark didn't have to go anywhere, it just had to float, and the instructions are for a type of craft which they knew very well. It's still sometimes used in Iran and Iraq today, a type of round coracle which they would have known exactly how to use to transport animals across a river or floods." Finkel's research throws light on the familiar Mesopotamian story, which became the account in Genesis, in the Old Testament, of Noah and the ark that saved his menagerie from the waters which drowned every other living thing on earth. In his translation, the god who has decided to spare one just man speaks to Atram-Hasis, a Sumerian king who lived before the flood and who is the Noah figure in earlier versions of the ark story. "Wall, wall! Reed wall, reed wall! Atram-Hasis, pay heed to my advice, that you may live forever! Destroy your house, build a boat; despise possessions And save life! Draw out the boat that you will built with a circular design; Let its length and breadth be the same." The tablet goes on to command the use of plaited palm fibre, waterproofed with bitumen, before the construction of cabins for the people and wild animals. It ends with the dramatic command of Atram-Hasis to the unfortunate boat builder whom he leaves behind to meet his fate, about sealing up the door once everyone else is safely inside: "When I shall have gone into the boat, Caulk the frame of the door!" Fortunes were spent in the 19th century by biblical archaeology enthusiasts in hunts for evidence of Noah's flood. The Mesopotamian flood myth was incorporated into the great poetic epic Gilgamesh, and Finkel, curator of the recent British Museum exhibition on ancient Babylon, believes that it was during the Babylonian captivity that the exiled Jews learned the story, brought it home with them, and incorporated it into the Old Testament. Despite its unique status, Simmons' tablet – which has been dated to around 1,700 BC and is only a few centuries younger than the oldest known account – was very nearly overlooked. "When my dad eventually came home, he shipped a whole tea chest of this kind of stuff home – seals, tablets, bits of pottery," said Douglas. "He would have picked them up in bazaars, or when people knew he was interested in this sort of thing, they would have brought them to him and earned a few bob." Simmons senior became a scenery worker at the BBC, but kept up his love of history, and was very disappointed when academics dismissed treasures of his as commonplace and worthless. His son took the tablet to a British Museum open day, where Finkel "took one look at it and nearly fell off his chair" with excitement. "It is the most extraordinary thing," Simmons said of the tablet. "You hold it in your hand, and you instantly get a feeling that you are directly connected to a very ancient past – and it gives you a shiver down your spine." Raiders of the lost ark The human fascination with the flood and the whereabouts of the ark shows few signs of subsiding. The story has travelled down the centuries from the ancient Babylonians and continues to fascinate in the 21st century. Countless expeditions have travelled to Mount Ararat in Turkey, where Noah's ark is said to have come to rest, but scientific proof of its existence has yet to be found. Recent efforts to find it have been led by creationists, who are keen to exhibit it as evidence of the literal truth of the Bible. "If the flood of Noah indeed wiped out the entire human race and its civilization, as the Bible teaches, then the ark constitutes the one remaining major link to the pre-flood world," says John D Morris of the Institute for Creation Research. "No significant artefact could ever be of greater antiquity or importance." In the Victorian era some became obsessed with the ark story. George Smith – the lowly British museum assistant who, in 1872, deciphered the Flood Tablet which is inscribed with the Assyrian version of the Noah's ark tale – could apparently not contain his excitement at his discovery. According to the museum's archives: "He jumped up and rushed about the room in a great state of excitement and to the astonishment of those present began to undress himself."

Biblical Archaeology's 12th Annual Fest!

Saw this press release today. I'm a big fan of Hershel Shanks and the Biblical Archaeological Society. He can be rather in your face but he's also put together a great magazine and has brought to the attention of folks like me - the general public - important issues and discoveries in archaeology. Love him or hate him, but he's not ignored! It's a wonderful thing that the Society is holding this Fest in New Orleans, which is still struggling to recover from Hurricane Katrina.

Announcing the Biblical Archaeology Society's 12th annual Bible and Archaeology Fest

The Biblical Archaeology Society announces its 12th annual Bible and Archaeology Fest, to be held November 20–22, 2009, in New Orleans, Louisiana and addressing the topics of early Christianity, Gnostic scholarship, the Hebrew Bible and more. Bible Fest 2009 in New Orleans! FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRLog (Press Release) – Aug 25, 2009 – WASHINGTON, D.C.-- Announcing the 12th annual Bible and Archaeology Fest, to be held November 20–22, 2009, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Twenty leading scholars will convene from around the world to share their research with the public in a in a dynamic seminar series designed specifically for the interested lay person. Concurrent sessions over the three-day period will address the latest developments in the fields of early Christianity, Gnostic scholarship, the Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient Israel and Biblical archaeology. For twelve years, the Biblical Archaeology Society is proud to be the only organization to bring current Biblical research to the general public straight from the scholars who are at the forefront of their fields. Session topics include such presentations as Should the Gospel of John be Used in Jesus Research? by the renowned speaker Dr. James Charlesworth of Princeton Theological Seminary, Jesus and the Exorcists: What We Learn From Archaeology presented by the ever-popular Dr. Craig Evans of Acadia Divinity College, and Whence Came the Israelites and Their Language? delivered by eminent scholar Professor Anson Rainey of Tel Aviv University. Some of the latest and most exciting discoveries in the field of Biblical archaeology will be presented by the excavation directions themselves, such as Dr. Yosef Garfinkel of the Hebrew University in his presentation Khirbet Qeiyafa: A Fortified City in Judah from the Time of King David and Aren Maier of Bar-Ilan University in Fleshing out the Bible at Philistine Gath: The Interface of Bible and Archaeology. Professor April DeConick of Rice University will illuminate the world of the mysterious Gnostics with her startling and gripping lecture The Magical Judas: Iscariot’s Gospel and Gem, and Sandra Richter of Asbury Theological Seminary addresses a very modern problem as seen in the light of an ancient culture in her presentation The Israelites and the Environment: An Ancient Code Speaks to a Current Crisis. A plenary session will be held the first evening, and the final evening will feature a banquet and question-and-answer session with Hershel Shanks, founder of the Biblical Archaeology Society and editor of Biblical Archaeology Review, scholar Jane Cahill of the Tell el-Hammah Archaeological Project and Dr. James Charlesworth of Princeton Theological Seminary. Included in the program fee are all lectures, the plenary session, continental breakfasts, refreshment breaks, a final banquet and Continuing Education units. Full details of the conference, which is to be held at the Marriott New Orleans at the Convention Center, can be viewed at www.biblicalarchaeology.org/fest. For more information, please contact Sarah Yeomans at syeomans@bib-arch.org, 1.800.221.4644, ext. 221, or Alicia Bregon at abregon@bib-arch.org, 1.800.221.4644, ext. 208.

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The Biblical Archaeology Society (BAS) was founded in 1974 as a nonprofit, nondenominational, educational organization dedicated to the dissemination of information about archaeology in the Bible lands.

Giants at Jericho?

An interesting hypothesis put forward by Ronald S. Hendel at the Biblical Archaeology website: BAR 35:02, Mar/Apr 2009 Biblical Views: Giants at Jericho By Ronald S. Hendel It's interesting that the Hebrews were still talking about "giants" - evidently attributable to the descendants of Nephilim - thousands of years after the Great Flood that was supposed to have wiped out every living thing except those that survived on Noah's Ark. Can't have it both ways, folks! If there were still descendants of Nephilim a few thousand years after the flood, that means your accounts of universal destruction are wrong (or God lied to Moses when He was dictating the first five books of the Bible). Or that means that Noah's family weren't as pure as driven snow - because everyone AFTER the Great Flood was supposedly descended from those four men and four women who walked off the Ark somewhere in the region of Mount Ararat. Well, that's another subject! I highly recommend reading the comments in the "Talk Back" section after reading the article. I'm not a biblical scholar, nor an archaeologist, just an avid reader, so this is just my personal opinion. Assuming that an exodus occurred (to my knowledge, there is no consensus on this), I'm of the opinion that it occurred sometime during the troubles with the Hyksos (c. 1650-1550 BCE), possibly in conjunction with the aftermath of the eruption of Thera (I do not think a definitive date has been established - there is a wide range of opinion with dates ranging anywhere from 1645 BC to 1500 BC). Those were chaotic times; it's not amazing to me that no definitive records of a mass migration of Hebrews out of the Delta area have been discovered. One of the comments to Hendel's article also suggest TWO exoduses - an intriguing proposition! Here's an interesting article on the destructive power of the eruption of Thera from Live Science. I recently watched a NOVA special on the eruption of Krakatoa in the 1880's, and that was absolutely terrifying. To think that Thera's eruption was four times more powerful than Krakatoa beggars the imagination - I just cannot conceive of it. It's aftermath must have been felt around the entire globe for years - perhaps a decade. Wow!

The Essenes Are Baloney! Claims Archaeologist

Nothing like Middle East archaeology to stir up a little controversy among the usually pretty laid-back realms of archaeology! The mental images of "scholars in uproar" makes me double over laughing! And that the archaeologist putting forth the new hypothesis causing all of the uproar is a female - well - PRICELESS! I can hardly wait to see how this all works out - but I'll probably be dead by then (50 to 100 years from now). Drat! I need a crash course in reincarnation... From The Times On Line (where else???) From The Times March 18, 2009 Scholars in uproar over challenge to Dead Sea Scrolls For more than 60 years scholars have believed that the Dead Sea Scrolls were the work of an ascetic Jewish sect called the Essenes, who lived in the 1st century in the mountains and recorded their religious observances on parchments. Now a new theory challenging the broadly accepted history is sending shockwaves through the archaeological community, even leading to the arrest of one prominent scrolls scholar’s son in the United States. Rachel Elior, a professor of Jewish philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, claims in a forthcoming study that not only were the 930 scrolls written by Jewish priests living in Jerusalem but that the Essenes as a sect did not exist. In her new book Memory and Oblivion, Professor Elior says that the scrolls were written by the Sadducees, a class of Jewish priests dating back to the time of King Solomon. The scrolls were found by a shepherd in a cave at Qumran, on the edge of the Dead Sea, in 1947. One of the most important archaeological finds of the century, their significance was enhanced by the discovery of an untouched version of the Hebrew Bible dating back to 300BC. Some scholars believe that the obscure sect may have had an impact on early Christianity, positing that John the Baptist or even Jesus may have spent time with them. Professor Elior argues, however, that an analysis of the scrolls shows that the authors were recording the routines and practises of the cohanim, or priests, descended from Zadok, the first high priest in Jerusalem after the conquest of the city by the Israelites hundreds of years before. She believes they were taken to Qumran some time during the 2nd century BC after the Sadducees turned their backs on the Temple of Jerusalem, which they said had been defiled by the conquest of the Seleucid Greeks, the descendants of one of the generals of Alexander the Great, in 175BC. “I believe any serious scholar truly can’t but admit that the law reflected in the scrolls is a Sadducee law,” she said, pointing out that there were no corroborating historical records, either in Jewish or early Christian literature, to indicate that a large sect of celibate men lived in the area over a long period of time. “The Essenes are only a literary invention of a Utopian society that lived a most benevolent and chaste life,” she told The Times. The confusion arose from scholars using other, later texts as their sources, she said, noting that the Jewish-Roman scholar Josephus mentioned them, but that he was writing hundreds of years later. The professor also noted that when the texts were unearthed in 1947, the area around Jerusalem was caught up in the war that created the Jewish state, and that early hurried assessment of their origin set scholars on the wrong track for decades. The theory has stirred controversy in academic circles, with established scrolls experts vehemently rejecting the new interpretation. “Almost seventy scholars accept the statement that one of the Essenes’ groups lived in Qumran, and some say we’re all morons and only they understand,” Hanan Eshel, a professor at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, told the Haaretz newspaper. The debate has even led to the arrest of the son of one proponent of the theory that the Essenes did not write the ancient scriptures. Raphael Golb, the son of Norman Golb, a professor at Chicago University, was arrested in New York this month for allegedly creating online aliases and conducting a campaign of harassment against academic opponents of his father’s theories. Father and son claimed that members of mainstream academia were trying to silence the professor. The younger Mr Golb reportedly accused his father’s critics of being anti-Semites trying to deny the link between the scrolls and established Jewish institutions. Monastic mystery — The Essenes are believed to have been a religious sect in Palestine from about the 2nd century BC to the end of the 1st century AD — The New Testament makes no mention of them, and accounts by Pliny the Elder, Philo of Alexandria and Josephus differ in significant details — Pliny, in his day, fixed their number at 4,000. They are thought to have moved to the desert in opposition to the powers in Jerusalem and lived in secluded monastic communities — It is believed that they considered themselves to be a chosen elect and that messianic figures would appear to them and usher in a new age, and that they spent their days engaged in manual work or study of Scripture — After a year’s probation, converts received emblems but were banned from common meals for two years — Those who qualified then swore piety to God, justice towards men, hatred of falsehood and faithful observance of the tenets Source: www.britannica.com ****************************************************************************** I found this first comment on the story made online at the newspaper's website point on - and it happens to coincide with the philosophy of the researchers at Goddesschess who are exploring the origins of chess and other ancient board games: a lot of accepted antiquities "standards" eg chronology are based on surprisingly flimsy evidence, often just some 19th century German theorist's opinion, who had information second or third-hand. The Egyptian chronology is a good example and David Rohl has done a great job of demolishing it. Justin Toffmann, Cologne, Germany Jan says: Just because it's accepted as "truth" today does not mean it's correct; what is accepted as "truth" today is tomorrow's discarded hypothesis. We've seen this over and over again in the world of science (both hard and "soft" sciences) and chess historians should keep this in mind.

Ancient Seal Inscription Re-translated

From israelj.post.com

Feb 4, 2008 20:26 Updated Feb 5, 2008 17:14
Archeologist revises read of ancient seal inscription
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS

A prominent Israeli archeologist said Monday that she has revised her reading of an inscription on an ancient seal uncovered in an archeological excavation in Jerusalem's City of David after various scholars around the world critiqued her original interpretation of the name on the seal.

The 2,500 year-old black stone seal was found last month amid stratified layers of debris in the excavation under way just outside the Old City walls near the Dung Gate, said archeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar, who is leading the dig.

Mazar had originally read the name on the seal as "Temech," and suggested that it belonged to the family of that name mentioned in the Book of Nehemiah.

But after the find was first reported in The Jerusalem Post, various epigraphers around the world said Mazar had erred by reading the inscription on the seal straight on (from right to left) rather than backwards (from left to right), as a result of the fact that a seal creates a mirror image when used to inscribe a piece of clay.

The critics, including the European scholar Peter van der Veen, as well as the epigrapher Ryan Byrne, co-director of the Tel Dan excavations, suggested in Internet blogs that the correct reading of the seal is actually "Shlomit," also a biblical name.

Mazar said Monday that she accepted the reading of "Shlomit" on the ancient seal, and added that she appreciated the scholarly research on the issue.

"We are involved in research, not in proving our own opinions," Mazar said.

She noted that the name Shlomit was known in the period from which the seal dated, and that other contemporary seals had been found that bore names of women who held official status in the administration.

It was not clear whether the name on the seal had any connection to the daughter of Zerubbabel, mentioned in 1 Chronicles 3:19, since the name was apparently common in the period.

The grandson of Judean King Jehoachin, Zerubbabel, led the first band of Jews who returned from the Babylonian captivity, and laid the foundation of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

"What we can say for sure is that this woman was an important woman in the society," Mazar said.

The seal, which portrays a common and popular cultic scene, was bought in Babylon and dates to 538-445 BCE, Mazar said.

In contrast, Byrne suggested that a date in the late seventh or early sixth century was more probable, noting that scene was typical of the Iron Age Levant and that there was no reason to surmise the seal had been made in Babylon.

The 2.1 X 1.8 cm elliptical seal is engraved with two bearded priests standing on either side of an incense alter with their hands raised in a position of worship.

A crescent moon, the symbol of the chief Babylonian god Sin, appears on the top of the altar, Mazar said.

The fact that this cultic scene relates to a Babylonian god seemed not to have disturbed the Jews that used the seal, she added.

Mazar gained international prominence for her recent excavation that may have uncovered the biblical palace of King David.

The three-year-old east Jerusalem dig is being sponsored by the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem research institute, where Mazar serves as a senior fellow, and the City of David Foundation, which promotes Jewish settlement throughout east Jerusalem.

A Controversy of Biblical Proportions

I have been following this battle since I first read of it a couple of months ago. In academic circles, it has been a BIG story. At stake: a tenured position for a female of Palestinian ancestry who teaches at Barnard University. The field: biblical archaeology. I’ll bet you thought that biblical archaeology was a yawner subject! Ha! From The Jewish Week News online (New York) October 25, 2007 Flinging Dirt In Archaeology Dispute Some charges against Barnard professor’s tenure inaccurate; scholars divided. by Larry Cohler-Esses Editor-At-Large The key organizer of a campaign to deny tenure to a Barnard College professor seen by some as virulently anti-Israel acknowledged this week that her petition against the professor may not have quoted the book accurately. Barnard alumna Paula Stern, who now lives in an Israeli settlement community on the West Bank, acknowledged Tuesday that her petition —signed now by more than 2,500 people — incorrectly quotes from Nadia Abu El-Haj’s book in charging she is grossly ignorant of Jerusalem geography. Stern also conceded attributing to Abu El-Haj a viewpoint that Abu El-Haj does not voice as her own in her book. The petition does so by taking a quote fragment from a section in which Abu El-Haj describes others as having the opposite viewpoint. In addition, despite Abu El-Haj’s frequent citation of Hebrew language sources and an acknowledgment on her book’s first page thanking her Hebrew tutor, Stern’s petition asserts, “Abu El Haj does not speak or read Hebrew ... We fail to understand how a scholar can pretend to study the attitudes of a people whose language she does not know.” The charge may stem from criticism from some scholarly quarters that Abu El-Haj’s book contains mistakes in Hebrew, indicating her skills in the language are inadequate for such complex scholarship. Other experts have defended her Hebrew skills. “It was written very quickly,” Stern said of her petition, whose signatories include many Barnard and Columbia University alumni. “But there is a clear pattern in her book of attempting to undermine the historical connection of the Jewish people to the land.” Abu El-Haj, a Palestinian American, has been condemned by many supporters of Israel who say her controversial book, Facts On The Ground, reflects a deep-seated hostility to the very notion of a Jewish state. But her politics, whatever they may be, are — in principle at least — irrelevant to the tenure process. More relevant to that process, many of these critics also charge that the book is intellectually dishonest — a fraudulent attempt to throw into question some of the basic historical assumptions about Jewish presence in the land of Israel through the centuries. Some scholars have argued that she uses evidence selectively, misunderstands key aspects of how archaeology works and/or misrepresents the conduct and motives of archeologists. Others, no less expert, have praised and defended Abu El-Haj’s book — based on her dissertation —which has won several prestigious awards. At times it sounds like the experts have read entirely different books. William Dever, a well-known retired professor of Near East archaeology at the University of Arizona, dismissed it as “a piece of shoddy work as historical research. She doesn’t quote a single Israeli archaeologist. She doesn’t show she’s read their work.” Eric Meyers, a biblical archaeology professor at Duke University and member of her dissertation committee, pointed out that, in fact, Abu El-Haj went deep into the archaeological archives to quote directly from dusty reports and field notes of Israeli archaeologists from the 1950’s and early 1960’s. Prof. Rafael Greenberg, senior lecturer in archaeology at Tel Aviv University, called the work an “eye-opener,” adding, “I recommend it.” His colleague, Aren Maeir, an archaeologist based at Bar Ilan, denounced it as “replete with inaccuracies [and] faulty research.” But the scholars are, by and large, at least arguing over things that are actually in the book, presumably, in context. In her petition, Stern says that Abu El-Haj “asserts that the ancient Israelite kingdoms are a ‘pure political fabrication.’" Last August, bloggers Richard Silverstein and Jesse Walker publicly challenged the accuracy of this quote, among others, noting it was taken out of context. After a close reading of the 319-page book, this reporter found that the only place in which that phrase appears is in a section devoted to comparing the understandings Israeli Jewish and Palestinian archaeologists have of their respective origins on the land. Abu El-Haj notes that some Palestinian archaeologists argue Palestinians are heirs to the Cannanites who preceded the Israelites on the land. Israeli archaeologists, she notes, dismiss this as complete nonsense while for them the “modern Jewish/Israeli belief in ancient Israelite origins is not understood as pure political fabrication.” Stern denied she had taken out of context Abu El-Haj’s quote about political fabrication. “She denies the ancient history of the Jewish kingdoms in many ways,” Stern said in an email about Abu El-Haj, “as when she says that Jerusalem in the times of Herod was not Jewish.” The statement in question, in Abu El-Haj’s own voice, reads, “For most of its history, including the Herodian period, Jerusalem was not a Jewish city, but rather one integrated into larger empires and inhabited, primarily, by ‘other’ communities.” On the other hand, contrary to many claims by both scholars and lay critics, Abu El-Haj elsewhere repeatedly writes about the First and Second Temple periods and Jewish presence during these periods as a matter of fact. Like many archaeologists, she raises many more questions about the historicity of Israelite presence during the late Bronze and early Iron ages, when biblical tradition holds that identifiably Israelite tribes came into the land. Stern's petition also lambastes Abu El-Haj for "demonstrations of her ignorance of history and archaeology." It cites her quoting of an unnamed Israeli archaeologist criticizing a dig "in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City" as "one of the worst" in terms of method and preservation. "Somewhere in there are the complexes of the Palaces of Solomon," the archaeologist frets. Stern notes that Solomon's palaces, if they exist, would be nowhere near the Jewish Quarter. But the archaeologist quoted was not referring to a dig there but to one on the south and southwestern slopes of the Temple Mount - near the City of David. It is a site that, in fact, later turned up artifacts from what appear to be part of the palace grounds, said Greenberg, the Tel Aviv University archaeologist. “I’ve spoken to many newspapers, no one has done what you’ve done,” said Stern, presumably displeased with questions asking her to square her charges against the book with its text. She says the overall “trend” of the book is to deny a Jewish connection to the land and that “no matter whether it’s accurate or not, my petition is not on trial here. If you don’t like my petition, go to my Web site and read the experts’ opinions.” The current status of Abu El-Haj’s tenure process is a well-kept secret. She is widely believed to have gotten tenure approval from Barnard but not yet from Columbia, the parent institution of the women’s college. The campaign to deny her tenure has received public support from figures such as Martin Peretz, editor-in-chief of The New Republic, who stated, incorrectly, last month that Abu El-Haj “believes that archeology proves there were never any Hebrews in the Holy Land.” Last November, The New York Sun, one of the first newspapers to report on the controversy, stated wrongly that Abu El-Haj “suggests Jerusalem was destroyed not by the Romans, but by the Jews themselves due to rising class tensions among them.” Sun managing editor Ira Stoll did not respond to a request for comment on the report by press time.Campus Watch, a web site devoted to exposing what it views as leftist bias in the academy, and FrontPage, a site with similar aims, have posted numerous articles critical of Abu El-Haj. The Democracy Project, another conservative website, has denounced her as “an academic impostor who passes off a political agenda demonizing the State of Israel and its legitimate historic roots.” In her book, Abu El-Haj repeatedly uses terms such as “colonial nation-state,” “(colonial) national political project,” and “settler state,” when describing Israel. The book implicitly rejects widespread Jewish self-perception of the Zionist enterprise as one in which Jews have returned to a land to which they have always been inherently connected. That connection, Abu El-Haj argues, had to be created in multiple ways—from establishing settlements and making that the sine qua non of early Zionism, through renaming and Hebraizing thousands of Arab villages, towns and place names and—not least of all—through developing a national “myth” of indigenous origin—a narrative—in which the findings of archaeology, with its scientific authority to “fix facts,” played a key role. The book discusses these issues using the loaded jargon of academic post-structuralism, referring frequently to “national origin myth,” “making place,” “self-fashioning” and “privileging” certain concepts, methodologies or paradigms. It strongly rejects a positivist world view in which knowledge is something objectively out there that is simply discovered, through empirical investigation, rather than interpreted. “The part that’s most revealing is her critical view of the automatic assumptions made by Israelis when they present Jerusalem,” said Greenberg, the Tel Aviv University senior archaeologist. “Anyone looking at it from a non-Jewish, non-Israeli point of view sees things we don’t see; for example, our use of terms like ‘First Temple period,’ ‘Second Temple Period. Once you think about it, you see it’s a very loaded term. There were many people living in the land at the time—many different religions, ethnicities, identities who did not relate to the Temple at all. “The thing I don’t agree with, emphatically, is that there’s something unusual in the Israeli position,” Greenberg said. “Every archaeologist in the world has an agenda.”