Book of Kells Online

James McGrath has noted that Trinity College Dublin has digitized and placed the Book of Kells online.  You can see it here.

Making the Chronicle's Honor Roll

The Chronicle of Higher Education has released its "Great Colleges to Work For 2013" guide, and my new institution this fall, University of Mississippi, made their "Honor Roll," that is, the top ten in its category (as a large 4-year university).  They received the honor roll for good ratings in the following categories: Collaborative Governance; Confidence in Senior Leadership; Facilities, Workspace, and Security; Job Satisfaction; Professional/Career Development Programs; Respect and Appreciation; Supervisor or Department Chair Relationship; Tenure Clarity and Process; Work/Life Balance.

Areas where they did not score as highly include:  Compensation and Benefits; Diversity; Teaching Environment.

Congratulations to Ole Miss for doing so well.  

The Exorcism Business is Booming

Evidently, anyway.  According to a Huffington Post article focusing on how Polish exorcists have been worried about Madonna, it mentions that requests for exorcists and, evidently, for Catholic clergy to receive exorcism training is on the rise not only in Eastern Europe, but also in the U.S.  I wonder why there is such an upsurge in interest?

Two Powers in Heaven (Now Affordably Priced)

Larry Hurtado notes here that my late advisor's first book, Two Powers in Heaven, is now being re-printed by Baylor University Press at an affordable cost.

Here is the blurb on BUP's site:

In his now classic Two Powers in Heaven, Alan Segal examines rabbinic evidence about early manifestations of the "two powers" heresy within Judaism. Segal sheds light upon the development of and relationships among early Christianity, Gnosticism, and Merkabah mysticism and demonstrates that belief in the "two powers in heaven" was widespread by the first century, and may have been a catalyst for the Jewish rejection of early Christianity. An important addition to New Testament and Gnostic scholarship by this much revered scholar, Segal's Two Powers in Heaven is made available once again for a new generation.

Updated Biblioblog List

There is a new, updated list of biblioblogs.  You can find Antiquitopia listed as New Testament / Early Christianity with an emphasis on Greco-Roman Culture (in its categorization "3d").  The site also lists which blogs are "Top 20" and which are "Top 50."  Antiquitopia, finally, has made the cut for Top 50!

SBL Program Book Online

The SBL Annual Meeting program book is now available online.

Here is the section in which I am giving a paper, scheduled for Sunday evening of the conference.  Looks like Jim Davila will be responding.

Esotericism and Mysticism in Antiquity 11/24/2013 4:00 PM to 6:30 PM Room: Holiday 2 - HiltonTheme: Religious Practices that (Trans)form Rebecca Lesses, Ithaca College, Presiding Jonathan A. Draper, University of KwaZulu-Natal Spiritual Temple and Prophetic-Priestly Revelation of Divine Mysteries in the Didache Community (25 min) Tyson Putthoff, University of Durham “To Die Saturated in His Glory”: Initiatory Death and Ontological Reconstruction in Hekhalot Zutarti (25 min) Joseph E. Sanzo, University of California-Los Angeles Making “Christian Magic”: Themes of Christian Identity Formation on Textual Amulets from Late Antiquity (25 min) Jared C. Calaway, Illinois Wesleyan University God and the Senses: Smelling, Tasting, and Touching God in Early Christianity (25 min) William Hamblin, Brigham Young University The Pseudepigrapha and Visionary Books (25 min) James Davila, University of St. Andrews, Respondent (15 min) Discussion (10 min)

God and the Senses (9): The Gospel of Truth

“For when they saw and heard him, he let them taste him and smell him and touch  the beloved Son” (30,23-31,35; trans. Marvin Meyer in Nag Hammadi Scriptures: International Edition). 

I have been reading a lot of the Nag Hammadi Codices lately, since many of my current research projects seem to intersect there.  While re-reading the Gospel of Truth, I found that it was full of multi-sensory language.  The Gospel of Truth, a profoundly original Valentinian homily (some even think it derives from Valentinus himself), effectively engages all five senses.  Indeed, in some ways, this one line encapsulates one’s relationship with the divine in this text: once you see and hear (initial steps), one then came come closer and taste, smell, and touch the divine, all indicating intimacy if not union.

Throughout the entire sermon, the speaker/author invokes sensory language.  There is, of course, a lot of visionary and auditory language, but there is also strong tasting/smelling and touching language as well.  Different types of senses seem to cluster around different types of ideas relating to salvation and ways of experiencing the divine.

Vision and Knowledge:  Seeing and failing to see serves primarily as a metaphor for understanding and knowledge (17,4-18,11; 28,32-30,23).  "Appearance" has ambivalent meaning: “mere appearance” can stand for the deficiency of the world (23,17-25,25), but there is also the positive appearance of truth (26,27-28,32).   Son is seen, but his name is invisible (as well as unheard, unpronounced, but uttered by whom the Name belongs) (38,6-41,3).

Hearing and Salvation:  the unutterable and unhearable name leads to issues of hearing.  There is some terminology of proclamation, but not much (19,34-21,25).  There is, again, great importance placed upon uttered and unuttered names.  Unlike the discussion of what can be uttered, this discussion is quite different.  Uttered and unuttered names (and "letters") refer to people who are called and those who are not called; hearing, therefore, serves as a metaphor for salvation.  This, in fact, sounds a lot like Paul in Romans 8:28-30.  The “letters” in this section suggest the names of those, who are called and lead to knowledge of the Father.

There is, moreover, the embodiment of the Word that was spoken (25,25-26,27)

Tasting (and Smelling):  Language of the Father:  Much of Valentinian theology surrounding the Father is basically apophatic, the via negativa.  Nonetheless, some more positive language occurs in smelling and tasting language.  Indeed, one finds in this text and throughout the Tripartite Tractate the fact that the Father is “sweet.”  Jesus is also sweet (23,17-25,25).  Smelling and tasting, in fact, are to the Gospel of Truth, the spiritual senses par excellence, far surpassing seeing and hearing:

           

“For the Father is sweet, and goodness is in his will.  He knows what is yours, in which you find rest.  By the fruit one knows what is yours.  For the Father’s children are his fragrance; they are from the beauty of his face.  The Father loves his fragrance and disperses it everywhere, and when it mixes with matter, it gives his fragrance to the light.  Through his quietness he makes his fragrance superior in every way to every sound.  For it is not ears that smell the fragrance, but it is the spirit that possesses the sense of smell, draws the fragrance to itself, and immerses itself in the Father’s fragrance.” (33,33-34,34; Trans. Marvin Meyer)

The superiority of smell over sound has a few advantages.  It seems to rely, firstly, upon a relationship between the concept of “spirit” and “breath,” which in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, etc., are the same word or from the same root word.  Breathing in is how you smell, and breath is spirit; therefore, smell is the sense of the spirit.  Hearing, moreover, is a response to sound; while obvious, hearing discernable sounds in communication would violate the principle that the Father is ineffable; smelling, however, is difficult to describe (except, in this case, as sweet).  It approaches ineffability in a way that hearing and seeing do not.

If one smells the Father, one tastes the “place of rest” (41,3-43,24).  Tasting is associated with the experience of salvation; and, moreover, tasting largely in biblically-derived sources seems to largely be equivalent with “experiencing” something: tasting death; tasting the heavenly gift (Hebrews), etc. 

Touching the Father’s Mouth:  Smelling is an especially intimate act, but touching is, at least in the Gospel of Truth, more so.  “Whoever loves truth, whoever touches truth, touches the Father’s mouth, because truth is the Father’s mouth.  His tongue is the Holy Spirit, and fro his tongue one will receive the Holy Spirit” (26,27ff).  While mouth and tongue connected with truth would, most of the time, be associated with hearing; in this case, it is touching.  It is more intimate; touching a mouth and tongue evokes a scene of kissing.  It, in that sense, resembles Origen’s spiritually erotic interpretation of “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth” (Song of Songs 1:1) as the intimate messages given between Christ and the soul, combining kissing with the conveyance of truth, perhaps a truth that surpasses discursive thought.  

In short, vision relates to knowledge and understanding; hearing relates to calling; but things that surpass understanding, things that surpass language, are best expressed in terms of smelling, tasting, and touching.  I think the most startling aspect of the Gospel of Truth is its reservation of smelling as the highest or most spiritual sense, if not the only sense that is truly spiritual.  

Taking the Bible Seriously (As Literature)

There is a nice review of Robert Alter's newest installment of his translation of the Hebrew Bible in the Tablet.

In Ancient Israel, Alter has reached the part of the Bible with the most to say about history. The Pentateuch begins in myth and ends in moral exhortation; its most famous legends are precisely that, legends, which can only be accepted as true by an act of faith. Adam eating the apple, Abraham sacrificing Isaac, Moses parting the Red Sea—these are not the kinds of things that can be corroborated with outside evidence. Starting with the Book of Joshua, however, Ancient Israel moves into a more recognizable world of power politics, in which the main events are wars between tribes, states, and empires, and the intrigues of kings and courtiers. Toward the end of Kings, when we read of the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel by the Assyrian Empire and the sacking of Jerusalem by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, we are dealing with events that also appear in extra-biblical inscriptions and documents. Somewhere along the line, the Israelites have evolved from a holy family into a political entity, with all the compromises and disappointments that entails.

Be sure to read the rest of it here, especially the bit about David.

How Did Protestants Lose the Apocrypha?

It is a few days old, but Philip Jenkins has an interesting informative post (definitely worth the read) on Protestants and "Apocrypha."

Really Old Torah Scroll at University of Bologna

Reported in BBC News: 

The University of Bologna in Italy has found what it says may be the oldest complete scroll of Judaism's most important text, the Torah.
The scroll was in the university library but had been mislabelled, a professor at the university says.
It was previously thought the scroll was no more that a few hundred years old.
However, after carbon dating tests, the university has said the text may have been written more than 850 years ago.
The university's Professor of Hebrew Mauro Perani says this would make it the oldest complete text of the Torah known to exist, and an object of extraordinary worth.
The university says that in 1889 one of its librarians, Leonello Modona, had examined the scroll and dated it to the 17th Century.
However, when Mr Perani recently re-examined the scroll, he realised the script used was that of the oriental Babylonian tradition, meaning that the scroll must be extremely old.
Another reason for the dating is that the text has many features forbidden in later copies under rules laid down by the scholar Maimonides in the 12th Century, the university says.

Ah, the importance of proper labeling.  Of course, the Leningrad and Aleppo Codices are still older, but they are codices and not Torah scrolls.

News of a New New Testament

There have been several discussions of the project spearheaded by Hal Taussig called A New New Testament.  See the description here:

It is time for a new New Testament. 

Over the past century, numerous lost scriptures have been discovered, authenticated, translated, debated, celebrated. Many of these documents were as important to shaping early-Christian communities and beliefs as what we have come to call the New Testament; these were not the work of shunned sects or rebel apostles, not alternative histories or doctrines, but part of the vibrant conversations that sparked the rise of Christianity. Yet these scriptures are rarely read in contemporary churches; they are discussed nearly only by scholars or within a context only of gnostic gospels. Why should these books be set aside? Why should they continue to be lost to most of us? And don’t we have a great deal to gain by placing them back into contact with the twenty-seven books of the traditional New Testament—by hearing, finally, the full range of voices that formed the early chorus of Christians? 

To create this New New Testament, Hal Taussig called together a council of scholars and spiritual leaders to discuss and reconsider which books belong in the New Testament. They talked about these recently found documents, the lessons therein, and how they inform the previously bound books. They voted on which should be added, choosing ten new books to include in A New New Testament. Reading the traditional scriptures alongside these new texts—the Gospel of Luke with the Gospel of Mary, Paul’s letters with The Letter of Peter to Philip, The Revelation to John with The Secret Revelation to John—offers the exciting possibility of understanding both the new and the old better. This new reading, and the accompanying commentary in this volume, promises to reinvigorate a centuries-old conversation and to bring new relevance to a dynamic tradition.

There have been a series of contributions to the Huffington Post on this new publication:

There are at least two posts directly discussing or written by Hal Taussig, the general editor:  see here (for an interview) and here for a more recent piece by Taussig himself posted today (5/20/2013).

There are two pieces (here and here) written from a Jewish, Rabbinic perspective, both of which seem to be particularly fond of The Thunder: Perfect Mind.  And then a more general discussion here.

Jim Davila has noted that it sounds a bit gimmicky (and it does), but anything to give attention to apocrypha.

The council that voted on which texts to include consisted on 19 members; they added 10 texts.

The ten texts are: Prayer of Thanksgiving, Gospel of Thomas (no surprise here), Odes of Solomon, The Thunder: Perfect Mind, Gospel of Mary, Gospel of Truth, Prayer of Apostle Paul, Acts of Paul & Thecla, Letter of Peter to Philip, Secret Revelation of John.

The council included:

• Margaret Aymer -- Associate professor of New Testament and area chair of biblical studies at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, Ga., and a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA).
• Geoffrey Black -- General minister and president of United Church of Christ.
• Sister Margaret Brennan -- Member of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and former president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.
• Lisa Bridge -- Program manager for children and youth ministries at Trinity Wall Street Episcopal Church in New York City and an expert in yogic and Buddhist traditions.
• John Dominic Crossan -- Professor emeritus in religious studies at DePaul University and former co-chair of the Jesus Seminar.
• Rabbi Nancy Fuchs Kreimer -- Editor of a forthcoming collection of spiritual essays by female Jewish scholars.
• Bishop Susan Wolfe Hassinger -- Retired bishop of the United Methodist Church and the bishop-in-residence and a lecturer at Boston University School of Theology.
• Bishop Alfred Johnson -- Retired bishop in the United Methodist Church and pastor of (United Methodist) Church of the Village in New York City.
• Chebon Kernell -- Pastor of First American United Methodist Church in Norman, Okla.
• Karen L. King -- Professor of divinity at Harvard University.
• Celene Lillie -- Doctoral candidate in New Testament studies at Union Theological Seminary.
• Stephen D. Moore -- Professor of New Testament at Drew University Theological School.
• J. Paul Rajashekar -- Professor of systematic theology at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America).
• Bruce Reyes-Chow -- Social media consultant and former moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
• Mark Singleton -- Professor at St. John's College in Santa Fe, N.M., and an expert on yoga.
• Sister Nancy Sylvester -- Member of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and former president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.
• Barbara Brown Taylor -- A professor of religion at Piedmont College, author and Episcopal priest.
• Rabbi Arthur Waskow -- Director of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia and a leader in Jewish renewal and peace movements.

It raises the question, though:  if you were to add anything to the New Testament (or if you were to recommend an ancient Christian text for people today to read that is not in the current NT), what would it be?  (And, though not addressed in this project, if there were any books in the NT you would like to see removed, what would it be?)

DNA of Minoans

New studies have traced the mitochondrial DNA, which traces maternal lineage, of Minoan remains to determine their racial background, at least partially so. And, of the bones and teeth that they could get a sample, it has a stronger correlation to European DNA than others.  See this article by a person with a spectacular last name.

Hanging Gardens of Nineveh?

According to Stephanie Dalley of Oxford, whom most of us know from her Myths from Mesopotamia, the hanging gardens belong to an engineering feat of the Assyrian King Sennacherib rather than the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar.  From the Guardian:

She [Dalley] was astonished to find Sennacherib's own description of an "unrivalled palace" and a "wonder for all peoples". He describes the marvel of a water-raising screw made using a new method of casting bronze – and predating the invention of Archimedes' screw by some four centuries.

Dalley said this was part of a complex system of canals, dams and aqueducts to bring mountain water from streams 50 miles away to the citadel of Nineveh and the hanging garden. The script records water being drawn up "all day".

Recent excavations have found traces of aqueducts. One near Nineveh was so vast that Dalley said its remains looked like a stretch of motorway from the air, and it bore a crucial inscription: "Sennacherib king of the world … Over a great distance I had a watercourse directed to the environs of Nineveh …"

She basically re-translates old Assryian and Babylonian tablets that she claims were mistranslated when they were discovered, and she traces the later Greek and Roman sources and their confusion about the Hanging Gardens.  Her newest book is coming out on the topic.

Late-Antique Egyptian Sex

When did late-antique Egyptians have the most sex?  Evidently that is a question some archaeologists are asking.  From the Huffington Post:

So far, researchers have uncovered 765 graves, including the remains of 124 individuals that date to between 18 weeks and 45 weeks after conception. The excellent preservation let researchers date the age of the remains at death. The researchers could also pinpoint month of death, as the graves were oriented toward the rising sun, something that changes predictably throughout the year. [See Images of the Ancient Egypt Cemetery]

The results, combined with other information, suggested the peak period for births at the site was in March and April, and the peak period for conceptions was in July and August, when temperatures at the Dakhleh Oasis can easily reach more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius). 

The peak period for the death of women of childbearing age was also in March and April (exactly mirroring the births), indicating that a substantial number of women died in childbirth.

Evidently different from other Mediterranean countries when sex dwindled in the hot summer months, Egyptians were having more of it.  The article suggests that it would have coincided with the summer flooding of the Nile and, therefore, with the most obvious symbol of Egyptian fertility.  There is also a quick discussion of contraceptives.

 

Rest in Peace: Geza Vermes

I just saw on Jim Davila's blog that Geza Vermes has passed away.  I only met him once, when he spoke at Barnard College at the invitation of Alan Segal.  He was immensely polite and, while a bit quiet, was very engaging.

He will be best known for his work on the Dead Sea Scrolls, especially his affordable English translation, which was my own introduction to the Scrolls, as well as his extensive work on Christian origins and the historical Jesus.

UPDATE (5/8/2013):  I just saw that Mark Goodacre has some reflections here, including some important notes on his contributions to the study of Jesus.  He has more here and here.

UPDATE (5/9/2013):  James Tabor has further reflections here.

UPDATE (5/10/2013):  I just saw that James Crossley has some provocative thoughts on how Jesus and NT scholars more generally have been both profoundly impacted by Vermes (even when we don't know) and have in many ways failed to learn the lessons Vermes teaches in his books.

UPDATE (5/13/2013):  Martin Goodman has a good, extensive obituary on the Wolfson College website.

Jesus in Novels: Your Thoughts

I am thinking of revamping some aspects of my Jesus and the Gospels course.  And I was considering ending the semester (next time I teach it) with a representation of Jesus found in a modern novel.  What novels do you think would be particularly good for this?  Either because it is a good piece of writing, or because it would stimulate conversation, or because it is a fun read, etc.?

Experimental Marriage? From Oneida to Marriage Equality

In a recent article in the Atlantic, Noah Berlatsky attempts a comparison between modern discussions of gay marriage and the 19th Century marriage experiments, mentioning Mormons and Shakers but focusing on John Humphrey Noyes's Oneida Community (which, the article omits, is the origin of Oneida silverware, though originally the company made animal traps).

As Jillian Keenan reiterated last week at Slate, gay marriage opponents often assert that allowing same-sex marriages will lead us to polygamy and other perversions. It's an odd rhetorical move, inasmuch as, in terms of chronology, the slippery slope from gay marriage to polygamy appears to run in the wrong direction. The major American experiment with multiple wives in one marriage, occurred, after all, in the 19th century with the early Mormon Church. To talk about polygamy, then, doesn't raise the specter of a dystopic future. It points instead to the past. And it also underlines the extent to which marriage experimentation in the U.S. goes back a long, long way. 

As far as the history of that experimentation goes, the Mormons were not even the most radical. That distinction goes to the Oneida community, several hundred strong, founded in upstate New York in 1848 by John Humphrey Noyes. Noyes was a graduate of Yale Theological Seminary and a preacher—though his license had been revoked after he began to develop his own shocking social and theological doctrines.

Their sexual practices included "complex marriage" (in which everyone in the community was married to everyone else, and, therefore, could have sex with everyone else--though I do believe they kept to opposite sex pairings) based upon the passage in Luke that in the age of the resurrection "they are neither married nor given in marriage."  Noyes believed the age of the resurrection was now (or then), and the reason why people are not given in marriage is that we are already married to everyone else.  Another practice is "male continence" in which men learn how to control their orgasm in sex so that they do not accidentally impregnate a woman.  As typical of the age, all of this was "scientific."

I recall writing a paper on the Oneida community as an undergraduate, likely for my "Religions in the United States" class with Paul Bushnell (who is retiring this year after 47 years of teaching at Illinois Wesleyan University).  So, much in this article was familiar to me, though I begin to wonder whether the analogy between the (religiously motivated) great marriage experiments of the 19th century and marriage equality movements is apt.  Indeed, it seems the article raises the specter of Noyes only to show how different it is from gay marriage and, in fact, how gay marriage is by far less radical:

Gay marriage, then, is both less and more radical than the Oneida experiment. On the one hand, the gay marriage movement does not challenge basic cultural ideas about romantic love and individuality. It doesn't create a new model of society, nor make sex a semi-public, communally regulated act. Noyes, as Vickers told me, "openly defined his endeavors in opposition to the mainstream social order of his times." Gay marriage doesn't do that. 

What gay marriage does do, though, and what Noyes did not, is to try to speak to, and change, society as a whole, rather than just a small subsection of it. The transformation that's required for gay marriage—including a greater number of people in a traditional institution—isn't as radical as it was for complex marriage. But, precisely because it seeks to expand rather than to reinvent, it's likely to be more lasting. Oneida is a measure of both how limited and how sweeping gay marriage is—as well as a reminder that "traditional marriage," and the tradition of marriage encompass a good bit more variation than its proponents like to remember.

It seems, therefore, that marriage equality is hardly "experimental" in the same way that the Oneida community was:  it is still marriage between no-more-than two consenting adults (though that has not always been a requirement for heterosexual marriage throughout history, which often has included non-consenting partners, especially with the female partner) that generally involves the same social structures as heterosexual marriage.  Another major difference is that interest in, support for, and perhaps even (or therefore?) opposition to marriage equality is far more widespread:  gay and lesbian couples throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe are seeking recognition for their commitments, instead of being just one small community in upstate New York.  It makes marriage equality a rather conservative gain.

Samaritan Passover

Samaritans made their annual Passover sacrifice yesterday on Mt. Gerizim:

The Samaritan community conducted its annual Passover sacrifice Tuesday evening under the leadership of a new high priest, as 50 sheep were slaughtered on Mount Gerizim in an ancient ceremony that attracted more than 1,000 spectators from around the world.
High Priest Aabed-El Ben Asher was elevated to his position, which is reserved for the eldest member of the priestly family, following the death last week of High Priest Aaron Ben Ab-Hisda at age 84. Ben Asher, 78, is the 133rd high priest in a line that the Samaritans claim stretches back to Aaron, brother of Moses.

There are fewer than 800 Samaritans.  See more here.  One thing I learned from the article is that Samaritans are known for their tahini.