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Oxford University Press: “To celebrate National Library Week (April 13th – 19th 2014) and all the hard work librarians do to support their patrons, OUP is freeing up our entire list of online products for one week only!”

UPDATE (4/16): OUP is *not* making available most of the titles listed here. Therefore we have deleted the previous contents of this post. We’re sorry. (See comments below for a reply from OUP.)

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Now online: the video of Eugene Merrill’s recent lecture on “Ai and Old Testament Chronology: Who Cares?

Places of the Passion Week in 360-Degrees – Wayne Stiles shares some new photos.

The ASOR Blog has a series of posts about Passover and Jesus:

Also on the ASOR Blog: 10 Tips for Packing for a Dig

The sale of a Nebuchadnezzar II cylinder set a world auction record.

Now available for Kindle: Hebrew Bible and Greek New Testament with English translation ($6.99)

iPad users can purchase the HebrewBible app here ($9.99).

Happy 6th Blogiversary to BibleX!

HT: Ted Weis

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Leo Depuydt still believes that the “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” is “hilarious” and “patently fake.” His article in the Harvard Theological Review is online as is Karen King’s response. Some excerpts are given in The Washington Post. Christianity Today runs an interview with Nicholas Perrin of Wheaton College about what it all means.

A fascinating new exhibition will be opening next month at the British Museum on mummies and what we know about them from the latest technology. The changing graphic on the museum website provides a preview. This AP article has more details.

Luxor Times has photos of antiquities recently stolen from the Luxor Temple.

Barry Kemp has posted a report from the latest season of excavations of the Great Aten Temple in
Amarna.

King Tut began his US tour in Kansas City this week. He will be in San Diego in time for the annual meetings.

Some excellent Zondervan e-resources on sale until tomorrow:

The full list is here. The first two are particular favorites of mine. All 5 volumes of ZEB for only $34 is very good, though this resource may be more difficult to use in electronic format than in print form ($121).

HT: G. M. Grena, Jack Sasson

Tell el-Amarna Small Temple of Aten from west, tb010905318
Small Temple of Aten, Tell el-Amarna
Photo from Pictorial Library of Bible Lands
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From the New York Times:

A faded fragment of papyrus known as the “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife,” which caused an uproar when unveiled by a Harvard Divinity School historian in 2012, has been tested by scientists who conclude in a journal published on Thursday that the ink and papyrus are very likely ancient, and not a modern forgery.
Skepticism about the tiny scrap of papyrus has been fierce because it contained a phrase never before seen in any piece of Scripture: “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife…’ ” Too convenient for some, it also contained the words “she will be able to be my disciple,” a clause that inflamed the debate in some churches over whether women should be allowed to be priests.
The papyrus fragment has now been analyzed by professors of electrical engineering, chemistry and biology at Columbia University, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who reported that it resembles other ancient papyri from the fourth to the eighth centuries. (Scientists at the University of Arizona, who dated the fragment to centuries before the birth of Jesus, concluded that their results were unreliable.)
The test results do not prove that Jesus had a wife or disciples who were women, only that the fragment is more likely a snippet from an ancient manuscript than a fake, the scholars agree. Karen L. King, the historian at Harvard Divinity School who gave the papyrus its name and fame, has said all along that it should not be regarded as evidence that Jesus married, only that early Christians were actively discussing celibacy, sex, marriage and discipleship.

The full NYT article is here. The Harvard Theological Review article is available for free download here.

An initial radiocarbon analysis dated the fragment to 404–209 BC; a second analysis gave a mean date of AD 741. King concludes with a date in the 7th or 8th centuries AD. As far as being a reliable witness to 1st century events, it is not. The author notes that the fragment should be studied in light of the Muslim view that prophets were usually married.

In King’s reading, “The main point of the GJW fragment is simply to affirm that women who are wives and mothers can be Jesus’s disciples.”

Previous posts about this subject:

Somebody Once Believed Jesus Had a Wife

Articles on Jesus’ Wife

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During a salvage excavation just southwest of Nazareth in the Jezreel Valley, archaeologists uncovered a unique coffin from the Late Bronze Age that may have belonged to a Canaanite official serving in the Egyptian army. From the Israel Antiquities Authority press release:

Part of a burial site dating to the Late Bronze Age (thirteenth century BCE) was exposed in an excavation at the foot of Tel Shadud. According to the excavation directors, Dr. Edwin van den Brink, Dan Kirzner and Dr. Ron Be’eri of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “During the excavation we discovered a unique and rare find: a cylindrical clay coffin with an anthropoidal lid (a cover fashioned in the image of a person) surrounded by a variety of pottery consisting mainly of storage vessels for food, tableware, cultic vessels and animal bones. As was the custom, it seems these were used as offerings for the gods, and were also meant to provide the dead with sustenance in the afterlife.” The skeleton of an adult was found inside the clay coffin and next to it were buried pottery, a bronze dagger, bronze bowl and hammered pieces of bronze. “Since the vessels interred with the individual were produced locally”, the researchers say, “We assume the deceased was an official of Canaanite origin who was engaged in the service of the Egyptian government”. Another possibility is that the coffin belonged to a wealthy individual who imitated Egyptian funerary customs. The researchers add that so far only several anthropoidal coffins have been uncovered in the country. The last ones discovered were found at Deir el-Balah some fifty years ago. According to the archaeologists, “An ordinary person could not afford the purchase of such a coffin. It is obvious the deceased was a member of the local elite”.
[…]
A rare artifact that was found next to the skeleton is an Egyptian scarab seal, encased in gold and affixed to a ring. The scarab was used to seal documents and objects. The name of the crown of Pharaoh Seti I, who ruled ancient Egypt in the thirteenth century BCE, appears on the seal. Seti I was the father of Ramses II, identified by some scholars as the pharaoh mentioned in the biblical story of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt. Already in the first year of his reign (1294 BCE) a revolt broke out against Seti I in the Bet Sheʽan Valley. Seti conquered that region and established Egyptian rule in Canaan. Seti’s name on the seal symbolizes power and protection, or the strength of the god Ra – the Sun God – one of the most important deities in the Egyptian pantheon. The winged Uraeus (cobra), protector of the pharaoh’s name or of the sovereign himself, is clearly visible on the seal. The reference to the pharaoh Seti on the scarab found in the coffin aided the archaeologists in dating the time of the burial to the thirteenth century BCE – similar to the burials that were exposed at Deir el-Balah and Bet She‘an, which were Egyptian administrative centers.
[…]
Tel Shadud preserves the biblical name ‘Sarid’ and the mound is often referred to as Tel Sarid. The tell is situated in the northern part of the Jezreel Valley, close to Kibbutz Sarid. The city is mentioned in the Bible in the context of the settlement of the Tribes of Israel. Sarid was included in the territory of the tribe of Zebulun and became a border city, as written in the Book of Joshua: “The third lot came up for the tribe of Zebulun, according to its families. And the territory of its inheritance reached as far as Sarid…” (Joshua 19:10). Tel Shadud is strategically and economically significant because of its location alongside important roads from the biblical period.

The Israel Antiquities Authority is currently looking into the possibility of sampling the DNA from inside the coffin to see if the deceased was originally a Canaanite or an Egyptian person who was buried in Canaan.

The full press release is here. High-resolution images are here. The story is also reported by the Jerusalem Post and Arutz-7.

1
The clay coffin at the time of its discovery in the field. Photograph: Dan Kirzner, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority.
2
Parts of the coffin’s lid after an initial cleaning. Photograph: Clara Amit, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority.
3
A general view of the excavation area. Photograph: Skyview Company, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority.
5
Egyptian scarab encased in gold. Photograph: Clara Amit, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority.
6
The bronze dagger and bowl. Photograph: Clara Amit, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority.
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If you haven’t been on a tour of Tiberias in the last decade, you have a lot to catch up on with the work of various excavation projects. Shmuel Browns has a well-illustrated summary of some of the important discoveries, including:

  • The decorative gate of Herod Antipas
  • The main street of the city in use for 700 years
  • The Roman theater built by Herod Antipas
  • A Roman temple (Hadrianeum)
  • A Byzantine monastery and church

His post also includes a number of interesting historical details about the city.

For some interesting descriptions and illustrations of Tiberias in the 19th century, check out Life in the Holy Land.

Mount Hermon from Tiberias, mat08928
Tiberias, the Sea of Galilee, and Mount Hermon
Photo from Northern Palestine
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