Dead Sea Archives - Page 29 of 30

Norman Golb’s Son Arrested on Charges of Impersonation

Having been the victim of unwelcome, sometimes lengthy, and usually inflammatory comments on posts on this blog related to the Dead Sea Scrolls, I’m happy to see that New York police have arrested a man for allegedly creating many false identities, impersonating scholars, and slandering Dr. Lawrence Schiffman. The guilty party, whether he is the accused or someone else, had a single agenda: to promote the widely panned theories of Dr. Norman Golb. I have long been curious what sort of person would be so committed to such an endeavor as to spend countless hours to promote this view in places that have little real significance (this and other blogs, Wikipedia). The answer, if NY prosecutors are correct, makes some sense: the perpetrator was Golb’s son. That son, however, was not 14 years old, but 49. One scholar who has wrangled extensively with the multiple-aliased offender is Bob Cargill. A scholar at UCLA, Cargill has posted an extraordinary catalog of the campaign of this individual (be he the accused or someone else). A few hours after Cargill posted his catalog, NY police announced the arrest. From the NY Times:

For decades, the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls has been intensely debated.
The prevailing theory is that these ancient documents, which include texts from the Hebrew Bible, were written over the three centuries before 100 A.D. by a Jewish sect known as the Essenes, who were based in Qumran, a settlement at the northwest shore of the Dead Sea near the caves where the scrolls were found between 1947 and 1956.
An alternative theory, passionately proffered by a University of Chicago professor, is that the scrolls’ authors were not Essenes, and that the scrolls themselves were kept in various libraries in Jerusalem until they were hidden in the caves around Qumran for safekeeping during the Roman war of A.D. 67 to 73. Qumran, he has said, was not an Essene monastery but a fortress, one of several armed defensive bastions around Jerusalem.
The professor, Norman Golb, has stood behind his theory despite significant criticism. His son, Raphael Haim Golb, has been one of his greatest allies.
But prosecutors said on Thursday that Raphael Golb took defending his father’s theory too far. Mr. Golb is accused of using stolen identities of various people, including a New York University professor who disagreed with his father, to elevate his father’s theory and besmirch its critics, Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney, said at a news conference.
Mr. Golb, 49, was arrested Thursday morning and charged in Manhattan Criminal Court with identity theft, criminal impersonation and aggravated harassment. He faces up to four years in prison if convicted.
Prosecutors said Mr. Golb opened an e-mail account in the name of Lawrence H. Schiffman, the New York University professor who disagreed with Mr. Golb’s father. He sent messages in Professor Schiffman’s name to various people at N.Y.U. and to others involved in the Dead Sea Scrolls debate, fabricating an admission by Professor Schiffman that he had plagiarized some of Professor Golb’s work, Mr. Morgenthau said. Raphael Golb also set up blogs under various names that accused Dr. Schiffman of plagiarism, Mr. Morgenthau said.

NYUNews has posted one of the emails that Golb is alleged to have forged.

(HT: Joe Lauer)

Unfortunately dad’s response is not altogether encouraging.

Reached at his office in Chicago on Thursday afternoon, Professor Golb said he was shocked at the allegations leveled against his son, who is a real estate lawyer and has a Ph.D in comparative literature from Harvard.
“My son is an honorable person,” Professor Golb said. “He could not have done such a thing.”
Professor Golb said that opposing scholars had tried to quash his views over the years through tactics like barring him from Dead Sea Scrolls exhibitions. He said he saw the criminal charges as another attack on his work.
“Don’t you see how there was kind of a setup?” he said. “This was to hit me harder.”

I’m not sure that this is the best time for Professor Golb to be complaining of the same thing that led the impersonator to carry out his campaign.

Tagged Dead Sea, Forgery

Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls and Biblical Interpretation Conference

Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary is hosting a conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls with an impressive line-up of speakers. More information is on the school’s website, but unfortunately no list of lecture titles is given.

Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls and Biblical Interpretation Conference

Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary, 2095 Appling Road, Cordova, TN 38088 (901)-751-8453

April 23-24, 2009

This conference will include world class archaeologists, authors, and researchers as well as Old and
New Testament scholars. The speakers will include:

Kirk Kilpatrick, Professor of Old Testament and Hebrew, Dean of the Masters and Associates Program, Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary
Jodi Magness, renowned author and the Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism, University of North Carolina
Stephen Ortiz, Associate Professor of Archaeology and Biblical Backgrounds and Director of the Charles C. Tandy Archaeology Museum, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
Lawrence H. Schiffman, renowned author and the Ethel and Irvin A. Edelman Professor in Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University
Michael R. Spradlin, President, Chairman and Professor of Evangelism; Professor of Old Testament and Hebrew, Practical Theology, and Church History, Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary
Emanuel Tov, renowned author, Department of the Bible, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
James Clair Vanderkam, renowned author; and John A. O’Brien Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame
Steven L. Cox, Professor of the New Testament and Greek, Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary

The registration cost is $25 for students, $30.00 for alumni, and $50 for others. Registration includes snacks and a banquet meal. Meal selections will be either beef, chicken or kosher.

The conference and banquet will be held on the MABTS campus.

On April 23, the conference runs from 2:00 p.m. through 9:30 p.m. (the banquet will be from 5:45 through 6:45 p.m.) and on April 24, the conference runs from 8:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

For a registration form, click here.

To register and pay online, click here.

The Tyndale House blog notes that DVDs of the conference will be for sale for $39.95.

HT: Joe Lauer

Tagged Dead Sea, Lectures

Wildfire in Dead Sea nature reserve

From the Jerusalem Post:

An IDF training exercise sparked a massive wildfire at the Ein Fasha Nature Reserve Tuesday morning, destroying nearly 2000 dunams [500 acres] of land in what the chief firefighter on the scene called “the largest wildfire of the summer.” “It’s by far the largest,” said Amnon Amir of the Judea and Samaria Fire Department, as flames in the area were still being sprayed by airplanes overhead. “It started around four in the morning, and has been extremely difficult to put out.” According to Amir, the exceedingly dry conditions in the area, which borders the northern Dead Sea, added to the difficulty, and low amounts of rainfall over the winter were to blame. But he also told The Jerusalem Post that the IDF had initially prevented his firefighters from entering the area, making it more difficult to combat the intense flames…. “It will take 10 years before the area completely renews itself,” Nissim said. “But within six months or so, we’ll already see new signs of life. This isn’t a completely tragedy, because it’s somewhat healthy for the vegetation to renew itself like that, but still, it’s been difficult to watch it all burn.” The army refused to comment further on the incident, which Army Radio reported had begun from a flash or smoke grenade. According to the Judea and Samaria fire department, there were no injuries reported, and damage was limited to the plant life in the reserve. There have been three large wildfires throughout the country since Saturday, two in the Jerusalem Hills before Tuesday’s at Ein Fasha. Firefighters blame high temperatures and dry conditions as a factor in all of the fires, but at least one, on Saturday afternoon near Kibbutz Ma’aleh Hahamisha, was reportedly the result of arson.

Tagged Dead Sea

Scroll Distribution in Dead Sea Caves

A new study suggests that the scrolls in two of the Dead Sea Scroll caves were deposited fifty years earlier than the rest of the scrolls. You can read a brief report of the study here; the full report was published here:

Stökl Ben Ezra, Daniel. “Old Caves and Young Caves: A Statistical Reevaluation of a Qumran Consensus.” Dead Sea Discoveries 14/3 (2007) 313-333.

I am curious which two caves have the older material. Based on geographical location of the caves, I’d expect 1 and 2, or 3 and 11. But I don’t have access to the article as I write.

For some photos of the Dead Sea Scroll caves, see here.

HT: Joe Lauer

Update (2/11): The link above has been corrected. In the process, I found the full article itself, plus an abstract, which answers my question above: 1 and 4. The link that Al gives in the comments below is to an earlier, abbreviated version.

Tagged Dead Sea

Free Dead Sea Scrolls Mug

The Biblical Archaeology Society has a survey for current subscribers that takes not more than 5 minutes and after which you can supply a mailing address to receive a free Dead Sea Scrolls mug.

This normally sells for $10.

Unfortunately, they don’t have space for comments. If they did, I’d complain that they sell my address to others. Ironically, in the email requesting subscribers to do the survey, they say, “We will not sell your mailing or email address and nobody will contact you as a result of your responses.” But they do sell your magazine subscription address without asking or telling you.

Tagged Dead Sea

The Rise and Fall of the Dead Sea

Yes, it’s true – the Dead Sea’s falling threatens the environment and the roads, and the Dead Sea’s rising threatens the hotels. How one sea can be both rising and falling at the same time is best explained this way: there are two Dead Seas.

Until modern times, the Dead Sea was a 50-mile (78-km) long body of water, with a piece of land sticking out from the eastern side. Because it apparently looked like a tongue, it was called that in Hebrew (lashon) and Arabic (lisan).

With the damming of the Sea of Galilee and the use of water that formerly flowed down the Jordan River into the Dead Sea, the level of the Dead Sea dropped in the 20th century until the tongue reached all the way across the lake. The southern end is shallow and would have completed dried up if not for the channeling of water by the company that extracts minerals from the Dead Sea waters. So the southern end today is essentially an artificial evaporation basin, connected to the northern end only by manmade channels.

Today the northern end continues to drop because the limited inflow of water from the Jordan River. The southern end, however, is rising, because of the activities related to the mining of minerals. The rise of approximately 8 inches a year (20 cm) is now threatening the tourist resort of Ein Bokek and its many hotels.

Hotels of Ein BokekAccording to Haaretz, the Supreme Court of Israel has ordered the government to come up with a plan to solve this problem.

At present, there are three options: building a new lagoon with walls that will prevent flooding of the reservoirs, removing the extra salt from the bottom of the reservoirs or demolishing all hotels on the Dead Sea shore and rebuilding them in alternative locations.

In the meantime, expect the Dead Sea to continue to rise and fall simultaneously.

Tagged Dead Sea