Ashkelon from the Ashes

The Jerusalem Post has a pretty interesting story about the restoration of Ashkelon’s gate. The account includes a photo (which reminds me, in miniature, of the St. Louis Arch).

The oldest arched gate in the world, located in Ashkelon, has been restored, nearly four thousand years after it was first built. The Canaanite gate, which was constructed around 1,850 BCE as part of the port city’s fortifications, is believed to be the most ancient arched gate in the world. The mostly brick and limestone gate is 15 meters long, more than 2 meters wide and almost 4 meters high. Its base was uncovered in 1992 during a Harvard University archeological dig led by Prof. Lawrence Steiger, said Ra’anan Kislev, director of conservation at the Antiquities Authority.

Read the whole.

She Loved Dogs, Pink Gin, and Digging…

She was Kathleen Kenyon and the good folks at Eisenbrauns got my copy of the newly published biography of her to me in record time. It’s a great book, narrated like a novel, and engaging to boot. The photos illustrating various points are clear and the whole project is nicely done.

But I’ll not be reviewing it. I’ll just be enjoying it. This is one of those books, you see, that are not to be dragged through the reviewers muckish analyzing of minutiae. Just read it and enjoy it, like you would a fine dinner.

Miriam C. Davis, well done!

Oh, You Feminists Are in Trouble Now…

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Vatican City, Vatican, Italy, Europe, The World, The Universe, has declared

… that two formulae used for baptism that remove the masculine names for God are invalid and undermine faith in the Trinity. The congregation’s statement, made public on February 29, 2008, responded to two questions concerning the validity of baptism conferred without referring to God the Father and Son.

I guess things in Rome at the Vatican do move slowly if a February announcement is just now making news in Catholic journals.  I wonder, though, how the Trinity is undermined when gender neutral language is applied to it?  That’s like saying that Moose Tracks Icecream by Mayfield Dairy is undermined and devalued if you call it Moose Trailings.  The name is not the thing, you silly Thomists.

A Paper By One of My Esteemed Professors

Don Cook taught at Southeastern while I was there (before the Fundamentalists ruined the place and he moved on to Gardner-Webb where he finished his academic career). In fact, I was in the honored position of being his Fellow (which means I filled in for him lecturing when he was gone and graded papers for his classes). Anyway, all that to say that you should definitely read the essay which Rob Bradshaw has linked to here. Don was one of the three smartest people I have ever known. I won’t say who the other two are as they are still living and I don’t want everyone else to be miffed. Just imagine that it’s you, precious reader. Now off with you to read something worth reading!

Update: For Trey and other former students of the great man- who may not have had opportunity to make journey to his resting place- the Seminary Cemetery just down the road from the SEBTS campus.

The Dead Sea Scrolls Traveling Road Show

This time the Scrolls are traveling to Raleigh, North Carolina.

In addition to displaying scrolls and ancient artifacts, the Museum of Natural Sciences will explore the scientific interpretation, conservation and preservation of the Scrolls, as well as the natural history of the Dead Sea region.

Neat huh?! The exhibition opens June 28 and ends December 28, 2008 (and in spite of Gadda and the Golbians desires, their theories won’t be featured during the exhibit. Isn’t that so sad…. Poor Charles. Who will he be able to lambast in Raleigh about this?

Mideast Peace, Archaeology, And Scholars

Those three things might seem at first blush to have nothing to do with one another, but as the UCLA news page reports

Israelis and Palestinians may not be able to agree right now on their present or future, but, if a pair of Los Angeles archaeologists have their way, they soon will see eye to eye on their past.

Working tirelessly for the past five years, Ran Boytner, a University of California, Los Angeles archaeologist and Lynn Swartz Dodd, an archaeologist at the University of Southern California, have guided a team of prominent Israeli and Palestinian archaeologists to arrive at the first-ever agreement on the disposition of the region’s archaeological treasures following the establishment of a future Palestinian state.

“Israelis and Palestinians never previously had sat down to achieve a structured, balanced agreement to govern the region’s archaeological heritage,” said Dodd, a lecturer in religion and curator of USC’s Archaeological Research Collection. “Our group got together with the vision of a future when people wouldn’t be at each other’s throats and archaeology would need to be protected, irrespective of which side of the border it falls on.”

Read the whole thing- with thanks to Robert Cargill for the heads up. Here’s hoping…

The Trials Begin

Over a year ago a gang of thugs carjacked, kidnapped, raped, tortured, and murdered Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, two young kids out on a date. Jury selection has begun for the first trial in the series of five, and the ‘man’ on trial today told the families of the victims to ‘bring it on‘. WBIR reports

Channon Christian’s father, Gary Christian, left the courtroom Tuesday after multiple witnesses said Boyd smiled at the victims’ families and told them to “bring it on.” Christian later returned to the courtroom. He was noticeably angry. Jury selection will continue throughout the day. Jury seating will begin Wednesday morning. The trial will begin as soon as the jury seating is complete.

I’ll be watching this trial closely, as I have the case since it began, because, in all my experience this is the most brutal, most horrific, most depraved thing I have ever seen. When the trials conclude and these ‘people’ are found guilty, for the first time in my life, I’ll be glad I live in a state with the death penalty. Even though, frankly, death is too good for people who abuse others so viciously.

Small Churches Do Matter

A report in the North Carolina Biblical Recorder notes

The Barna Research Group says in the United States the average church attracts 89 adults on a typical weekend. Among churches affiliated with the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, 55 percent have attendance of 100 or fewer on Sunday morning, according to their church profile reports.

Barna says only two percent of churches have more than 1,000 adults in a typical weekend.

…

In a culture where bigger is better and in a cultural theology that says growth is a mandatory sign of health, the small church and its leadership must often feel second-class.

In fact nothing could be further from the truth than that small churches are second rate. Real growth is in depth as much as it is in width. In fact, depth is more important than width; as the roots of the tree are more important than the span of its branches.

A Brief Explanatory Note

The header image above (for now anyway- you know it will change sometime soon) is a photo I took in Zurich of the great door of the Grossmunster.  It’s a huge iron double door and each panel shows scenes from Zwingli’s life.

More Rabbinical Misconduct

It seems either 1) that Rabbis don’t misbehave at the same rate as Christian clerics or 2) they hide it better or perhaps 3) there are so fewer of them that statistically its no surprise at all that less is heard. In any event, the Globe and Mail reports

A radical rabbi once linked to a plot to fire a missile at Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, is hiding in Canada, Israeli police said yesterday, announcing that he is wanted for his alleged role in a series of ghastly abuses of his followers’ children. Israeli officials have issued an international warrant for the arrest of Rabbi Elior Chen, and were planning to ask Canada to extradite him. “He left [Tel Aviv's] Ben Gurion Airport. He flew to Canada. We know that he’s in Canada at the moment,” said police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld. Mr. Chen, who is in his late 20s, hasn’t yet been charged but he has been described as the “spiritual mentor” of a group involved in the systematic abuse of children, allegedly using his status as a rabbi to convince a mother of eight that her children’s shortcomings could be beaten and burned out of them.

Yikes! I hope they get the fellow. Sounds like he’s a fairly dicey character.

Come Thou Long Expected (Encyclopedia of the Historical) Jesus

My copy arrived today. My articles are on ‘Jericho’, ‘Jerusalem’, and ‘Bethlehem’ and I have to confess that the ‘Jericho’ essay was the most fun.

click to enlarge

Is Blogging For The Weak of Heart?

Chris Brady has posted what really is a fascinating piece that deserves, I think, wide, wide attention and serious interaction. After describing how he approaches writing and public speaking, Chris writes

On the blogs I have at times tended to be even more timid, for all the reasons we might reasonably consider: it is a semi-permanent record, avoiding confrontation, and, perhaps my most crippling fault of all, not wanting to be misunderstood. I don’t really mind conflict or contradiction so long as my position is accurately understood. So I wonder if others wrestle with this as well.

I think timidity in general stems from a certain fear of being held accountable. Not just in Chris’s case but in all cases. What I mean is that when one writes or says something one is instantly opening oneself to not only misunderstanding, but intentional misunderstanding, misrepresentation, and conflict. Many fear this and so avoid saying anything ‘controversial’. It’s decidedly not the case that they don’t have an opinion or an insight on the matter; it’s that they simply don’t wish to open themselves to the consequences of that free speech.

For instance, I’ve let my opinion about home schooling be fairly well known. In consequence, not only have home schoolers actually stopped by my house and given me pro home schooler literature and cd’s, I’ve also become the object of a vindictive and personal attack within the blogger community itself by a so called scholar. For my stance on the tenure question of Nadia abu el-Haj I was accused of vile antisemitism. For my belief that the Palestinians deserve a homeland of their own in the land of their ancestors, I have been derided again as antisemitic. For my remarks contra Christian Zionism I have, again, been denounced as antisemitic. And because I think homosexuality is a deviation from the Divine plan, I’ve made not a few enemies. And the cases could be multiplied. One blogger several years ago, in good academic fashion, told his readers to avoid me.

I’m willing to accept the consequences of my free speech. I know that I won’t be invited to represent the Home Schooler Association. I shan’t be allowed to enter Hagee’s pulpit. And gays around the world won’t feel warmly towards me. But timidity is inappropriate for me. It isn’t who I am and quite frankly anyone who doesn’t want me to be myself, doesn’t want me as I really am.

Chris continues

It is a question of what pressures or constraints, internal or external, do we feel when we set down to write.

He continues suggesting that I feel no constraints- which is in sum correct. He opines that Mark Goodacre and Jim Davila are very narrowly focused in their blogs on purely academic issues- which observation brings me to my second point: bifurcation too is impossible for me.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Mark Goodacre. As a person and as a scholar. But unlike Mark and others I cannot compartmentalize my life or my interests. I find no fault with those who can and do- but I simply cannot. I don’t have an academic side and a pastoral side and a personal side and a private side. Such bifurcation, such compartmentalization, is, for me, a falsehood. One is who one is and the compartmentalization of life is timidity.

After describing his approach to blogging and preaching, Chris concludes

So what is the blog? Pulpit, classroom, water-cooler, or …?

Blogging is the setting forth of one’s ideas in interaction with others as part of a wider community with the goal of achieving understanding and the communication of perspective. Anyone who cannot or will not be him or her self in their blog has something to hide, feels ashamed of something they think, or fears that others won’t ‘like them’ if they say it.

I conclude by saying that I understand completely why some people are hesitant to be themselves on their blog. That’s fine, by the way. But the reason they don’t say what they really think is because they have a financial interest at stake. The young blogger hopes to get a job one day, and with google they know that their potential employer will read what they have written. So they either blog anonymously (which is really just cowardice, no matter what face it’s painted with), or they say nothing at all worth reading because what they say has already been said before. Hence, they don’t comment on news stories, they just mention them. And instead of writing what they believe, they write what they hope their future employer will believe.

I on the other hand don’t imagine I’ll be looking for a job. And if I do, I don’t think Wal-Mart really cares what its greeters think about Home Schooling. So I’ll continue to write what I think and should I ever find myself in the position of a job seeker, I will hope that whoever hires me will want the real me and not the pretend me of a pretend blog which is nothing less than pretense.