The Trial of the Century: Update

The trial of Oded Golan et al is plodding along at a pace only comparable to that of a snail crawling through a pile of gravel covered with pellets of salt. Today Ronnie Reich, who was one of a handful and the only one from the IAA committee to say that the ossuary and the Jeohash inscriptions may have been legitimate, testified. He reversed his earlier position and told the judge that he was wrong on both artifacts and that on the basis of the isotope evidence as he understands it, the patinas on both are forged.

And so forward the trial of the century goes…

The Truth Will Out…

One of my many sources has sent along a photo of Chris Tilling in his actual state of being.  Once he peels off the makeup and dons his authentic clothing:

Another Conference I Would Love To Attend

Via Jack Sasson

The Temple of Jerusalem: From Moses to the Messiah: May 11 • Noon – 6:00 pm, Yeshiva University Museum at the Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street New York, NY.

Noon – 1:00 pm • Viewing of “Imagining the Temple:The Models of Leen Ritmeyer”

Session 1, 1: 00 – 3:30 pm

From the Tabernacle to the Dead Sea Scrolls- Chair: David Horwitz, Yeshiva University

Gary A. Anderson, University of Notre Dame- The Inauguration of the Tabernacle Service at Sinai

Shawn Zelig Aster, Yeshiva University- Centralization of Worship in the First Temple and Israelite Religious Belief

Shalom Holtz, Yeshiva University- Temple as Asylum and God as Asylum in the Psalms

Lawrence H. Schiffman, New York University -The Temple Scroll: A Utopian Temple Plan from Second Temple Times

Session 2, 3:45 – 6:00 pm

The Second Temple: Between Rome and Eternity – Chair: Moshe Bernstein, Yeshiva University

Menachem Mor, Haifa University – The Jewish and Samaritan Temples: Religious Competition in the Second Temple Period

Miriam Pucci Ben Zeev, Ben Gurion University- From Tolerance to Destruction: Roman Policy and the Jewish Temple

Joshua Schwartz and Yehoshua Peleg, Bar Ilan University – Notes on the Virtual Reconstruction of the Herodian Period Temple and Courtyards

Leen Ritmeyer, Trinity Southwest University – Envisioning the Sanctuaries of Israel—The Academic and Creative Process of Archaeological Model Making

May 12 • 9:00 am – 5:30 pm

Stern College for Women- Geraldine Schottenstein Cultural Center, 239 East 34th Street (between 2nd and 3rd Avenues), New York, NY

Session 3, 9:00 – 11:30 am

The Jerusalem Temple in Medieval Christianity and Islam – Chair: David Berger, Yeshiva University

Frank Peters, New York University – Ruined Expectations: Christians and Muslims and the Jerusalem Temple

Moshe Sokolow, Yeshiva University- Fadai’l al-Quds: Jerusalem, The Temple and The Rock in Muslim Literature

Vivian B. Mann, Jewish Theological Seminary of America – Imagining the Temple in Late Medieval Spanish Altarpieces

Session 4, 12:30 – 2:45 pm

The Jerusalem Temple in Medieval and Early Modern Thought- Chair: Elisheva Carlebach, Queens College and the Graduate Center, CUNY

Jonathan Dauber, Yeshiva University – Images of the Temple in Sefer ha-Bahir

Mordechai Z. Cohen, Yeshiva University – God Dwelling in the Sanctuary? Interpretive Strategies of Maimonides, Nahmanides and Sefer ha-Hinnukh

Jacob J. Schacter, Yeshiva University – Remembering the Temple: Commemoration and Catastrophe in Medieval Ashkenazi Culture

Matt Goldish, Ohio State University -The Temple of Jerusalem from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment

Session 5, 3:00 – 5:30 pm

The Jerusalem Temple in the Modern World – Chair: Joshua Zimmerman, Yeshiva University

Jess Olson, Yeshiva University, – “Jerusalem Rebuilt”: The Temple in the Fin-de-siècle Zionist Imagination

Maya Balakirsky Katz, Touro College – The Second Temple in Contemporary Orthodox Visual Culture

Ann Killebrew, Pennsylvania State University – Recent Excavations and Discoveries On and Near the Temple Mount

Robert O. Freedman, Johns Hopkins University – Digging the Temple Mount: Archaeology and the Arab-Israeli Conflict from the British Mandate to the Present

Concluding Remarks
Louis H. Feldman, Yeshiva University – Steven Fine, Yeshiva University

Register for our inaugural conference at www.yu.edu/cis

Oh Wicked Eisenbraun-ians

Spinti et al have stomped upon my Achilles heel with this particular celebration of selling: Israelite History and Historiography!  Oh lament.  Oh dread.  Oh terror.  The desire is building like Vesuvius before catastrophe…  Especially since this volume is extraordinarily inexpensive and I’ve been greedily eying it for too long now…  And for mercy’s sake this one is so inexpensive it’s worth it for sure.

I Like His Tie…

So I’m adding Ken Schenk’s blog to the roll.  I’m a simple person with simple requirements.  Say intelligent and humorous things, wear a nice tie, and like Mozart and you’ll end up on the blogroll.  I added him yesterday to Biblioblogs.com as well.

Unspeakable Dilettantish Dreck

Antonio Lombatti points out what really has to be the stupidest book ever written (ever, and I mean ever). Here’s a book even Nick Norelli would turn down if they sent it to him to review. And Nick’s never met a book he wasn’t happy to review! I wonder how many Wiki articles Olson has set her gnarled hands to? From the sound of her book, probably quite a few.

Pastoral Breakdown- Now That’s An Understatement

Ethics Daily notes

After nine often turbulent years, Rev. Tom Ambrose has been stripped of his job at St. Mary and St. Michael Church, near the English university town of Cambridge, in what was described as a case of “pastoral breakdown.” Bishop of Ely Anthony Russell ordered Ambrose’s disqualification after an ecclesiastical tribunal appointed last year heard evidence of his “arrogant, aggressive, rude, bullying, high-handed, disorganized and at times petty behavior.”

Yikes. Obviously he should be an anger counselor. Who would know the subject better?

This Woman Should Remain Silent In the Church

The Vancouver Sun reports

With or Without God [a new book by someone named Rev. Gretta Vosper] argues the Christian church should stop using the word “God” and put “Jesus Christ” on the shelf — because both have so many terrible connotations of myth and patriarchy as to not only be useless, but dangerous. Instead of exploring Christian “belief” in the transcendent possibilities associated with “God” and a cosmic Christ, Vosper argues at length her church should debunk divinity and focus on ethics; on community, justice and truth.

This isn’t new- it’s the same tired, ridiculous, and sub-Christian nonsense peddled by Rauschenbusch so many decades ago. Tried, and rightly abandoned, as it turned the Church (the Body of Christ) into nothing more than a Rotary club. There’s nothing new under the sun, including replacing theology with sociology.

How David Ker Convinced Me To Leave the Ministry

This is all it took.

[n.b.- he didn't really, but his little tidbit does make one wonder...]

The Baptist Center for Ethics, Global Warming, And A Letter to the Senate

More than 140 Baptist leaders from 25 states and the District of Columbia endorsed a Baptist Center for Ethics letter sent today calling on the U.S. Senate to pass climate-change legislation Being delivered this morning to Senate offices by e-mail, the letter from BCE Executive Director Robert Parham urges the Senate to “pass the strongest possible climate legislation that recognizes the needs and burdens of low-income and working families in the United States and around the world.”

Robert asked me to sign and I was more than happy to do so. This issue concerns us all- and theologians, Pastors, and church leaders should be at the forefront (as they should always what with being representatives of the ‘Queen of the Sciences’.)

The letter applauds Senators John Warner, R-Va., and Joseph Lieberman, ID-Conn., for introducing bi-partisan legislation and the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works “for beginning to address this important moral issue.”

The entire letter with the complete list of those who signed it is available here. We Baptists are working while the Episcopalians are sleeping (that’s a reference to Barth and his colleagues at Barmen- where Barth says that he wrote while the Lutherans slept).