Israel Trip 2e (April 30) - Nazareth

We stopped briefly in Nazareth at the closest thing our guide could find to a cliff (see Luke 4:29). The historical village of Nazareth apparently fit within the compound of the Church of the Anunciation somewhere in the valley below:
Across the street from where we stopped is The Morgenthau Absorption Centre, which to a Canadian eye looks like something else:
That's it for Nazareth (I only took two pictures) and our second day of touring. Stay tuned for day 3.

This is the 6th in a series on the 2009 Briercrest Israel Tour:
Israel Trip 1 (April 28-29) - Climate Change
Israel Trip 2a (April 30) - Caesarea
Israel Trip 2b (April 30) - Views from Mt. Carmel
Israel Trip 2c (April 30) - Megiddo
Israel Trip 2d (April 30) - Sepphoris (Zippori)

Greek Inscriptions from Israel 5

Today's inscription comes from a mosaic that lined the floor of the 6th century Beit Alpha Synagogue:
The design is not nearly as professional as the mosaics in urban Sepphoris--or perhaps it simply anticipates modern art:
Here is a close up of the inscription:
As usual, kudos and coffee to the first person who correctly transcribes and translates the Greek inscription in the comments. Bonus kudos if you translate the Aramaic too.
You can probably find a translation of the inscription online somewhere. Don't spoil the fun!

Other posts in this series:
Greek Inscriptions from Israel 1
Greek Inscriptions from Israel 1 Revisited
Greek Inscriptions from Israel 2
Greek Inscriptions from Israel 2 Revisited
Greek Inscriptions from Israel 3
Greek Inscriptions from Israel 4
Greek Inscriptions from Israel 4 Revisited

And now for something completely different, check out these pictures of the demolition of our WWII era hangar/hockey rink: Sparrow Gardens r.i.p.

A dubious honour

I was happy to be mentioned in the latest Biblioblog Carnival until I started to think about the significance of being included among Augustine's fart musicians. Uh, thanks Pat!

Israel Trip 2d (April 30) - Sepphoris (Zippori)

Update: See discussion of the mikveh "immersion pools" below.
Zippori (Sepphoris) is best known today for the "Mona Lisa of the Galilee," part of an amazingly detailed mosaic that once lined the floor of a triclinium dining room in a 3rd CE mansion:
At one end of the mosaic is the "Mona Lisa":
Near the other is the final scene from a drinking contest between Dionysus and Hercules:
Hercules lost.

The beautiful mosaic associated with the worship of Dionysus is intriguing because Zippori was at this time a center of Jewish religious life: Rabbi Judah the Prince moved the rabbinic Sanhedrin to Zippori at the end of the 2nd century, and the Mishnah was codified here around 200 CE.

(A miqveh immersion pool,* a sign of Jewish presence in Zippori)

"The city . . . was considered by Theodoret the church history to be entirely Jewish in the reign of Valens (364-78)" (Murphy-O'Connor 468). No doubt the city had a mixed Jewish and pagan population in the 3rd century (a 2nd CE Roman temple was recently discovered), but it is instructive to imagine the rabbis carry on their work in such a cosmopolitan setting.

*Update: That is, if the archaeologists are right in identifying the pools as immersion pools (miqva'ot). Consider Seth Schwartz in his excellent book, Imperialism and Jewish Society: 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E. (Princeton University Press, 2001):

[O]ver twenty small bathtubs were discovered in a residential district of the city, which excavators have identified, with what justification is unclear, as miqva'ot. If this is correct, then the population of Sepphoris in approximately the third century was either radically diverse, consisting of a mixture of paganizers and the purity-obsessed or mind-bogglingly eclectic in their Jewish observance. While both options seem probable on other grounds, it is unclear why the bathtubs should not be considered simply bathtubs. (144)

Also interesting, giving the rabbinic prohibition of images, is the 5th century synagogue that we didn't take time to see: It has a colourful mosaic that contains the signs of the zodiac and depicts biblical figures such as Abraham, Isaac, and Aaron (see the pictures at the bottom of this page).

Sepphoris was made the capital of Galilee when the Romans took over in the first century BCE. It was destroyed by the Romans after a revolt in connection with Herod the Great's death (4 BCE). Herod Antipas, Herod the Great's son and successor in Galilee, rebuilt Sepphoris and made it his capital. Murphy-O'Connor speuclates that this "probably drew the artisan Joseph and his family to settle in nearby Nazareth (Matt. 2: 21-3); the project would provide work for many years" (468).

There is much more to see in Zippori--the national park pamphlet recommends 3-4 hours to view the whole 16 square kilometer site--but we were short on time, I was tired, and took few pictures.

If you want more, check out Bibleplaces.com for always excellent photos, a few of which are free to view; the Wikipedia article, and especially Biblewalks.com.

This is the 5th in a series on the 2009 Briercrest Israel Tour:
Israel Trip 1 (April 28-29) - Climate Change
Israel Trip 2a (April 30) - Caesarea
Israel Trip 2b (April 30) - Views from Mt. Carmel
Israel Trip 2c (April 30) - Megiddo

Barrett on Barth, Calvin, and Luther on Romans

From the preface to Barrett's 1957 commentary on Romans:

Not a few others could be named, but I must reserve a paragraph for special mention of three: Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Karl Barth. Barth's commentary . . . I read as an undergraduate. If in those days, and since, I remained and have continued to be a Christian, I owe the fact in large measure to that book, and to those in Cambridge who introduced it to me. Calvin has long been a companion whose patient exegesis is a model of critical and theological thoroughness. In the summer of 1953, in the University Library of Göttingen, I read through Luther's Scholia on Romans . . . with a sustained enthusiasm and even excitement which I never thought 400 large pages of medieval Latin could evoke. Less sound in detail than Calvin, Luther wrestles at perhaps even greater depth with sin and righteousness, race and predestination, and rarely fails to reach the heart of the matter, and to take his reader with him. To have sat at the feet of these three interpreters of Paul is one of the greatest of privileges." - C.K. Barrett, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1957), vi.

For those who wondered how his views changed over the next 40 years, Barrett adds this in the 2nd 1991 edition:

"There is nothing in the preface to the first edition of this Commentary that I wish to retract. My gratitude to the writers and teachers mentioned there is undiminished, but it is expanded now to include many more whose work on Romans and Pauline theology has greatly enhanced my own understanding." - C.K. Barrett, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (Hendrickson, 1991), ix.

Advice for those contemplating graduate school

John Anderson, John Stackhouse, and Andy Rowell have some good advice and information for students considering graduate programs in Biblical Studies or Theology. But for a dose of hard reality you really should read Thomas Benton's recent columns in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go
Just Don't Go, Part 2
And, on a related subject: What to Advise Unemployed Graduates

My advice: Go for it, if you love it because you love it*, but stay out of debt if you can possibly avoid it--especially if you are entering a field where there may not be jobs at the other end.

*It refers to study in your field, not the dream of teaching.

My sense is that in Biblical Studies the number of graduates with newly minted Ph.D.'s is out of all proportion to the number of academic jobs available. Maybe I don't know where to look (since I'm not on the market), and now is not the job-posting time of year, but the SBL Career Center currently has 0 (that's zero) jobs posted.

Of course, a graduate degree in Religious Studies may lead to a lucrative fulfilling career in any number of other fields. And if you want to serve the church there are other more important jobs than being a professional academic--like being a pastor, for instance.

Finally, trust God and be thankful. Who you are matters more than what you do. (I'm aware the advice is easier to give when one has a job than to live when one doesn't.)

Israel Trip 2c (April 30) - Megiddo

What does one say about Megiddo, a tell made up of at least 20 different historical periods dating between 4000 and 400 BCE? After fourteen years of archaeological excavations by the Rockefeller expedition (1925-1939), the site now looks like a pile of rubble--at least to the unaided eye. Fortunately, there is a model in the museum that helps make sense of it all:Unfortunately, those of us who stayed behind to take pictures took a wrong turn on the way out. When we rejoined the group, our guide was talking about a Solomon-era gate (see 1 Kgs 9:15):
The palm trees in the distance . . .
. . . overlook the sacred area where archeologists uncovered ruins of four different Canaanite temples. The round altar in the next picture is is dated to 2500 BCE:
Turning around, there is a magnificent view of the Jezreel valley. In the northeast we could see Mt. Moreh on the right, Mt. Tabor barely visible in the centre, and the Nazareth ridge on the left:
In the east we could make out Mt. Gilboa near Beit-Shan, where King Saul was killed (2 Sam 21:12):
Because of its prominent position overlooking the Jezreel valley, Jerome Murphy-O'Connor calls Megiddo "the royal box in one of the great theatres of history":

From time immemorial armies have surged from the surrounding valleys to play their parts on the flat stage of the Jezreel valley. Not surprisingly, Armageddon (= Har Megedon = Mountain of Megiddo) has become the symbol for the battle to end all wars (Rev. 16: 16). Its position at the head of the most important pass through the Carmel range . . . gave Megiddo control of the Way of the Sea, the ancient trade route between Egypt and the east. Traders from all over the known world passed its gates, as did invading armies. - The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide (5th ed.; Oxford: 2008), 386.

The real question for me was the identity of this building:
The archaeologists first identified the building (and others like it on the northeastern side of the tell) as Solomon's stables. We know that Megiddo was in Israelite hands by Solomon's time. According to 1 Kings 9:15, he fortified the city; 1 Kings 10:26 says that he collected horses and stationed them in chariot cities. The buildings were identified as stables because limestone troughs were found within them. I saw this example later when I visited the Rockefeller museum in Jerusalem:
The problem is that archeologists later found a palace from Solomon's time underneath the southeastern stables. Apparently most now date the stables to Ahab or Omri's time in the 9th century BCE. O'Connor isn't even convinced they are stables: "if they were stables they must have housed very small, house-broken ponies" (390)!

If you want to find out more about Megiddo, check out the Megiddo Expedition. Better yet, join the archeological dig at Megiddo that is set to begin June 13th, 2010.

This is the 4th post in a series on the 2009 Briercrest Israel Tour:
Israel Trip 1 (April 28-29) - Climate Change
Israel Trip 2a (April 30) - Caesarea
Israel Trip 2b (April 30) - Views from Mt. Carmel