The latest issue of the Biblical Archaeology Review arrived in the mail the other day. The cover story is about Aphrodisias, a city in southwestern Asia Minor (modern Turkey). There was once a temple of Aphrodite there. Later, after Christianity became the main religion there, that temple became a Christian basilica. By the seventh century the city's name was changed to Stavropolis ("City of the Cross").
In 1976 an excavation of the ruins there found a 9-foot high marble block inscribed in Greek with about 120 names, donors to a synagogue. The inscription is believed to come from a time somewhere in the 350-500 AD range. In addition to Jewish names, there are also proselytes and God-fearers (Gentiles who were friends of the synagogue but not proselytes to Judiasm),. Given the time frame and evidence from the names, the author of the article believes that a number of the God-fearers were from Christian families.
Apparently the people in Aphrodisias hadn't heard about the supposed "parting of the ways" between Christianity and Judaism. There seems to have been quite a bit of interaction between the two groups.
This was a busy week on campus. Historian David McCullough was in Oxford on Monday night, giving a lecture entitled "Leadership and the History You Don't Know."
On Tuesday, archaeologist James Russell gave an Archaeological Institute of America lecture called "Chasing a Roman Soldier."
On Wednesday a representative of Feminists for Life spoke out on behalf of the unborn and their mothers.
On Wednesday and Thursday there was also a miniconference on the legacy of Lincoln, Darwin, and Poe, with historian Daniel Walker Howe as a keynote speaker.
Then on Friday there was a conference celebrating the creation of the new Statistics Department, with a number of alumni reminiscing about their time at Miami and reporting on how they've used their training in statistics and mathematics in their careers.
I've finally finished my report on the lecture Walter Kaiser gave at Miami University back in March. (See the March 29 entry.) It was a very enjoyable project, but I got carried away. The print version of the article is 14 pages long, and there are 37 footnotes. Who is actually going to read this monstrosity?
In his lecture, Kaiser briefly mentioned some important archaeological finds from each period of biblical history. During the lecture I scratched down the list, with the idea that I would look up each one afterwards.
As it turned out, each discovery had its own interesting story. I made heavy use of my Biblical Archaeology Review CD-ROM. (It contains the first 27 years of the magazine.) Most of the discoveries in the list have received extensive coverage there. I also used
Kaiser's A History of Israel: From the Bronze Age through the Jewish Wars and The Old Testament Documents: Are They Reliable and Relevant?
the survey articles on archaeology from the Expositor's Bible Commentary.
The Copper Scroll contains plenty of material for writers of adventure stories. It lists 64 stashes of hidden treasure that include large amounts of gold and silver. But the locations given for the treasures are vague enough that no one knows exactly where they are.
Then there are those mysterious sequences of Greek letters after a few of the entries in the list--e.g., Kappa Epsilon Nu after the first entry. Is this treasure the property of the Kappa Epsilon Nu fraternity on some college campus? (Perhaps at Marshall University, where Indiana Jones was a faculty member. ) The 17 talents of silver in that batch of treasure could finance a few keg parties.
It's no wonder that the Copper Scroll is showing up in novels--like Gold of Kings by Davis Bunn, a new thriller published by Simon and Schuster.
In this story, an antiquities dealer named Sean Syrrell is murdered at the beginning of the book. It turns out that he has found clues to the possible location of some of the Copper Scroll treasure. He bequeaths the clues to his granddaughter, who along with a treasure hunter and a federal agent set out in search of Sean's killer and the treasure.
It's an entertaining story. It includes enough action--e.g., car crashes--to...
A few years ago I wrote a review of A Skeleton in God's Closet, a novel by Prof. Paul Maier, a history professor at Western Michigan University. This 1991 novel is one of the first examples of the genre of "archaeological thrillers."
Now there are a growing number of books in this category, including:
Cross Bones (2005), one of the Temperance Brennan novels by Kathy Reichs (the books on which the TV series "Bones" is very loosely based). James Tabor, a colleague of Reichs at UNC Charlotte, was a consultant for this one.
The Lazarus Effect (2008) by biblical scholar Ben Witherington III and his wife Ann.
The Bone Box (2008) by Bob Hostetler, who pastors a church that meets a couple miles from here.
Gold of Kings (2009) by Davis Bunn, a popular author of "Christian fiction". There's a full page ad for this book in the latest BAR.
I was at the public library yesterday and found a copy of Bunn's book on the shelf of new fiction. I'll see if it lives up to its hype.
Each year on the last Saturday night in March, there's a special lecture at Miami University, given by some noted evangelical scholar in honor of Dr. Edwin Yamauchi, a longtime history professor at Miami who retired in 2006.
The first three Yamauchi lectures were given by Darrell Bock, Richard Hess, and Craig Evans. The 2009 speaker was Old Testament scholar Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.
Kaiser was a graduate school classmate of Dr. Yamauchi's. The two of them (along with Marvin Wilson, another rather well known evangelical scholar) were students of Cyrus Gordon at Brandeis in the 1960s. Kaiser retired a few years ago from his position as president of Gordon-Conwell Seminary, and he has been working on a number of writing projects since then.
Dr. Kaiser is, among other things, the editor of the NIV Archaeological Study Bible, and his lecture was an overview of biblical archaeology, highlighting some of the top discoveries from each era of biblical history. I'll post an article on the G&K website when I have a chance.
Kaiser prefaced his remarks with the story of how he persuaded a very wealthy (and extremely conservative) former student to provide $500,000 to fund the...
At Miami University spring break has come and gone. There are seven weeks of class left in the spring semester, then final exams.
One thing that I enjoy about this part of the academic year is that lots of campus lectures are typically scheduled for March and April.
This year is no exception. Garrison Keillor is coming this week, Salman Rushdie next week.
Sometimes two good lectures are scheduled at the same time. On April 2, there's going to be an AIA archaeology lecture in Oxford at 7:30 PM. At the same time, eminent Lincoln scholar Allen Guelzo will be speaking on the Hamilton campus about Lincoln as a philosopher. I"m leaning toward going to the Guelzo lecture. I've seen him speak on BookTV, and he's an excellent speaker.
But the lecture i'm most looking forward to is the one by Walter Kaiser, one of my favorite Bible scholars. He'll be giving a lecture called "Archaeology and the Bible: The Top 15 Finds" on March 28.
