The Israel Antiquities Authority Press Office issued a press release regarding a fragment of a stone inscription that contains two fragmentary lines of Hebrew. One of the words may be reconstructed to read “Hezekiah”. Also ScienceDaily.
Hezekiah inscription
The April 6, 2009 issue of Science Daily describes a collection of five foot-shaped structures in the Jordan Valley. These Iron Age stone enclosures may be related to festival gatherings, and may be related to the Hebrew terms gilgal (round stone structure?) and hag (festival procession).
Stone Enclosure in Jordan
The National Geographi News for April 10, 2009 reports that a plaque found at Beth Shemesh may depict the “Mistress of the Lionesses”, a female ruler of a Canaanite city known from the Amarna tablets of the 14th century B.C.E.
Mistress of the Lionesses
The April 13, 2009 issue of Newsweek magazine features a cover story entitled “The Decline of Christian America: How a reduction in religious affiliation will change the U.S.” It examines recent polling data that indicates how the religious profile of the nation is changing, and what this implies about the character of the United States.
April 13, 2009
This Chronicle of Higher Education blog entry by Randy Bass and Bret Eynon gives thought to designing learning materials to meet well-defined liberal arts goals and objectives. The entry contains helpful links to a variety of resources, including AACU’s “Essential Learning Outcomes” and the Academic Commons Visible Knowledge Project.
Marvin H. Pope, my Yale dissertation director and advisor, of blessed memory, is famous for his professional interest in Love and Death. Among other writings, it came to expression in his monumental commentary on the Song of Songs. In class he would often wax eloquent on the parallels between the Hindu goddess Kali, the one he called the black goddess, and the Ugaritic goddess Anat. Both disturbingly violent.
So I was delighted to find Pope surfacing in the very entertaining and erudite mystery by Laurie R. King, entitled Night Work: A Kate Martinelli Novel (Bantam, 2000). Kate is a detective with the San Francisco police. Both Kali and “the Pope” come up in the course of her investigation of a series of homicides of misogynists and wife abusers. It turns out they were perpetrated by devotees linked to a Kali cult. Read the rest of this entry »
National Geographic reports that the remains of a second city gate at the Elah fortress (Khirbet Qeiyafa) indicates it is probably the Sha’arayim associated with David in the biblical text.
Other coverage:
An eighth century BCE stele from Zincirli in southeastern Turkey contains an inscription. It contains the line “and a ram for my soul that is in this stele.” The inscription was written in Phoenician, a West Semitic language akin to Hebrew and Aramaic.
Other coverage:
New Study Shows Time Spent Online Important for Teen Development (November 20, 2008), with links to the full 30 page report.
See also Report on Youth and New Media Pokes at Educational Institutions (Chronicle of Higher Education November 20, 2008)