O debate sobre a Inscrição de Joás continua

Em 2003 foi apresentada à imprensa uma inscrição em pedra, de proveniência desconhecida, reproduzindo um trecho de 2Reis 12, onde o rei Joás, do século IX a.C., fala da reforma do Templo de Jerusalém.

Naquela ocasião a Inscrição de Joás monopolizou o debate de especialistas, especialmente israelenses. Nas listas de discussão, não se falava de outra coisa: é falsa, é autêntica, há um trecho em hebraico moderno na inscrição, não há… Mas o que predominou foi o ceticismo! Veja aqui.

Mas recentemente, um grupo de especialistas está defendendo a autenticidade da Inscrição de Joás, baseado em dados das geociências.

Veja em The Bible and Interpretation, o artigo Archaeometric evidence for the authenticity of the Jehoash Inscription Tablet.

John Collins x Israel Knohl: A Visão de Gabriel

Quem estiver acompanhando o debate sobre o texto apocalíptico escrito com tinta em pedra, e que, aparentemente, antes da época de Jesus, fala da ressurreição do Messias ao terceiro dia, caso que pode ser visto aqui, aqui, aqui, aqui e aqui, não pode perder, de jeito nenhum, o embate de ideias entre John Collins, da Yale University, USA, e Israel Knohl, da Universidade Hebraica de Jerusalém, que pode ser lido no biblioblog de John Hobbins, Ancient Hebrew Poetry em duas postagens de hoje, 26 de agosto de 2008:

Crânios da Idade da Pedra descobertos na Galileia

Arqueólogos israelenses descobriram na Baixa Galileia, em escavações realizadas em Yiftah’el, três crânios esculpidos, da Idade da Pedra, do Período Neolítico B Pré-cerâmico, diz a IAA – Israel Antiquities Authority. Os crânios têm mais de 8 mil anos de idade.

O Dr. Hamoudi Khalaily, diretor da escavação, explica que os crânios estão esculpidos, um fenômeno que se identifica com o Neolítico. A prática inclui a reconstrução de todos os traços faciais do morto esculpidos com distintos materiais, como, por exemplo, uma argamassa especial. Os crânios modelados são a imagem do falecido que ficava na consciência dos sobreviventes e os guiava nas decisões que tomavam no seu dia a dia. Práticas semelhantes foram igualmente identificadas em descobertas feitas na Síria, Turquia e Jordânia.

Na página da IAA leio:
Three Extraordinary Skulls were found in Excavations in the North
The 9,000 year old skulls, which were found sculpted, attest to the development of ancestor worship from then until the present. The skulls were apparently placed on benches in a house where they would inspire the younger generation to continue in the ways of their forefathers. A similar custom was also identified in Syria, Turkey and Jordan.

In excavations that are currently being conducted at the Yiftah’el archaeological site, near the Movil Junction in the Lower Galilee, three extraordinary skulls from the New Stone Age (Pre-pottery Neolithic B) were discovered. The skulls are 8,000-9,000 years old and were buried in a pit adjacent to a large public building (…)

According to Dr. Hamoudi Khalaily, director of the excavations at the site on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “The skulls were found plastered – that is to say sculpted – which is a phenomenon that is identified with the New Stone Age. The practice included the reconstruction of all of the facial features of the deceased by means of sculpting the skull with a variety of materials such as plaster that was specifically intended for this. It should be noted that the reconstruction of the facial features was not always done in accordance with their real location on the skull. On the skulls that were found in the excavation the nose was entirely reconstructed; the mouth was accentuated and the eyes were restored by means of three shells placed in each of the orbits. The rest of the facial features were reconstructed with a “plaster mask”. As mentioned above, the skulls were found in a pit next to a large rectangular building whose walls were built of mudbricks and floors were made of thick, high quality plaster. Especially noteworthy in the building were depressions that were fashioned in the floor and later sealed. Dr. Khalaily says, “It seems that these depressions were used as graves beneath the floors. The funerary practice at this time consisted of burying the dead beneath the plaster floors, inside the buildings. Some time thereafter, the residents would dig up the grave, retrieve the skull from the rest of the skeleton and recover the grave. Later they would then mold the skull in the image of the deceased and keep it inside the house. This custom is known in the scientific literature as “ancestor worship”. The molded skull is actually the image of the deceased that remained in the survivors’ consciousness, and it guided them in the various decisions they made in their everyday life. Evidence from sites that are contemporary with Yiftah’el indicates that the molded skulls were placed on shelves or benches inside buildings, which were specifically constructed for this purpose. After a period of time, during which the successor established his status and it was accepted by society, the need of the father image lessened and in another ceremony the skulls were buried in a separate pit, within the precincts of the building or nearby”.

The three molded skulls that were found at Yiftah’el join some fifteen other similar skulls that have been found to date at Jericho, Beisimoun, Kefar HaHoresh, ‘Ain Ghazal in Jordan and at a site near Damascus. According to Dr. Khalaily, “The manner in which the skulls from Yiftah’el are buried and how they are shaped resemble those that were discovered at the Neolithic site of Tell Aswad and it seems that there was a connection between Yiftah’el and the Syrian site, which is located c. 200 kilometers away”…

Veja também as fotos na página da IAA.

Leia mais sobre a descoberta no blog BiblePlaces, de Todd Bolen, no post Plastered Skulls Found in Galilee.

Navegando na maionese

O assunto não é novo, continua controvertido, ainda será debatido, acho que dificilmente chegará a algo mais consistente, mas…

Já falei dele aqui, em Morte e ressurreição do Messias no judaísmo e, como escrevi, “este caso é bem capaz de criar muito frufru por causa da desinformação generalizada que existe sobre o assunto ou da eventual má-fé de algumas pessoas…”.

Por isso, quem estiver interessado no assunto, veja antes de mais nada a tradução do texto em Index of links on the Apocalypse of Gabriel. Em inglês. Há até mais de uma, escolha a sua!

E agora me diga se não tem gente que anda navegando na maionese…

Procure no Google por Mashiach ben Yosef ou Mashiah ben Yosef.

Eu avisei!

Messiah and Resurrection

Se você já leu sobre a tão debatida inscrição judaica sobre a ressurreição do Messias ao terceiro dia, vá em frente e confira duas coisas:

  • na imprensa de língua inglesa, uma grande quantidade de links sobre o assunto, reunidos por David Meadows em Explorator 11.12, newsletter publicada hoje
  • na Pesquisa de Blogs do Google, com uma busca por Messiah and Resurrection, uma explosão de notícias e abordagens em blogs e assemelhados

Ressuscitou ao terceiro dia

Quem leu o meu post do dia 7 passado, Morte e ressurreição do Messias no judaísmo, pode ter mais esclarecimentos se ler no blog de Stephen L. Cook, Biblische Ausbildung, o post Messianism Before Christ: Gabriel’s Revelation, publicado em 9 de julho.

Só um trechinho:
It is hardly any sort of challenge to Christianity that the idea of a resurrection after three-days was around before Christ. Again, the Christian claim is that Christ fulfilled longstanding messianic expectation. Across religions, three days of death is a motif common to the archetypal theme of death and rebirth. It is a symbolic reference to transformation. Think of the three days and nights that Jonah spent in the belly of the whale and the three days Inanna hung dead in the underworld “like a piece of rotting meat” in the Summerian story, “The Descent of Inanna.”

Vi a dica em John Hobbins, do Ancient Hebrew Poetry, que aponta este caminho em Messianism before Jesus of Nazareth and Gabriel’s Revelation: Steve Cook nails it, e a quem agradeço.

Morte e ressurreição do Messias no judaísmo

Este caso é bem capaz de criar muito frufru por causa da desinformação generalizada que existe sobre o assunto ou da eventual má-fé de algumas pessoas…

Mas, por via das dúvidas, leia sobre o caso em Texto em pedra fala de ressurreição do Messias décadas antes de Jesus, uma sucinta explicação em bom português, e vá em frente, lendo, em inglês, em The Aramaic Blog, Ancient Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection e vendo o texto em hebraico em Gabriel’s Revelation – Full Transcript.

Em seguida, veja, para um balde de água fria sobre possíveis sensacionalismos, no blog Pisteoumen, de Michael Halcomb, o post The Messiah Tablet: Is It A Big Deal? e no post de Todd Bolen, de BiblePlaces Blog, Gabriel’s Vision (Messiah Stone).

Mais informações, desta vez em italiano, podem ser vistas, entre outras, no blog de Antonio Lombatti, nas seguintes postagens: Tavoletta in ebraico, il messia e la risurrezione e Dopo tre giorni, risorgi. Testo messianico del 20 a. C.

Israel visto por Michael Pahl

Michael Pahl, do biblioblog The Stuff of Earth, é professor de Novo Testamento no Prairie Bible College, Alberta, Canadá.

De 3 a 16 de maio de 2008, ele fez um tour com alguns de seus alunos por Israel. Em seu blog vale a pena ver alguns dos sítios bíblicos visitados por eles. Há muitas fotos e alguns textos explicativos.

No post de 18 de maio de 2008, Back from Israel ele diz: … we … did manage to see a few of the most significant archaeological and traditional sites related to the biblical narratives…

E no dia 21 de maio, no post Trip to Israel:
From May 3-16, 2008, I had the opportunity to tour Israel with a group that included some of my students from Prairie. Here are some posts related to this trip (…):

  • Tel Arad
  • Bet Shean
  • Gamla
  • Chorazin
  • Sepphoris
  • Capernaum

Fotos interessantes.

A arqueologia de Nazaré

Leia sobre as recentes escavações feitas em Nazaré: “What good thing can come out of Nazareth?” em The View from Jerusalem: February 16, 2008.

Last century’s excavations of Nazareth by the Franciscans led to a rather remarkable reconstructed picture of the domiciles and government of this New Testament town. After having uncovered a little more than an acre of rocky surface with little or no evidence for walls, Bagatti and his team probed the numerous holes in the surface to find scores of intact storage caves, cisterns, silos and installations. With nothing more to build upon, the domiciles of this Galilean village appeared to be caves in a rocky hill, which could have housed only a few hundred inhabitants.

Recent excavations and surveys within the immediate surroundings of ancient Nazareth, have uncovered realia left behind by the inhabitants of the original town. These remnants can help us to better understand and define its physical structure and social character.

In an area just 500 meters away from the remains of the ancient town and present Basilica, the staff of the University of the Holy Land surveyed and excavated a farm and stone quarries associated with the town’s construction and the livelihood of its inhabitants.

The quarries, dating to the late Hellenistic and early Roman periods, bear witness to the stone-built buildings which were constructed in the nearby town. The dimensions of the stones match those found in other Galilean towns and cities. The stony slopes were quarried, yielding squared stones to build homes in the town and leveled depressions on the ground to hold the terraces.

Remains from the first centuries BC and AD were found including pottery, watch towers, agricultural terraces and a wine press. Advanced methods of viticulture and agriculture was practiced at the farm as has been revealed by excavations of the early terrace systems. An ancient terraced road was also found cutting though the farm connecting ancient Nazareth with nearby Sepphoris and Jaffia. Coins from this period were also unearthed in other excavations in the vicinity of the town’s spring. Little doubt can now persist that the Nazareth of the Second Temple Period, Jesus and his fellow townspeople, was a bustling Galilean town.

If so, why has the evidence for first century Nazareth been brought into question? First of all, first century pottery and lamps were in fact found by Bagatti during the excavation of the infrastructure of the town, its cisterns, silos and storage caves (with lids still fitted to the openings on the horizontal rock surfaces). In fact, a sizable wall belonging to a public building, dated by him to the first century, was discovered under the Byzantine Church. All of this was published in the original report.

The problem comes when one paints the picture, as has been done, of a town of two hundred and fifty inhabitants who lived in the caves of a rocky hill (bringing into question the feasablity of the synagogue of the Gospel story). Why is the evidences for walled houses and buildings virtually lacking from the earlier excavations if recent excavations have revealed first century quarries which provided cut stones for building the town? The answer lies in the construction of the Byzantine Church. The ruins of Roman period Nazareth were the most available source of stone for building the Byzantine Church. After the stones were robbed out from the ruins, all that was left behind was one of the best preserved set of basement systems found in the Galilee (…).

The official final publication of these excavations has just appeared recently in the Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society vol. 25 (2007) pp. 19-79: S. Pfann, R. Voss, Y. Rapuano, “Surveys and Excavations at the Nazareth Village Farm (1997–2002): Final Report”. The summary of the ceramic finds from this rather lengthy article has been provided by Antonio Lombatti here.

For more about the Nazareth Village Project follow the links in the UHL web site beginning here.

Finkelstein contesta Mazar sobre Palácio de Davi

Israel Finkelstein – e outros colegas – contestam Eilat Mazar sobre o pretenso Palácio de Davi, descoberto em Jerusalém [sobre a descoberta leia aqui].

O seu texto, publicado hoje, sob permissão, por Jim West, na lista de discussão Biblical Studies, é:

FINKELSTEIN, I. et al. Has King David’s Palace in Jerusalem Been Found? Tel Aviv University.

Infelizmente, o acesso é restrito aos assinantes da lista. Mas o texto está disponível para download em Academia.edu, aqui.