The significance of the scrolls
relates in a large part to the field of textual criticism. Before the discovery
of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible were
Masoretic texts dating to 9th century. The biblical manuscripts found among the
Dead Sea Scrolls push that date back to the 2nd century BC. Before the
discovery, the oldest Greek manuscripts such as Codex Vaticanus and Codex
Sinaiticus were the earliest extant versions of biblical manuscripts. Although
a few of the biblical manuscripts found at Qumran differ significantly from the
Masoretic text, most do not. The scrolls thus provide new variants and the
ability to be more confident of those readings where the Dead Sea manuscripts
agree with the Masoretic text or with the early Greek manuscripts.
Further, the sectarian texts among the
Dead Sea Scrolls, most of which were previously unknown, offer new light on one
form of Judaism practiced during the Second Temple period. http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de
Books Ranked According to Number of
Manuscripts found (top 16)[1]
Books ↓ No. found ↓
Psalms 39
Deuteronomy 33
1 Enoch 25
Genesis 24
Isaiah 22
Jubilees 21
Exodus 18
Leviticus 17
Numbers 11
Minor Prophets 10
Daniel 8
Jeremiah 6
Ezekiel 6
Job 6
1 & 2 Samuel 4
Origins: Qumran-sectarian theory
The Qumran-sectarian theory holds that
the scrolls were written by the Essenes, or perhaps by another sectarian group,
residing at Khirbet Qumran.
Qumran-Essene hypothesis
The prevalent view among scholars,
almost universally held until the 1990s, is that the scrolls were written by a
sect known as the Essenes.
1. There are striking similarities between the
description of an initiation ceremony of new members in the Community Rule and
Josephus' (a Jewish-Roman historian of the time) account of the Essene
initiation ceremony.
2. Josephus mentions the Essenes as sharing property
among the members of the community and so does the Community Rule. (It should
also be noted that there are differences between the scrolls and Josephus'
account of the Essenes.)
3. During the excavation of Khirbet Qumran two
inkwells were found, giving weight to the theory that the scrolls were actually
written there.
4. Long tables were found that Roland de Vaux (one of
the original editors of the Dead Sea Scrolls) interpreted as tables for a
'scriptorium'.
5. Water cisterns were discovered which may have been
used for ritual bathing. This would have been an important part of Jewish (and
Essene) religious life.
6. A description by Pliny the Elder (a geographer who
was writing after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD) of a group of Essenes living
in a desert community close to the ruined town of Ein Gedi was seen by some
scholars as evidence that Khirbet Qumran was in fact an Essene settlement.
Since the 1990s a variation of this
theory has developed, stressing that the authors of the scrolls were
"Essene-Like" or a splinter Essene group rather than simply Essenes
as such. This modification of the Essene theory takes into account some
significant differences between the world view expressed in some of the scrolls
and the Essenes as described by the classical authors.
Qumran-Sadducean theory
Another variation on the Qumran-sectarian
theory, which has gained some popularity, is that the community was led by
Zadokite priests (Sadducees). The most important document in support of this
view is the "Miqsat Ma‘ase haTorah" (MMT, 4Q394-), which states one
or two purity laws (such as the transfer of impurities) identical to those
attributed in rabbinic writings to the Sadducees. This document also reproduces
a festival calendar which follows Sadducee principles for the dating of certain
festival days. However, the MMT contains other purity laws different from those
attributed to the Sadducees, and the similarities in laws and calendar are not
considered sufficient to support a definite conclusion.
Florentino Martinez, in a 2000 article
in Near Eastern Archaeology, dates composition of the Temple Scroll to the
times of Hasmonean power consolidation, long before the existence of the
Essenes, and states that this is only the date when this material was reduced
to writing; the notions expressed must be older. This tends to undermine the
idea of an Essene-Sadducee connection.
Other theological considerations count
against the idea. Josephus tells us in his Jewish War and in his Antiquities of
the Jews that the Sadducees and the Essenes held opposing views of
predestination, with the Essenes believing in an immortal soul and attributing
everything to divinely-determined fate, while the Sadducees denied both the
existence of the soul and the role of fate altogether. The scroll authors'
beliefs in the soul's survival beyond death and in the resurrection of the
body, and their complex world of angels and demons engaged in a cosmic war,
were contrary to the Sadducean belief that there is no resurrection, and that
there are no such beings as angels or spirits.
For the Sadducees, every person had
the right to choose between good and evil, and the scope of humankind's
existence was limited to this life. For the Essenes, God ruled and foreordained
all events–including every person's ultimate choice to follow after good or
after evil–and the significance of each human life would culminate in the
soon-to-come Hereafter. It is difficult to imagine how such disparate beliefs
might evolve into one another or even be reconciled. This tends to undermine
the idea of a strong connection between the Essenes and Sadducees.
Origins: Jerusalem theory
Some scholars posit that there is
strong evidence against the Qumran-sectarian theory. Khirbet Qumran is a tiny
settlement which could only house about 150 persons at any one time. Since
several hundred different scribal "hands" have been identified in the
material, with only about a dozen repetitions of handwriting found, the
available population doesn't seem large enough to account for the diversity of
handwriting. Advocates of the Qumran-sectarian theory respond that the Scrolls
date over a period of centuries and therefore, over time, the settlement could
have housed a large number of scribes.
Even according to those scholars who
believe that there was scribal activity at Qumran, only a few of the biblical
scrolls were actually made there, the majority having been copied before the
Qumran period and subsequently having come into the hands of the claimed Qumran
community (Abegg et al 2002). There is, however, no concrete physical evidence
of scribal activity at Qumran, nor, a fortiori, that the claimed Qumran
community altered the biblical texts to reflect their own theology (Golb, 1995;
cf. Abegg et al 2002). It is thought that the claimed Qumran community would
have viewed the Book of 1 Enoch and the Book of Jubilees as divinely inspired
scripture (Abegg et al 2002).
Opponents of the Qumran-sectarian
theory also note that the custom at the time was for scribes to write sitting
cross-legged with a board on their lap, whereas the "writing" tables
in the assumed scriptorium would not be suited to this purpose.
Qumran-sectarian advocates respond that the existing scroll could sit on the
table while the newly written scroll would reside on the scribe's lap.
Finally, Pliny's description isn't
specific enough to be definitely tied to Khirbet Qumran. And Pliny describes
the Essenes of the Dead Sea area as celibate, yet remains of women were found
in the cemetery at Qumran.
In 1980 Norman Golb of the University
of Chicago's Oriental Institute published the first of a series of studies
critical of the Qumran-sectarian theory, and offering historical and textual
evidence that the scrolls are the remains of various libraries in Jerusalem
(perhaps including, but not limited to, the Temple library), hidden in the
Judaean desert when the Romans were besieging Jerusalem in 68-70 AD In broad
terms, this evidence includes (1) the Copper Scroll found in Cave 3, which
contains a list of treasures that, according to Golb and others, could only
have originated in Jerusalem; (2) the great variety of conflicting ideas found
among the scrolls; and (3) the fact that, apart from the Copper Scroll, they
contain no original historical documents such as correspondence or contracts,
but are all scribal copies of literary texts -- indicating that they are
remnants of libraries and were not written at the site where they were found.
Golb's theory has been endorsed by a number of scholars, including the Israeli
archaeologists Yizhar Hirschfeld (deceased), Yahman Jamaca, Yitzhak Magen and
Yuval Peleg, Rachel Elior (chair of the Department of Jewish Thought at the
Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who emphasizes the connection between the
Scrolls and the Temple) and others. Hirschfeld believes that Qumran was the
country estate of a wealthy Jerusalemite. Magen and Peleg believe that the site
was a pottery factory and had nothing to do with any sect. Golb believes that
it was a military fortress, part of a concentric series of such bastions protecting
Jerusalem. Thus, it can be said that current scrolls scholarship includes a
school that challenges the traditional Qumran-sectarian theory which supports a
growing movement towards the view that the site was secular in nature and had
no organic connection with the parchment fragments found in the caves (see
below). The scrolls are increasingly held, by this group of scholars who have
emerged since 1990, to have come from a major center of Jewish intellectual
culture such as only Jerusalem is known to have been during the
intertestamentary period. According to this theory, the scrolls are in fact
more important than they were previously thought to be, because of the light
they cast on Jewish thought in Jerusalem at that time.
In a series of editorials and
articles, historian Norman Golb criticized the San Diego Natural History
Museum's 2007 exhibit of the Scrolls, suggesting that the museum is
inappropriately taking sides in a bitter and widening academic dispute by
presenting a slanted interpretation of the Scrolls and of the archaeology of
Qumran. This ongoing dispute is only the latest sign of the
"polarization" of Scrolls studies between defenders and opponents of
the traditional theory of Scroll origins, a controversy that has gathered steam
during the past decade.
Temple library
In 1963, Karl Heinrich Rengstorf of
the University of Münster put forth the theory that the Dead Sea scrolls
originated at the library of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. This theory was
rejected by most scholars during the 1960s, who maintained that the scrolls
were written at Qumran rather than transported from another location (a
position then thought to be supported by de Vaux's identification of a room
within the ruins of Qumran as a probable scriptorium -- an identification that
has since been disputed by various archaeologists). Rengstorf's theory is also
rejected by Norman Golb, who argues that it is rendered unlikely by the great
multiplicity of conflicting religious ideas found among the scrolls. It has in
large measure been revived, however, by Rachel Elior, who heads the department
of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Christian connections
Spanish Jesuit José O'Callaghan has
argued that one fragment (7Q5) is a New Testament text from the Gospel of Mark,
chapter 6, verses 52–53. In recent years this controversial assertion has been
taken up again by German scholar Carsten Peter Thiede. A successful
identification of this fragment as a passage from Mark would make it the
earliest extant New Testament document, dating somewhere between 30 AD and 60
AD. Opponents consider that the fragment is tiny and requires so much
reconstruction (the only complete word in Greek is "και" = "and") that it
could have come from a text other than Mark.
Robert Eisenman advanced the theory
that some scrolls actually describe the early Christian community,
characterized as more fundamentalist and rigid than the one portrayed by the
New Testament. Eisenman also attempted to relate the career of James the Just
and the Apostle Paul / Saul of Tarsus to some of these documents.
Conspiracy and other theories
Because they are frequently described
as important to the history of the Bible, the scrolls are surrounded by a wide
range of conspiracy theories. There is also writing about the Nephilim related
to the Book of Enoch. Theories with more support among scholars include Qumran
as a military fortress or a winter resort; see above (Abegg et al 2002).
Digital Copies of the Dead Sea Scrolls
High resolution images of all discovered
material are not available online for public examination. However they can be
purchased in inexpensive multi-volumes (on disc media or in book form) or
viewed in certain university libraries.
According to Computer Weekly (16th Nov
2007), a team from King's College London is to advise the Israeli Antiquities
Authority, who are planning to digitise the scrolls.
The text of nearly all of the
non-biblical scrolls has been recorded and tagged for morphology by Dr. Martin
Abegg, Jr., the Ben Zion Wacholder Professor of Dead Sea Scroll Studies at
Trinity Western University in Langley, BC, Canada. It is available on handheld
devices through Olive Tree Bible Software - BibleReader, on Macs through
Accordance, and on Windows through Logos Bible Software and BibleWorks.
To this day, many believe there are
more scrolls to be found. They believe the Dead Sea scrolls will help them
unleash the remains of the sacred feminine, Mary Magdelene. With many of the
scrolls still being translated, Grail searchers and historians think that it
will tell the true story of Jesus. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.wordpress.com
Garry Wills has written widely and
well for many years. He has won awards for his historical work and approval for
his works on religion. Like others who have written seriously for a long time
and accomplished much, he has found it increasingly easy to write colloquially,
even personally. He wrote Why I Am a Catholic and got an award. At some point,
the thought occurred to him-as it has to other celebrated authors like Reynolds
Price and Norman Mailer-to turn his hand to Jesus.
Or maybe his editor suggested that he
was better equipped to do it than those guys. After all, Wills sat through
those seminary courses in the 1960s, and mastered Greek and Latin so well that
he had a first career as a professor of classics. He could easily give the New
Testament a fresh translation, stripping its simple language of ecclesiastical
diction. http://www.myspace.com/louis_j_sheehan_esquire
He could bring what everyone agrees is
his exceptional historical insight to bear on the figure of Jesus.
So, invoking the spirit of Romano
Guardini and G. K. Chesterton, he published What Jesus Meant (2006). He called
it a devotional book rather than a scholarly one. References to scholars are
few and there are no footnotes. Like his worthy mentors (and like Benedict XVI
in his recent reflection on Jesus), Wills eschews the excesses of
historical-critical biblical scholarship, explicitly repudiating the Jesus
Seminar. http://louis.j.sheehan.googlepages.com/home
He begins with the conviction that God was in Christ, so that
the quest for “what Jesus meant” is not a search for recoverable pieces but an
inquiry into the significance of his words and deeds. Jesus was not a
Christian, he avers, but Christianity must be measured by the incarnate God. In
the spirit of “faith seeking understanding,” then, Wills steps immediately into
Jesus’ story from birth to Resurrection. The slender and unimposing book
contains many fine observations, among them that Paul should be taken seriously
as an interpreter of what Jesus meant.
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The boldness and simplicity of Wills’s
approach, though, camouflages a serious problem. He refuses to provide any
justification for distinguishing what Jesus meant from what the Gospels say. In
effect, he picks and chooses among the four Gospels for what makes sense to
him. Not only is this the sort of carelessness that Wills would not countenance
in his normal historical pursuits, it exposes him to the charge of subjectively
imposing on Jesus his own predilections, a charge that is difficult to avoid
for anyone undertaking this task, which is precisely why scholars like John
Meier and John Dominic Crossan spend so much time on tedious methodological
questions. http://louisjsheehanesquire100.ning.com
http://LOUIS2J2SHEEHAN.USThis lack of methodological rigor is especially evident in the
chapters “The Radical Jesus” and “Against Religion,” in which Jesus gives voice
to views remarkably similar to those espoused by the author.
Still, the success of that
book-success being measured here by its becoming a New York Times bestseller
and receiving plaudits from the likes of Peter Gomes and James Carroll-led
Wills and his editor to a second volume of the same sort, What Paul Meant
(2007). This book also became a bestseller and was applauded by Andrew Greeley
and the Christian Century. It is another slender volume with the same engaging
prose, and-consistent with the first book-provides a positive and
rehabilitating treatment of Paul in the face of all his cultured despisers:
“Those who say that Paul’s was an alien spirit superimposed on that of a loving
Jesus do not see that they both taught the same message of love,” Wills writes.
Still, the book on Paul is not without
its own problems, especially in Wills’s increased reliance on standard New
Testament scholarship on the apostle. Thus, with the majority of critical
scholars, he finds the true Paul not in Acts but in the letters that are
universally attributed to Paul (Romans and Corinthians, for example) as opposed
to the disputed letters (Colossians, Ephesians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2
Timothy). The approach of not-this-but-that, however, leads to a focus more on
Paul’s life than on his thought, with an exaggerated emphasis on Paul’s
distance from the Jerusalem church and the unreliability of Acts.
More troubling in this book are the
number of overstatements and errors. I draw these only from pages 2 to 8. Wills
says that “during the earthly career of Jesus, Paul was never in the same
country with him”-he cannot know that. He states that Paul “often took occasion
to stress how distant he was, how independent, from the gatherings in
Jerusalem”-no, he doesn’t. He mischaracterizes 1 Cor 1:12 by stating “he
defended himself against ‘a party of Peter’ in Corinth.” He states, with no
support, the supposition that “there were probably later letters suppressed or
destroyed because they were an embarrassment to the gatherings-whence the
blackout on Paul’s last days and death.” He says Paul “gave different advice on
observance of the Jewish food code to the Galatians and the Romans”-it was the
Corinthians and Romans, and it wasn’t that different at all. He claims that
Paul “refused to accept financial support from the Corinthians but he welcomed
it from the Galatians”-no, it was the Philippians.
Wills properly asserts the importance
of the Resurrection experience for Paul, as well as elements of continuity between
Jesus and Paul. And he correctly rebuts the biased readings that make Paul a
fomenter of hatred, a misogynist, or an anti-Semite. But such correctives do
not amount to a genuinely positive reading of Paul’s thought, of “what he
meant.”
Another year, another volume: 2008
sees the arrival of What the Gospels Meant. Wills begins by acknowledging that
his first book was criticized because “I drew indiscriminately from all four
Gospels to find the true Jesus,” but does not really answer the criticism by stating
that “all of the Gospels [are] authentic.” The issue is not whether they are
authentic, but how they are to be read: as sources for a historical
reconstruction of Jesus, or as distinctive spirit-guided portraits of Jesus. http://members.greenpeace.org/blog/purposeforporpoise
Wills is correct when he places Gospel
composition within the life of the early church, and when he defines a Gospel
as “a meditation on the meaning of Jesus in the light of Sacred History as
recorded in the Sacred Writings,” but he then goes too far in that direction
when treating each Gospel ecclesially: Mark is a “Report from the Suffering
Body of Jesus,” Matthew a “Report from the Teaching Body of Jesus,” Luke a
“Report from the Reconciling Body of Jesus,” and John a “Report from the
Mystical Body of Jesus.”
What the Gospels Meant, like Wills’s
previous books on Jesus and Paul, contains large patches of his own
translations of New Testament texts. For the most part, the translations are a
pleasure to read. One suspects that for Wills, the chance to offer them was a
prime incentive for writing the series. The treatment of each Gospel, though,
amounts to a set of observations-most of them the standard stuff of New
Testament introductions-rather than a powerful reading.
The book is dedicated to Raymond E.
Brown, and that scholar’s influence is felt strongly throughout but most
obviously in the birth and passion accounts and in all of John. As in What Paul
Meant, however, the scholarly references serve mainly as ornament, with little
evidence that Wills has done more than skim complex discussions. And Wills’s
mini-essays on aspects of each Gospel stay safely on the surface. Stressing
only the Gospel of Luke’s “reconciling” or “irenic” character, for example,
risks missing entirely the passionate (and divisive) challenge posed by this
prophetic composition. Indeed, Wills’s willingness to divide his treatment of
each narrative into topical discussions prevents him from offering a convincing
argument for what each evangelist sought to accomplish in his portrayal of
Jesus. http://www.myspace.com/louis_j_sheehan_esquire
Because he does not engage the Gospels
literarily at the level of their narrative rendering of Jesus, Wills fails to
convey a coherent sense of what each of them “meant,” and-more serious-a sense
of what these compositions continue to “mean” for countless readers.
Each of Wills’s books nevertheless
contains some elements of delight such as arise from a humane spirit and
excellent style. They have a positive disposition toward Jesus, Paul, and the
Gospels, if not always toward every stripe of Christian. They would disappoint
only those readers who-believing the extravagant blurbs and reviews-think that
Wills alone can rescue them from the deadly obfuscations of clerics and
scholars. To write simply and truly about complex subjects-and the subjects of
all three books are extraordinarily complex-one must know enough to cut through
the complexity and isolate what is deepest and most important in the subject.
In these three books, Wills simply did not know enough to do the job.
Tomorrow's science stars got to pick
the brains of today's science giants during a question and answer session May
13 in Atlanta at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. A panel
of six Nobel laureates and one scientist whose work helped win the Nobel for
her adviser took questions from the young audience on a range of topics from
eureka moments to hospitable planets.
Much of the discussion emphasized
science as process. Robert Curl, who won the 1996 Nobel Prize in chemistry for
the discovery of fullerene molecules, responded to a question about his journey
to winning a Nobel by saying, "Like everything in life, the real meaning
comes from doing it, not the reward." He noted that his discovery was a
"lucky accident."
"Fullerenes insisted on intruding
on our … well-planned experiment.… Fullerenes said, 'Something interesting is
going on here — look at me!'" Curl concluded, “The only moral lesson I can
draw from this is if something seems interesting — look at it!"
Another student asked the scientists
on the panel how it made them feel to know that students read about their work
in textbooks.
Curl noted that, of course, it doesn't feel bad. But he
pointed out that the rewards of science aren't defined by outside acknowledgment,
nor is that acknowledgment a motivator.
"As a scientist, you find out
something, you write it up — but it is kind of like having a child — you can't
play favorites. Some of my “children” never get written up, but I think about
them with great pleasure.…There is a warm feeling about the work you've done,
but it doesn't have much to do with the rest of the world appreciating
it," Curl said.
The panel also spoke about balancing
work and family. Richard J. Roberts, who won the Nobel Prize in physiology or
medicine 1993 for the discovery of introns in eukaryotic DNA and the mechanism
of gene-splicing, urged the high school students to find tools that would help
them balance work with the rest of life.
"From time to time you have to be
obsessed. I suspect most of you in this room have really obsessive
personalities. It's OK — it's not a bad thing. But you need to learn the
techniques and tools that work for you so you can see this obsessiveness and
turn it off." http://louis1j1sheehan.us
On a more somber note, Jocelyn Bell
Burnell whose work led to the discovery of pulsars and won her thesis adviser
Antony Hewish a Nobel in physics in 1974, commented that for women in science,
the road was easier without the commitments of family.
"I spent half my working life as
a married woman and mother, trying to reconcile working life and these
commitments. My second half has been as a divorcee," Bell Burnell said.
"In terms of my career, [the second half] has been a lot more
straightforward, and a lot lonelier. Being female, [in this career] I have to
say it is a lot easier being single. I'm very sorry that I have to say
that."
The students also expressed concern
that everything worth discovering in science had already been discovered.
Panelists responded with laughter. Dudley Herschbach, who won the Nobel Prize
in chemistry in 1986 and chairs the board of trustees for Science News’ parent
organization, the Society for Science & the Public, commented that he has
heard this refrain before. http://louis6j6sheehan.blogspot.com
"I can understand [this idea]
that the older generation walked through picking all the low hanging fruit from
the trees, the fruit rained down on them and now, what is left for your
generation? But you've been left new tools that allow you to entertain a much
wider range of ideas than your predecessors."
Leon Lederman, who won the Nobel Prize
in physics 1988 for his work with neutrinos, pointed out that there is much
more work to be done in his field. "We've been very happy with quantum
theory … and we have relativity and cosmology … but they are not compatible.
They get together and spit and claw. They don't work well together. Then
there's new data that's baffling to us. The collaborative effort to build this
machine in Europe [the Large Hadron Collider] — with that, there are unknown
possibilities and lots of expectations."
Finally, panelists were asked what
their most rewarding accomplishment was, other than their Nobel. H. Robert
Horvitz, who won the 2002 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine said being a
father. To which Herschbach replied, "The only one matching that is being
a grandfather!" http://louis6j6sheehan.blogspot.com
The Intel International Science and
Engineering Fair is the world's largest international pre-college science
competition and is run by the Society for Science & the Public. More than
1,500 high school students from over 40 countries showcase their independent
research at the fair and compete for roughly $4 million in prizes and
scholarships. Since 1997 Intel Corp. has partnered with Society for Science
& the Public in sponsoring the fair. Agilent Technologies is the presenting
sponsor this year.
Welcome to this summer’s scientific
blockbuster, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skullduggery.” In
his latest cinematic adventure, the bullwhip-cracking Jones chases down an
ancient skull carved out of crystal that contains supernatural powers. Lou Sheehan
But a new analysis of two actual
crystal skulls — skulls carved out of a type of quartz rock — fingers the
artifacts as forgeries. The supposed treasures have been attributed to either
the Aztecs or a related pre-Columbian society in Mexico, the Mixtecs.
One of the two life-size carvings was
purchased in 1897 by the British Museum in London and the other was delivered
anonymously in 1992 to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Both
these and other skulls liked them helped to inspire not just this weekend’s
“Indiana Jones” movie but also public speculation about whether crystal skulls
obtained by museums and collectors since the late 19th century originated on a
long-lost continent or even in outer space.
“The British Museum and Smithsonian
skulls were carved with relatively modern stone-working equipment, which was
unavailable to pre-Columbian stone carvers,” says Smithsonian anthropologist
and study coauthor Jane Walsh.
A team led by Walsh and British Museum
archaeologist Margaret Sax published the findings online May 18 in the Journal
of Archaeological Science.
Like all other crystal skulls, the
British Museum and Smithsonian pieces don’t come from documented excavations.
Sax and her colleagues examined the fine detail of carved features on the
skulls to determine what types of tools were used to make them. For comparison,
they similarly assessed a Mixtec rock crystal goblet and five Aztec rock
crystal beads that were excavated at sites dating from about 1,000 to 500 years
ago.
The team studied molds of the tool
marks on each artifact. The molds were impressed onto a special silicone wax
and studied at high magnification in a scanning electron microscope.
The goblet and beads exhibit shallow,
irregular indentations consistent with the use of stone and wood tools tipped
with an especially hard material, such as almandine garnet or corundum.
In contrast, both crystal skulls
display deep, regular incisions indicating that they were carved with rotary
wheels. The makers of the British Museum skull used an instrument like a
jeweler’s wheel that was powered by hand or foot, the researchers suggest. Its
metal rotary wheel was coated with a hard material such as emery or diamond.
Also, close examination of the
Smithsonian skull revealed traces of a modern synthetic abrasive.
Analyses of the composition of rock
used for the British skull suggest that it came from Brazil, Madagascar or the
European Alps, areas outside Aztec and Mixtec trade networks.
Archival research conducted by Walsh
revealed that the British Museum skull was deemed a fake by the National Museum
of Mexico in 1885, when it was offered for sale by French antiquities collector
and dealer Eugène Boban. http://www.myspace.com/louis_j_sheehan_esquire
The item was probably manufactured in
the decade before 1885, the researchers say.
Boban sold at least five crystal
skulls to various museums worldwide.
The Smithsonian crystal skull also
bears telltale microscopic signs of having been wheel-cut. It was probably made
shortly before its sale to a private collector in Mexico City in 1960, Walsh
says. Blocks of white quartz would have been available from deposits in Mexico
and the United States.
Walsh suspects that several small
crystal skulls now held in museums, each no larger than a fist, were made in
Mexico around the time that they were originally sold, between 1856 and 1880.
Unpublished microscopic analyses of a
few small crystal skulls brought to the Smithsonian have also yielded evidence
of wheel-carving. “Every crystal skull we’ve studied so far is modern in
origin,” Walsh says. “It’s reasonable to think that the rest are as well.”
Archaeologist and Aztec researcher
Michael E. Smith of Arizona State University in Tempe disagrees. Sax’s team
“has clearly shown that the largest, football-sized skulls are modern fakes,
but some small crystal skulls may indeed be legitimate Aztec objects,” Smith
says.
These skulls fit with what’s known
about Aztec skull depictions in artwork, he notes. http://louis2j2sheehan2esquire.blog.ca
Rock crystal objects recovered at
Aztec sites include lip plugs and beads.
Most crystal skulls exhibit styles
reminiscent of European traditions of skull art, Walsh responds. Some small
crystal skulls probably started out as pre-Columbian beads and were carved into
their present shape for sale in the late 19th century, in her view.
French researchers are now applying
microscopic analyses, as well as advanced dating techniques, to three crystal
skulls held in European museums. One of those skulls is now on exhibit in
Paris. http://louis1j1sheehan.us
Indiana Jones and his real-life
counterparts may never look at crystal skulls the same way again.
These rugged green mountains, once
home to one of Asia’s most productive coal regions, are littered with abandoned
mines and decaying towns — backwaters of an economy of bullet trains and hybrid
cars.
But after decades of seemingly
terminal decline, Japan’s coal country is stirring again. With energy prices
reaching record highs — oil settled above $135 a barrel on Thursday — Japan’s
high-cost mines are suddenly competitive again, and demand for their coal is
booming. Production has jumped to its highest in nearly four decades, creating
a sensation rarely felt in these mining communities: hope.
“We are seeing a flicker of light
after long darkness,” said Michio Sakurai, the mayor of Bibai, on Japan’s
northernmost island of Hokkaido. “We never imagined coal would actually make a
comeback.” Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Soaring commodity prices have had
distorting effects across the global economy, driving up food prices and
prompting fears of future energy shortages. But they have been an unanticipated
boon to the coal producing regions of countries like Japan that had written off
coal mining as a relic of the Industrial Revolution.
In Bibai, once a thriving cultural
center that had a ballet troupe and five cinemas showing first-run Hollywood
movies in its heyday in the 1950s, the population shrank to 27,800, from
92,000. As mining jobs evaporated, they left behind rows of abandoned
clapboard-fronted stores that give some neighborhoods the air of a ghost town.
While Japan’s coal industry remains
tiny, its revival is an example of how higher commodity prices are driving a
search for resources even in some of the world’s most urbanized and developed
nations.
In recent months, South Korea has
experienced calls to create a domestic coal industry in order to reduce
dependence on imports. In the United Kingdom, where coal’s decline became a
symbol of withered industrial might, companies are increasing production and
considering reopening at least one closed mine as demand for British coal
rises. Louis J. Sheehan
“It’s now the perfect storm with
demand for our coal from South Africa to China and Australia,” said Rhidian
Davies, president of Energybuild, an operator of mines in South Wales that will
increase production at one of its mines tenfold over the next five years.
In Japan, higher commodity prices have
also unleashed soaring demand for the heavily populated nation’s other limited
natural resources, including lumber and natural gas, where production has risen
nearly 20 percent this year to a three-decade high.
But coal is the most potentially
plentiful fossil fuel in Japan, and companies have been quick to embrace now
affordable domestic supplies out of deep-rooted anxieties about Japan’s heavy
reliance on imported energy.
While there are no national figures
yet, mining communities report sharply higher production in the last two years.
For example, in Bibai the city’s last two mines, both small strip mines,
produced just 34,961 tons of coal in 2005. This year, they expect to surpass
150,000 tons, the highest production since 1973, when the city’s last large
underground mine was shutting down.
For decades, Japanese coal, at $100 or
more a ton, was simply too expensive because of high wages and extraction
costs. But with global prices now reaching the same heights, Japanese coal is
looking more attractive.
The price of power-station coal
shipped from Newcastle, Australia, settled at $134 a metric ton for the week
ending May 16, from a high of $142 for the week ending Feb. 15. In May 2003,
the price was $23.25 a metric ton.
The utility company Hokkaido Electric
Power announced it would nearly double purchases of domestic coal this year to
110,000 tons, while Mitsubishi Materials, a cement maker, said it would buy
domestic coal for the first time in 18 years.
Demand is so high that one of Bibai’s
mine operators, the Hokuryo Corporation, is now scouting a second mine to
double its output.
But the industry’s long decline has
made it difficult to gear up. There are almost no geologists left in Japan
specializing in coal, or recent surveys of coal deposits in the region. To
conduct its search, Hokuryo is relying on a stack of torn, yellowed maps
hand-drawn by company geologists more than 40 years ago.
“Our predecessors braved the bears in
the woods to leave us these maps,” said Fumihiro Yamamoto, the Hokuryo mine’s
director.
Other changes in the last four decades
could also hamper efforts to increase production. Hokuryo and other companies
say they can no longer build large underground mines because no Japanese worker
would want to work in such dark and dangerous conditions today.
At the same time, environmental
regulations prevent most strip-mining, which creates huge open pits that can be
eyesores. There have been proposals to raise production using new, untested
technologies like pumping in water or heat to liquefy coal so it can be sucked
it out of the ground like oil. http://louis-j-sheehan.com
Louis Sheehan
Even if such technologies worked, no
one is expecting Japan to become self-sufficient in coal anytime soon. Domestic
coal production contributes only 0.8 percent of the total coal consumed by
Japan. Still, there is enormous potential: Sorachi, the region that includes
Bibai, sits on an estimated six billion tons of coal, enough to supply Japan’s
current level of use for 30 years.
“I don’t think we can expect a
dramatic increase in the near future” in domestic coal production, said
Hirofumi Furukawa, general manager of the Japan Coal Energy Center, an
industry-affiliated research group. “But still, it is good to have a rare bit
of encouraging news.”
Japan’s coal industry needs cheering
up: nationwide, production is down from its peak in 1961 when 662 mines yielded
55 million tons of coal. Last year, eight mines produced about 1.4 million
tons, according to Mr. Furukawa and Japan’s economy ministry.
Japan’s hard-hit coal mining
communities have sought ways to cope with the industry’s long decay. The town
of Yubari, an hour east of Bibai, went bankrupt after building an extravagant
amusement park, the Coal History Village, which failed to attract tourists.
That does not mean coal is a savior.
In fact, so far the coal revival has failed to produce new jobs in Bibai’s
mines, where machines now do most of the digging. Many residents doubt a real
renaissance is even possible. Much of the city’s population is in its 70s or
older. Some doubt that working-age people who left when the mines closed will
ever want to come back.
“Even if a few young people come back,
it won’t be enough to save this town,” said Mitsuko Michiyama, 69, who owns a
clothing shop on an empty shopping street where most storefronts are boarded
up.
Still, business is looking up for
Hokuryo, a unit of the Mitsubishi Corporation that once operated vast mines
producing a million tons of coal a year and employing 8,000 workers.
Today, it employs just 40 at its
single remaining strip mine.
The mine had survived by supplying
about 30,000 tons a year to Hokkaido Electric, which bought the coal in order
to support a local industry. Then, starting last year, the mine began receiving
calls from other potential buyers. This year, it has promised to deliver some
120,000 tons of coal, far beyond the mine’s initial projected output of 50,000
tons, said Mr. Yamamoto, the mine’s director. http://Louis-J-sheehan.info
With its half dozen bulldozers and
power shovels digging full-time, the company has had to turn down a half dozen
would-be buyers.
“It’s frustrating,” said Mr. Yamamoto,
who has witnessed the industry’s decline after he started working 36 years ago
in one of Japan’s last big underground mines. “It was so hard for so long, and
now we refuse big customers.”
At the mine, an open pit cut into a
mountainside above Bibai, the mood is noticeably upbeat. Workers say they are
working every day of the week, which was not the case even last year.
“We’re all really thankful,” said
Takeshi Sasaki, who wore a hard hat as he checked one of the conveyers that
wash and sort newly unearthed coal. “If this keeps going, it will mean a whole
new era for Bibai.” http://louis-j-sheehan.us/ImageGallery
Dramatic shifts in Middle East
diplomacy during the past week, including a political deal in Lebanon and
Israeli-Syrian peace talks, are exposing significant strategic divisions
between the U.S. and its closest regional ally, Israel.
The tensions, described in interviews
with U.S. and Israeli officials in recent months, counter the widespread
assumption that the Bush and Israeli governments march in lockstep on foreign
policy. They also provide insight into why these new diplomatic initiatives may
unravel ultimately, regional analysts said. http://louis-j-sheehaN.NET
Dramatic shifts recently in Middle
East diplomacy, including a political deal in Lebanon and Israeli peace talks
with Syria, are exposing significant strategic divisions between the U.S. and
Israel.
The most profound strategic division
between Washington and Jerusalem concerns Israel's engagement of Syrian
President Bashar Assad. In revealing peace talks with Damascus this week,
Israeli officials voiced a determination to peel Syria away from Iran, its
principal regional ally. Among the goals is to undermine the two states'
support for extremist groups Hezbollah and Hamas, which operate on Israel's borders.
But U.S. officials say the move
undermines their efforts to punish Damascus. The Pentagon accuses Syria, along
with Iran, of backing the continued flow of foreign fighters and munitions into
Iraq, a charge Damascus denies. And U.S. diplomats believe President Assad has
actively sought to topple Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora through his
support of Hezbollah and other Syrian allies inside Lebanon. A United
Nations-backed investigation implicated Syrian intelligence officials in the
2005 murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
Mr. Siniora's government agreed
Wednesday to a power-sharing deal that many analysts believe significantly
strengthens the power of Hezbollah and other Syrian and Iranian allies inside
Lebanon. Members of Mr. Siniora's government have complained Western support
for Beirut has been inadequate to compete with the military help provided to
Hezbollah by Damascus and Tehran.
The Israelis "don't seem to
understand that our interests and their interests in Lebanon aren't
aligned," one senior U.S official working on the Middle East said.
"In the short-term, the Israelis want to remove a threat on their border.
But they don't care about" the fate of Lebanon's government.
The State Department's point man on
the Middle East, Assistant Secretary of State David Welch, said widening the
Middle East peace dialog could be a "good thing" for the region. But
he also stressed that Washington has "reservations about the
foreign-policy behavior of Syria, and its internal politics as well."
Speaking Thursday, Israeli Foreign
Minister Tzipi Livni reflected the strategy in outlining her government's
requirements for a peace deal. Syria must understand that peace "involves
their complete renunciation of support for terror in Hamas, Hezbollah and
Iran," she said.
Israeli officials say Syria's secular
government is fundamentally averse to its strategic alliance with Iran's
Islamist rulers. Louis Joseph Sheehan
They say Damascus needs to be offered
economic and diplomatic incentives to offset the assistance supplied by Iran.
The talks will also focus on Israel giving control of the Golan Heights region
back to Damascus.
Israelis officials are fearful of
facing a three-front war involving Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza
Strip and Syria on the Golan Heights. "Maybe it's time to employ the
carrot to remove [Syria] from the axis of evil," then deputy chief of
staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky, said in
Washington last fall.
In recent months, Washington has moved
to exact new financial sanctions against many of President Assad's closest
business associates and political allies. And the U.S. has worked with Arab
states, particularly Saudi Arabia and Egypt, to isolate Damascus diplomatically
in a bid to gain its assistance in stabilizing the region. Saudi Arabia and
Egypt didn't send top leaders to the Arab Summit in Damascus this March, to
snub President Assad.
Divisions between the Bush
administration and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government on Syria may
imperil the peace initiative. President Assad has said that such a deal is
impossible without the active support of Washington. Damascus believes that
American aid and the removal of U.S. sanctions on Syria would have to be part
of any long-term agreement. http://www.myspace.com/louis_j_sheehan_esquire
Bush administration officials have
offered no indication that the U.S. is preparing to directly broker
Syrian-Israeli talks. Instead, they say, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
will focus her remaining months in office on supporting the Israeli-Palestinian
peace track.
Some Syrian officials have said that a
new U.S. administration that comes to power next January could be more supportive
of such a peace tract. The two leading candidates to replace President Bush,
Senators Barack Obama and John McCain, both released statements saying they
supported Israel's position.
The view in the region, by contrast,
is that Israel and the U.S. are still tightly tethered. Suleyman Haddad, the
head of the foreign-affairs committee in Syria's parliament, said Syria won't
agree to any conditions in return for a peace deal, such as giving up support
for Hamas or Hezbollah.
He said if Israel wanted peace with
Syria it "should give up all these unattainable conditions." Talking
about the talks, Mr. Haddad said he didn't believe Israel would do anything
"without instructions from and cooperation with the United States."
“Sex and the City,” the former HBO hit
about four single women devoted to designer shoes and other forms of
self-gratification, is about to be released as a feature film. But isn’t the
film out of sync with the spirit of New York at a time when people are scaling
back? But the top are not scaling back. That’s what we keep hearing, right?
These girls are doing pretty well. My money and Charlotte’s money — that’s big
law-firm money.
I like the suit you’re wearing now. Is
that a label? That is Oscar de la Renta. They lent it to me, just to wear
today.
Obviously, there’s a disjunction
between your own life and the characters in this film. Very much so.
A few years ago, you moved in with a
woman, after leaving the father of your children. Do you find it easier living
with a woman than a man because you have more in common? I think you do have
more in common.
You can use the same bathroom in movie
theaters, for instance. That’s absolutely true!
Can you share clothes? No. Christine
doesn’t wear women’s clothes; she only wears men’s clothes. She won’t even wear
any kind of women’s shoes. I bought her a pair of cowboy boots that were from
the women’s department, and she was like, “Don’t do this again.”
Does she watch sports on TV? She does.
We don’t have a TV. But when there was a World Cup, we went to the local Ruby
Foo’s and watched it. And we actually did watch the Super Bowl as well. She
tried to explain it to me.
Do you think of her as the male figure
in the relationship? No, I don’t at all. Look at what’s happening now. She’s at
home with the kids, and I’m the one out pounding the pavement. . . . She’s for
Hillary, and I’m for Obama.
What was it like growing up with the
name Nixon as a native New Yorker? Horrible. My mother always said — her father
was a German — “I lived through World War II with a father named Adolph and
through the ’70s with a husband named Nixon.” Horrible!
ramatic shifts in Middle East
diplomacy during the past week, including a political deal in Lebanon and
Israeli-Syrian peace talks, are exposing significant strategic divisions
between the U.S. and its closest regional ally, Israel.
The tensions, described in interviews
with U.S. and Israeli officials in recent months, counter the widespread
assumption that the Bush and Israeli governments march in lockstep on foreign
policy. They also provide insight into why these new diplomatic initiatives may
unravel ultimately, regional analysts said.
Dramatic shifts recently in Middle
East diplomacy, including a political deal in Lebanon and Israeli peace talks
with Syria, are exposing significant strategic divisions between the U.S. and
Israel. WSJ's Jay Solomon reports. (May 22)
The most profound strategic division
between Washington and Jerusalem concerns Israel's engagement of Syrian
President Bashar Assad. In revealing peace talks with Damascus this week,
Israeli officials voiced a determination to peel Syria away from Iran, its
principal regional ally. Among the goals is to undermine the two states'
support for extremist groups Hezbollah and Hamas, which operate on Israel's
borders.
But U.S. officials say the move
undermines their efforts to punish Damascus. The Pentagon accuses Syria, along
with Iran, of backing the continued flow of foreign fighters and munitions into
Iraq, a charge Damascus denies. And U.S. diplomats believe President Assad has
actively sought to topple Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora through his
support of Hezbollah and other Syrian allies inside Lebanon. A United
Nations-backed investigation implicated Syrian intelligence officials in the 2005
murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
Mr. Siniora's government agreed
Wednesday to a power-sharing deal that many analysts believe significantly
strengthens the power of Hezbollah and other Syrian and Iranian allies inside
Lebanon. Members of Mr. Siniora's government have complained Western support
for Beirut has been inadequate to compete with the military help provided to
Hezbollah by Damascus and Tehran.
Louis Joseph Sheehan, Esquire
The Israelis "don't seem to
understand that our interests and their interests in Lebanon aren't
aligned," one senior U.S official working on the Middle East said.
"In the short-term, the Israelis want to remove a threat on their border.
But they don't care about" the fate of Lebanon's government.
The State Department's point man on
the Middle East, Assistant Secretary of State David Welch, said widening the
Middle East peace dialog could be a "good thing" for the region. But
he also stressed that Washington has "reservations about the foreign-policy
behavior of Syria, and its internal politics as well."
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