Pontius Pilate and the Imperial Cult in Roman Judaea

While Pontius Pilate is often seen as agnostic, in modern terms, the material evidence of his coinage and the Pilate inscription from Caesarea indicate a prefect determined to promote a form of Roman religion in Judaea. Unlike his predecessors, in the coinage Pilate used peculiarly Roman iconographic elements appropriate to the imperial cult. In the inscription Pilate was evidently responsible for dedicating a Tiberieum to the Dis Augustis. This material evidence may be placed alongside the report in Philo Legatio ad Gaium (299–305) where Pilate sets up shields – likewise associated with the Roman imperial cult –honouring Tiberius in Jerusalem

Revisiting Qumran Cave 1Q and its archaeological assemblage

Qumran Cave 1Q was the first site of Dead Sea scroll discoveries. Found and partly emptied by local Bedouin, the cave was excavated officially in 1949 and published in the series Discoveries in the Judaean Desert (Volume 1) in 1955. Contents of the cave are found in collections worldwide, and in different institutions in Jerusalem and Amman. While the scrolls are the most highly prized artefacts from this cave, in archaeological terms they are part of an assemblage that needs to be understood holistically in order to make conclusions about its character and dating. This study presents all of the known items retrieved from the cave, including those that are currently lost, in order to consider what we might know about the cave prior to its emptying and the changes to its form. It constitutes preliminary work done as part of the Leverhulme funded International Network for the Study of Dispersed Qumran Caves Artefacts and Archival Sources [IN-2015-067].peer-reviewe

Forcing nonperiodicity with a single tile

An aperiodic prototile is a shape for which infinitely many copies can be arranged to fill Euclidean space completely with no overlaps, but not in a periodic pattern. Tiling theorists refer to such a prototile as an "einstein" (a German pun on "one stone"). The possible existence of an einstein has been pondered ever since Berger's discovery of large set of prototiles that in combination can tile the plane only in a nonperiodic way. In this article we review and clarify some features of a prototile we recently introduced that is an einstein according to a reasonable definition. [This abstract does not appear in the published article.]Comment: 18 pages, 10 figures. This article has been substantially revised and accepted for publication in the Mathematical Intelligencer and is scheduled to appear in Vol 33. Citations to and quotations from this work should reference that publication. If you cite this work, please check that the published form contains precisely the material to which you intend to refe

A critical investigation of archaeological material assigned to Palestinian Jewish-Christians of the Roman and Byzantine periods

The Franciscan Fathers B. Bagatti and E. Testa have developed the hypothesis which holds that Jewish-Christians with a heterodox theology venerated and utilised many important Christian holy sites before they were appropriated by the "Gentile" Church in the fourth century.This thesis argues that Jewish-Christians should not be defined in terms of heterodox theology but by their maintenance of Jewish praxis, which may accompany various theological perspectives. A detailed examination of the literary traditions and archaeology of the land in general and important Christian holy sites in particular shows that there is no evidence for Jewish-Christians in the heartland of Palestine, which was in the third century extensively populated by pagans. Moreover, there is no evidence that any Palestinian Christians venerated places they considered sacred prior to the fourth century. If the definition of pilgrimage implies travel to specific holy places in order to pray, then there were no Christian pilgrims prior to Constantine's mother, Helena. It was Constantine who established the first Christian holy sites in Palestine, using the pagan model of the sacred shrine. Before Constantine, Christians had visited Palestine out of interest in the land of the Bible, but had not considered any site "holy" (which was too materialist a notion). After Constantine, Christian holy places multiplied. Biblical or apocryphal stories were attached to certain areas; this served in part to fulfil the expectations of the flood of Christian pilgrims who followed Helena's example. Some of the designated Christian holy places had been associated with Biblical or apocryphal stories already (e.g. Bethlehem, Eleona, Golgotha), though only a few sites (e.g. Golgotha, Gethsemane, Bethesda) are probably "genuine" in that they really were locations at which New Testament events took place. Frequently, holy sites were claimed and appropriated by the Church from pagans, Jews and Samaritans (e.g. Mamre, Bethlehem, Golgotha, Bethesda and many tombs and caves). Byzantine holy places were also created which had no traditional significance and where nothing sacred existed before (e.g. the Bethany Cave, the Tomb of the Virgin, the Church of Holy Zion, the Rock of the Agony, the Imbomon) . The Christian structures in Nazareth and Capernaum should be included in this category. Small pilgrim churches (the "House of Mary" and the "House of Peter" respectively) were built in these two Jewish cities by Joseph of Tiberias who, acting with the blessing of Constantine, constructed them in order to encourage the conversion of Jews in Galilee. Christian pilgrimage in turn provided financial revenue for Jews, who could then afford to construct such an edifice as the Capernaum synagogue

Perspectives on Affirmative Action in Academic Dental Institutions: The U.S. Supreme Court Rulings in the University of Michigan Cases

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/153707/1/jddj002203372004689tb03841x.pd

Myocyte-Restricted Focal Adhesion Kinase Deletion Attenuates Pressure Overload-Induced Hypertrophy

Focal adhesion kinase (FAK) is a ubiquitously expressed cytoplasmic tyrosine kinase strongly activated by integrins and neurohumoral factors. Previous studies have shown that cardiac FAK activity is enhanced by hypertrophic stimuli before the onset of overt hypertrophy. Herein, we report that conditional deletion of FAK from the myocardium of adult mice did not affect basal cardiac performance, myocyte viability, or myofibrillar architecture. However, deletion of FAK abolished the increase in left ventricular posterior wall thickness, myocyte cross-sectional area, and hypertrophy-associated atrial natriuretic factor induction following pressure overload. Myocyte-restricted deletion of FAK attenuated the initial wave of extracellular signal-regulated kinase activation and cFos expression induced by adrenergic agonists and biomechanical stress. In addition, we found that persistent challenge of mice with myocyte-restricted FAK inactivation leads to enhanced cardiac fibrosis and cardiac dysfunction in comparison to challenged genetic controls. These studies show that loss of FAK impairs normal compensatory hypertrophic remodeling without a concomitant increase in apoptosis in response to cardiac pressure overload and highlight the possibility that FAK activation may be a common requirement for the initiation of this compensatory response