Queries & Comments

1.

Before eating the Sabbath meal on Friday evening, the wine and then the bread are blessed. Saturday evening, the bread is blessed, the last Sabbath meal eaten, and at the Sabbath’s conclusion, the wine is blessed.

2.

Matmid refers to a scholar who spends day and night poring over texts.—Ed.

3.

The address in New York of the Jewish Theological Seminary.—Ed.

4.

V. Guerin, Description de la palestine—2nd part—Samarie (Paris, 1974), Chap. 26, s.v. Hirbet Kalise.

5.

References available on request.

6.

References available on request.

7.

References available on request.

8.

The only paper where a study of elevated temperatures was conducted postmortem was one by Hutchins in Human Pathology 16 (1985), p. 560, where all the temperatures were taken rectally. He found an initial postmortem increase in temperature measured rectally probably due to increased bacterial metabolism without any heat dispersal mechanism but he did not measure skin temperatures. We have also confirmed this but in all the cases of elevated rectal postmortem temperatures that I have investigated, in no instance was the skin temperature elevated. If the deceased with an elevated rectal temperature was found in a cool area, the skin was also cool despite the elevated internal temperature.

9.

References available on request.

10.

Nicholas B. Millet et al., “ROM I: Mummification for the common people,” in Mummies, Disease and Ancient Cultures, ed. Aiden and Eve Cockburn (Cambridge University Press, 1980).

11.

Blood cells exhibiting irregularity in size have been reported in 2,000-year-old mummies by Michael R. Zimmerman, “Blood Cells Preserved in a Mummy 2000 Years Old,” Science, 180 (April 1973), pp. 303–304.