By any chance, is your jar file in exploded format (in the form of a directory) instead of a zipped archive? If yes, then the issue might be because of this http://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/EJBTHREE-1254
Yes I am ... I should have mentioned that in the post. Thanks for pointing me to the jira issue (workaround). Sorry about bringing this up again - I should have done a better job searching for it in jira.