OK. I figured out how to change the PHP session directory, but that still didn't solve my problem.

Specifically, I've changed .htaccess in the public_html directory to include:
suPHP_ConfigPath /home/username/public_html
This (successfully) sets the
php.ini to the file:
/home/username/public_html/php.ini .
This new
php.ini contains the line:
session.save_path="/home/username/php_tmp"
This (successfully) sets the PHP Session directory to
php_tmp, which I created in my home directory.
I tried various permission settings on php_tmp directory, including 777 and 755, but nothing worked. Still got Error 500.
BTW, when I try browsing index.php5 instead of index.php, I get a blank (empty) page with no server errors.
PHP5 works, as did the installation script for Mediawiki 1.12. Here's the URL for PHP test program in the wiki directory:
http://meritology.com/wiki/testing.php . It lists full phpinfo() so y'all can see what's configured.