A Short History of BAR

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Talk about vision. I certainly had none when I started BAR. It began almost by accident, as an avocation. If I had any fixed notion, it was that it would be a magazine of ideas, not pictures. Excavations in Israel were full of stones, not gold. That’s why the first issue of BAR (BAR 01:01) has only one picture, an altar of stones. I was hardly suited to the task I was about to undertake. I had never taken a course in Bible or archaeology, and I knew nothing about publishing.

I was a lawyer. Over lunch one day in 1972, some lawyer friends and I were talking about a colleague with a successful divorce practice who had taken off with his family for the south of France to write a novel. “I could never do that,” I remarked. “Why not?” my friends asked. “Because my wife has become accustomed to the comfortable life I’ve provided for her,” I jokingly replied. My wife would now regard that remark as a form of atavistic male bonding. In the interest of domestic tranquillity, I must add that Judith has always worked and contributed to our income; she is an administrative editor at Time-Life Books.

That night at dinner, I reported the lunch conversation to Judith. “Try me,” she responded.

I had always wanted to live abroad—in college I dreamed of living on the Left Bank in Paris—but the time or the money was never right.

So Judith and I talked about the possibility of spending a year in Israel. I was almost finished with a major anti-trust case (representing, of all places, the state of Arkansas, home of young Bill Clinton; in those days, the state attorney general was not up to anti-trust cases, so they came to Washington to find a lawyer). My law partners were not getting any younger; our two daughters were not yet in school and the elder would start the next year. So if we were ever 035going to take off a year and live abroad, this was the time. Otherwise, I would have to stop talking about it.

On September 1, 1972, the four of us flew to Israel on a 363-day excursion ticket.

Despite some inevitable ups and downs, it was a glorious year. The key event was serendipitous and occurred not long after we arrived (knowing hardly a soul): While shopping at Chaim the butcher’s, Judith bumped into Bill Dever, then director of the W.F. Albright School of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem.

On an earlier visit to Israel, we had knocked on the door of the Albright, as the school is called. Professor Albright had once helped me write an article on the use of the title “rabbi” in the New Testament, an article that grew out of a discussion at our informal Bible study group. On that basis, Dever had graciously invited us into the school director’s “residence” for coffee. Six months later, when Judith saw Dever at Chaim’s, the two greeted each other, recalling our earlier visit to the Albright. Through Bill we soon fell in with the archaeological community. We were even permitted to join Gus Van Beek’s little pottery study group. (Van Beek, an archaeological curator at the Smithsonian, directs the excavation of an important ancient site near Gaza called Tell Jemmeh.)

Another fortuitous event involved my six-year-old daughter Elizabeth (called Elisheva that year). We made frequent trips around the country, visiting archaeological sites and collecting potsherds lying on the surface. Elisheva and Yael (Julia, then three) enjoyed this because they could also join in the search. One Shabbat, before climbing over the tell of Hazor, we visited the little museum at the nearby kibbutz. There on display were some stamped jar handles from the tell. I pointed to them and told the kids, “See, that’s what we’re looking for.” An hour later we were on the tell looking for sherds when Elisheva came running to me with her “lucky find”—a small jar handle that appeared to have the figure of a man engraved on it!^a

Tell Hazor had been excavated by Israel’s most illustrious archaeologist, Yigael Yadin. Through Elisheva’s lucky find, I met him. I vividly remember the first time Yadin and I talked about Jerusalem archaeology. I sat enthralled while he gave me an hour’s private lecture on the archaeology of the ancient city. He helped me publish Elisheva’s find in the Israel Exploration Journal and later reviewed the manuscript of a book I wrote that year on the archaeology of Biblical Jerusalem, The City of David.

When the year was up, we came back to the States, and I returned to practicing law. But I wanted to maintain some connection with Israel. We felt part of the community. I didn’t want to go back now simply as a tourist, with nothing to do but see sights we had seen before and say hello to old friends. I wanted some business in Israel. So I thought of writing a regular column on Biblical archaeology.

I contacted a friend who edited a Jewish organizational magazine and proposed the idea to him. “I have too many columns already,” he replied. “Why don’t you start your own magazine?”

“How do I do that?” I asked.

“It’s simple. You write up a prospectus, send it to some writers, some Bible scholars, some archaeologists, some philanthropists and some wealthy businessmen. They’ll each contribute—and there you have it.”

So that’s what I did.

But only one replied—Samuel Sandmel, a great Bible scholar at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. Sam, who later became a valued member of our editorial advisory board, has since died, so I can’t ask him: But I’ve always wondered whether he replied because he dated my mother-in-law decades earlier when he was 036serving as a rabbi in Atlanta, Georgia. In response to my prospectus Sam said simply that it sounded like an interesting idea.

With Sam’s reply in hand, I sent a second mailing to all who had received the first mailing. I thanked them for their heartwarming response and told them that we now had enough contributions, financial and literary, to go ahead with the first issue.

In fact, we had neither.

I wrote the first issue and had it printed for $700, hoping to get enough subscriptions by the time it came out to pay the printer’s bill. Luckily, I did. (Today it costs several hundred thousand dollars to produce an issue of BAR.)

Oh yes, the name. At first, I didn’t think of it as a real magazine. (When I showed a new issue to Judith, I would say, “It looks like a real magazine, doesn’t it?”). Originally, I thought of calling it The Biblical Archaeology Newsletter. But then, during a visit with Carol and Eric Meyers, now both senior Biblical and archaeological scholars (Eric is the long-time president of the American Schools of Oriental Research), Carol remarked on the unfortunate acronym that would result—BAN. “Why don’t you call it Biblical Archaeology Review instead?” she said. “The acronym would be just right for a lawyer.”I took the suggestion and BAR was born.

Early Controversies

BAR has always been a little quirky, a little iconoclastic, a little bit in your face. At the same time, though this has not been as widely recognized, it has also been factual, reliable and even scholarly.

Perhaps best, or worst—depending on your viewpoint—it has been independent. To some we are a loose cannon, never easily controllable.

From the beginning, BAR has been regarded as something of an outsider—outside the establishment. The American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR), the leading professional 037organization of Near Eastern archaeologists, considered suing us because they thought our name, Biblical Archaeology Review, was too similar to that of their semi-scholarly quarterly, Biblical Archaeologist. A young ASOR scholar destined for ASOR leadership was told that he’d better resign from our editorial advisory board if he wanted to proceed to the next rung on the ASOR leadership ladder. He did—and he did!

In an early issue, we ran an article that considered whether the anti-Zionist politics of the British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon affected her archaeological work and Biblical interpretations.^b The scholarly community was not accustomed to discussing questions like this in public. One friend of “Kay” has refused to write for us since, though that incident occurred 20 years ago. Scholars in Israel as well as in this country feared what we might come up with next.

Their scholarly fears proved entirely justified.

For three years, BAR was a small, 7-by-10 inch quarterly. The cover looked like something out of the old Alley Oop comic strip—chunky, Stone-Age looking, featuring three large boulders. The horizontal top stone, with our name, was shaped roughly like the Siloam Inscription.^c The type was specially designed (by a friend’s wife) with “chiseled” letters. This top stone was supported by two upright stones meant to recall the Tablets of the Law; within each upright stone was the beginning of an article.

BAR’s first issue featured the story of how Rabbi Nelson Glueck, a leading archaeologist of Hebrew Union College, had incorrectly identified a site as King Solomon’s mines and had wrongly interpreted a building as the smelting plant for the copper extracted from the nearby mines.^d

The reaction to BAR’s early issues was not all bad. We received letters of praise from the director of Tel Aviv University’s Institute of Archaeology, Yohanan Aharoni, from the head of the Hebraic Section of the Library of Congress, from other professors and subscribers—who, by the end of our first year, numbered about 3,000. (Today, it’s close to 250,000.)

With characteristic bravado, our first issue advised subscribers to save their BARs and “collect a complete set of issues.” Someday, we wrote, “you will be able to make a valuable contribution to the library of some future religious school, church or synagogue. How’s that for a tax deduction?” Not a bad prediction. Today, these early issues are indeed very hard to come by, and institutions from universities to Sunday Schools would be glad to have a full set.

BAR’s first issue also contained an introduction to the magazine that holds up pretty well, considering that it was written 20 years ago. We print it in the sidebar “BAR, March 1975: What We Thought Then.”

Also in our first year, we began publishing cancellation letters. One subscriber called us a “Mickey Mouse publication” that was “next to worthless.” Another felt “thoroughly ripped off.” But there are fewer cancellations than might be thought from the cancellation letters in “Queries & Comments” (the runaway favorite department of the magazine, according to our readers).

BAR’s first article on the Dead Sea Scrolls, a report by Professor Harry Thomas Frank on how the scrolls were found, appeared in the last issue of our first year. The same issue included a spoof by Woody Allen entitled “The Red Sea Scrolls,” BAR 01:04. Although several readers criticized that article, one letter-writer called it a “marvelous touch: One of the many charms of BAR is that it can be serious without being solemn.”

In an editorial at the end of that year, we tooted our own horn, something we sometimes do too often. Here is what we said:

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“Now we’ve made it. … We’re a success. We’ve proved that there is an abundance of exciting material that can be made understandable to the non-professional without sacrificing accuracy or depth.”

That issue (BAR 01:04) presaged another theme that was to endure over the years: the problem of unpublished archaeological material. The Israel Department of Antiquities refused to provide us with a photograph of a recently discovered kernos (a hollow pottery ring used in a cultic ritual). The kernos had not yet been “published” in a scientific journal, we were told, and for that reason was unavailable to us. The refusal was especially galling because a picture of the kernos had been given to the Jerusalem Post. The Post was a newspaper, it was explained; BAR was a magazine. We didn’t quite understand the distinction. We printed a blank rectangle with the caption: “A kernos found on an Israeli kibbutz…would have been pictured above had it been released to The Biblical Archaeology Review as it was to The Jerusalem Post.” Hardly designed to endear us to the authority that controlled so much information coming out of Israel!

In that issue, we also criticized the Near East Archaeological Society (NEAS), an American organization of scholars that required as a condition of membership an oath of belief in the inerrancy of the Bible, a criticism we returned to 20 years later.^e In that later article, we observed that the NEAS is an otherwise excellent organization of fine people that we hoped to be able to join someday, despite the fact that we cannot sign the oath. This time the NEAS acted, creating an “associate membership” for those who do not wish to sign the oath. We promptly joined an an associate member.

The first issue of our second year (BAR 02:01) included our first color pictures, an innovation in archaeological reporting that was to become a BAR trademark—fantastic color pictures. We had begun publication with the idea that BAR was to be a magazine of ideas, not pictures (the first issue contained a single picture). We were obviously wrong. It could be both, something we quickly realized—and sought to remedy with the latest technologies.

By the second issue of the second year, the Israel Department of Antiquities, under its new director Avi Eitan, reversed itself and gave us a picture of the kernos, which we featured in a story about kernoi.

But the “inaccessibility” issue came up again in our third year (BAR 03:04)—this time involving one of Israel’s most respected senior archaeologists, Nachman Avigad of Hebrew University. Avigad had failed to provide information regarding an important colonnaded street called the Cardo that he had uncovered in the Old City of Jersusalem. Referring to “tight-lipped archaeologists,” we wrote: “[T]he public has a right to know and to see promptly what the archaeologist uncovers. These finds are our heritage. They belong to us all.”

Again, BAR printed a blank box, with a caption stating, “This space is reserved for pictures of the Cardo…. We will print these pictures promptly after their release by Professor Avigad”.

Professor Avigad responded forcefully, denouncing our “crusade against excavators who withhold information and photographs of unpublished finds” from the public. “For some reason,” he complained, “you chose me as the main target of your attack.” Accusing us of mounting a “smear-campaign” by printing the empty box, Avigad asked, “Doesn’t it sound like blackmail?” He concluded: “Dear Mr. Editor. I know that you are happy with this kind of reporting [on] archaeological news, and you think that it is good for BAR. But please, let me alone! Your journal is not to my taste.”

BAR printed Avigad’s response, but it was painful. We had alienated one of the most important and respected members of the archaeological community. Most Israeli archaeologists agreed with Avigad.

In retrospect, we may have been overly harsh. But the principle was valid; the same principle led to our later crusade to free the Dead Sea Scrolls. Although Professor Avigad never really forgave me, we did become friends. He thereafter wrote articles for BAR and asked us to help him find an American publisher for a book he was writing about his Jerusalem excavations. I was delighted to be able successfully to represent him to an American publisher. Later, when Avigad died in 1992 at the age of 86, I wrote his obituary; I wished he could have read it.

In our fourth year (1978), we went to a standard 8.5-by-11 inch format, with a color cover, and became a bi-monthly instead of a quarterly. Our first issue in the new format presented a major statement by David Noel 039Freedman, a towering figure in Biblical scholarship, calling for prompt publication of archaeological research. For the first time, we noted that “the materials from Cave 4 of the Dead Sea Scroll archive are still not available to scholars generally—after 25 years.” “Other scholars—and the public—do have a right to know,” we said. “These finds, in the final analysis, belong to all of us, not just to the particular scholar in whose care they have been entrusted for publication.” In his own mea culpa for failing to publish a Dead Sea Scroll promptly, Freedman stated, “I should either have published the scroll or returned it to the team for reassignment. Many if not most scholars harbor optimistic delusions about what they can and will do in the way of productive writing.” Shortly thereafter, Freedman, with a colleague, published the scroll.

Later that year, we protested a decision of the Israel Department of Antiquities not to release a picture of a bronze statue of Hadrian found by a tourist. “Free Hadrian,” BAR 04:03, proclaimed the headline; the story asked readers to go over the head of the director of antiquities by sending letters of protest to the Minister of Education and Culture in care of the Israel Embassy in Washington. In BAR 05:02, we printed the Minister’s response under the headline, “Responsive Israeli Bureaucracy’s Reply to BAR Readers”—an empty white box.

Evenhandedly, in the same issue, we criticized Syria for attempting to influence experts’ interpretations of the famous Ebla tablets. A prominent Ebla scholar was forced to sign a formal “Declaration” stating that the tablets “always give us more evidence of the central role of Syria in the history of the third millenary [sic].” The Declaration was explicitly devised to expunge what were described as “pretended links with the biblical text.”

In an obituary of Kathleen Kenyon, who died without completing publication of her excavations at either Jericho or Jerusalem, we asked the profession to consider how to remedy that unfortunate situation: “Dame Kathleen’s death raises a serious problem which the archaeological profession has yet to resolve: What happens when an archaeologist dies before completing the final excavation report.” (Dame Kathleen’s colleagues have since done an admirable job preparing and—in part—publishing the materials she left behind, but the problem remains very widespread; few major digs see the completion of a final report. We continue to address the problem.^f)

Despite the serious subjects BAR has dealt with, there is always a bit of levity around as well. When some readers objected to replicas of idols we were selling for educational purposes, on the ground that this might lead people into idolatry (one reader wrote: “The Lord God destroyed nations and cities that worshipped the idols you are digging up and selling. Do you want money that bad to cause a repeat of history?”), we put a bright red rubber stamp over our idol ad, reading: “Warning: These Idols Are Not To Be Worshipped.”

Taking Chances

Over the years, we’ve tried lots of experiments. Many worked; some didn’t. For a while, we had a Biblical Archaeology Society Newsletter. We had a column called BAR Jr. for younger readers and a technical column, “Scholars’ Corner,” for more advanced readers. We had a photo contest. And an essay contest, the prize being a trip to Israel.

From time to time, we still run articles on “archaeological stumpers,” finds that puzzle even the experts—for example, ceramic “tootsie rolls” and S-shaped wires.

We even had something called a “Backward Subscription”: In each odd month (when a new issue of BAR did not appear), “Backward Subscribers” would get an increasingly older issue of BAR, moving backwards in time from when their subscription began. In that way, “Backward Subscribers” would eventually acquire a complete set, even though they subscribed long after we began publication. Although the idea proved popular, and was even written up in the daily press, fulfilling these subscriptions became a computer nightmare. People with backward subscriptions were getting wildly different issues of BAR at the same time, depending on when their backward subscription began. We eventually dropped the idea. Now BAR simply sells back issues on request to those who want to fill out their set. (Unfortunately, many back issues are now unavailable.)

BAS’s Archaeological Preservation Fund has restored and helped restore several Biblical sites—Izbet Sartah (Biblical Ebenezer), Lachish, Herodian Jericho.

The biennial BAS Publication Awards honor the best publications—both scholarly and popular—in Biblical archaeology and Biblical studies. Over the years the prestigious BAS Publications Awards plaques have found their way onto the walls of many scholars’ offices.

We put together sets of original pottery sherds from different periods in Israel’s history, so they could be used in American schools for study purposes. We’ve published a variety of books and even invented a game called “Exodus—Getting to the Promised Land.”

In some ways, our slide sets—on everything from “Jerusalem Archaeology” and “New 040Testament Archaeology” to “Religion and Archaeology” and “Mesopotamian Archaeology”—have revolutionized the teaching of Biblical archaeology. We’ve also produced several videos—on the Dead Sea Scrolls and on Jerusalem archaeology. Currently, there is another video in the works on Biblical archaeology.

Over ten years ago, we launched a second magazine, called Bible Review, which now has more than 50,000 subscribers.

Our travel/study program, now in its 18th year, has created a network of participants around the entire U.S. who have developed close friendships and who come back again and again to experience the special intensity of fine scholarship and warm friendship. The program offers study tours to Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and Greece, among other locales; it also offers seminars held in this country and abroad, at such major universities as Oxford, Harvard and Princeton. In the dead of winter, we even have a Seminar at Sea—in the Caribbean.

Each year, in our January/February issue, known as our dig issue, we instruct thousands of potential volunteers on how and where to participate in archaeological excavations in Israel and Jordan.

We provide scholarships for Americans to dig in Israel, and for Israelis and Arab nationals to travel to the United States to deliver papers at scholarly meetings—all people who could not otherwise afford to make the trip.

During the Gulf War, we tried to send 10,000 copies of BAR to the American troops in Saudi Arabia to help relieve their tension and the boredom—but the shipment was stopped by the Saudis, who refused to allow anything “Biblical” to enter their country.

Over the years, we’ve lost many friends and faced the sad task of writing tributes to their lives and work—Mitchell Dahood, Pierre Benoit, Aharon Kempinski, Yigael Yadin and others.

BAR continues to be controversial, to present all sides of the major debates in Biblical archaeology. While often critical, we have also come to the defense of scholars—such as Hans Goedicke of The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, who was was baselessly charged in a supposedly serious journal with “epigraphic flim-flam” (fudging his results by inserting two crucial signs in a hieroglyphic inscription).^g And we applauded the Syrians for prompt publication of the Tell Fakhariyah inscription, an important bi-lingual text in Aramaic and Akkadian cuneiform.^h

And our circulation continues to climb—with nearly a quarter million subscribers and over half a million readers (many copies are read by more than one person, according to our demographic studies).

Freeing the Dead Sea Scrolls

In mid-1984, BAR first commented on the Dead Sea Scrolls publication problem, at the end of a report on an archaeological congress.ⁱ At that time, our message was simply cautionary: To Harvard professor John Strugnell’s statement that the established rules must be followed, we replied, “Some may wonder if that is a satisfactory answer…. It remains to be seen whether the profession will face the issue as a profession.”

In later years, the drumbeat grew louder, culminating in two now-famous covers. One showed the Rockefeller Museum, where the unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls were kept, with a banner naming it the “Dead Sea Scrolls Prison,” BAR 15:04. The other (BAR 16:02) featured Professor Strugnell—chief editor of the official Dead Sea Scrolls editing team—on a television screen; beneath the screen ran a quotation from a national television program in which Strugnell had called his critics “a bunch of fleas who are in the business of annoying us.” Around the television screen we placed large fleas identified with the names of scholarly critics—the largest flea of all was labelled “BAR.”

As early as September/October 1985 (“BARview: Israeli Authorities Now Responsible for Delay in Publication of Dead Sea Scrolls,” BAR 11:05) we began calling for immediate publication of 041scroll photographs so that the basic material would be available to all scholars. We arranged for a $100,000 grant to be made to the official publication team if the money was used to publish a volume of photographs of the unpublished scrolls. The offer was spurned.

In late 1991, BAS published the first volume of computer-reconstructed transcripts of unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls (the work of Professors Ben-Zion Wacholder of Hebrew Union College and Martin Abegg of Grace Theological Seminary, who compiled the volume from transcripts prepared in the 1950s by the original team of editors). Strugnell accused us of “stealing.” In an op-ed piece in New York Times, I responded: “I believe that under international law these editors are trustees, fiduciaries. The real beneficiaries of this trust are the people whose heritage is illuminated by these precious texts—not an elite group of scholars or even a single country, culture or religion.”

The publication of these computer-reconstructed texts was what we needed to break up the Dead Sea Scroll monopoly. Then in September 1991 the Huntington Library in California announced that it would allow all scholars to see its microfilm fiches of Dead Sea Scroll photographs, including those still unpublished. This was quickly followed by BAS’s publication of its two-volume set of nearly 1,900 photographs of unpublished scrolls obtained from a still-unidentified source.

The jig was up; there was no way the genie could be put back in the bottle. The Israel Antiquities Authority and the official editing team soon capitulated, announcing that they would issue a microfiche set of all the scrolls, including the unpublished ones.

That was not the end of the story, however. In our two-volume edition of unpublished scroll photographs, we included a 120-line transcript of a text known as MMT as it had appeared in a Polish journal without the permission of the scholars working on it (John Strugnell and Elisha Qimron). Qimron promptly sued BAS for a quarter of a million dollars in a Jerusalem court, claiming that he owned the copyright to the reconstructed text of MMT. After a two-day trial in Jerusalem, the judge ruled in Qimron’s favor.^j Although the court denied Qimron’s contention that he had suffered any financial injury from the publication, it awarded him 80,000 shekels for mental suffering. Under the court’s ruling, Qimron (and his heirs) will control publication of the reconstructed text of MMT for his lifetime plus 50 years. So far, the case has cost BAS over $100,000.The award, as one recent book put it, was “just large enough to be painful for the Biblical Archaeology Society.”^k The case is now on appeal to the Israel Supreme Court.

Over the years, we’ve had a few other crusades: maintaining an open forum for all scholars to express their views; resisting government efforts (in the case of Syria and the Ebla tablets) to control what scholars do and say; defending the discipline of “Biblical archaeology” against those scholars who would abolish it; insuring that scientific reports on all excavations—past, present and future—be published; protesting the destruction of archaeological remains on the Temple Mount under the supervision of Moslem religious authorities; trying to persuade Israeli park authorities to restore the marvelous site of Tel Gezer with its unique high place and Solomonic gate, so that it might be easily reachable and appreciated by visitors. We’re also trying—so far unsuccessfully—to persuade Turkey at least to lend Israel the Siloam inscription (now in Istanbul) for the 1996 celebration of the 3,000th anniversary of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Many, many other issues and debates have occupied our pages: Did the Israelites conquer Jericho? Was the Egyptian queen Nefertiti black? Should we use B.C./A.D. or B.C.E./C.E.? Should we accept ads from antiquities dealers who may be selling illegally excavated artifacts? Should we print pictures of objects showing sexually explicit scenes—such as the clay lamps excavated at Ashkelon? The list goes on and on.

And we’ve had our share of scoops: BAR was the first to publish the oldest pictures of Israelites, dating to the 13th century B.C.E., from the wall of an Egyptian temple; what was possibly an early Israelite house in Egypt, from the time of the Exodus; the first extra-Biblical reference to King David, chiseled on an Aramaic victory stela discovered at Tel Dan (and a second reference from the famous Mesha stela); the only known relic from Solomon’s Temple, a small inscribed ivory pomegranate; archaeological evidence for the location of the earliest Temple Mount, from King Solomon’s time; the existence of a consort of the Israelite God Yahweh; the earliest Biblical text, a variant of the priestly blessing from Numbers, engraved on a silver amulet from the late seventh or early sixth century B.C.E.; the recovery of a boat from the Sea of Galilee dating to Jesus’ time; the ossuary (a stone box in which the deceased’s bones were placed after about a year) of the high priest, Caiaphas, who presided at the trial of Jesus; the earliest evidence of a Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land, in the basement of Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre; and on and on.

All in all, it’s been a wonderful 20 years, and we look forward to the next 20. We hope you’ll stay with us.

Talk about vision. I certainly had none when I started BAR. It began almost by accident, as an avocation. If I had any fixed notion, it was that it would be a magazine of ideas, not pictures. Excavations in Israel were full of stones, not gold. That’s why the first issue of BAR (BAR 01:01) has only one picture, an altar of stones. I was hardly suited to the task I was about to undertake. I had never taken a course in Bible or archaeology, and I knew nothing about publishing. I was a lawyer. Over lunch one day […]