Letters We Loved

047

Where would we be without our loyal readers? No sooner had the first issue been mailed out than we began receiving letters back with compliments, criticisms and questions. Two hundred issues later, our readers are as engaged and outraged as ever. We love reading every single letter that comes in—and we hope you do, too. So, from “snail mail” to e-mail and Web Talkbacks, we present some of our most unforgettable Queries and Comments.

Diggin’ Our Scene (or Not)

The Archaeologist of Dreams

Thank you, BAR! You take this midwestern American woman to places I shall never set foot in! With BAR I become the archaeologist that I have always wanted to be, sitting in the dirt/dust/heat with a small brush and pick in hand. Carefully digging up some ancient treasure, sure to set the archaeological community on their ear! I sit and read and dream of the smells and sounds of what it must be like to be on a dig.

Your articles give me the dream I have had since I was 11 years old, sitting in a creek behind my house in western Pennsylvania, digging up a neat-looking rock with a small twig, pretending it was an ancient pottery vessel.

I always promised myself that when I had children and the last child grew up and went to college, I would go on a true dig. Well, that was five years ago. Here I still sit in Illinois in my easy chair, still reading BAR and dreaming.

May/June 1990

Lust Among the Ruins?

Please address your attention to your January/February issue (“1990 Excavation Opportunities”), specifically to the picture of Donna Canalizo [a volunteer at the Ashkelon excavation pictured excavating in shorts and a T-shirt].

It is this type of picture, which you print each year at this time 048with your “excavation opportunities,” that makes me feel that these same opportunities are less for learning something of the Holy Land and archaeology than for the ars mores dissoluti!

Why you do this, I cannot explain; you do it, however, each and every year at this time.

I wish to register my disgust with this type of picture!

It’s all in the mind of the beholder.—Ed.

September/October 1990

Donna Canalizo Replies

I appreciate your response to Father Bruce C. Perron in the May/June issue (“Lust Among the Ruins?” Queries & Comments). I think Fr. Perron unjustly interpreted the photograph of me as embodying a theme of lust.

Most volunteers on digs wear shorts and T-shirts. Why should the photograph of me be considered lustful simply because I am in normal dig attire? I thought “good Christians” were taught not to judge others, lest they be judged. Furthermore, I think Fr. Perron’s interpretation of the image was a result of projecting his own thoughts onto the image. Frankly, I am ashamed of Fr. Perron. The object in the image to be focused on is not my body, but rather the hypocaust tiles, one of the most spectacular finds in my grid last season.

But if it is my attire, or the pose I assume in the photograph, that Fr. Perron objects to, why didn’t he complain about the picture in which a male student volunteer appears excavating an iron knife? This gentleman is assuming the exact same pose as I do in the picture of me—kneeling in the process of excavating. What about the picture in the same issue, in which a male archaeological draftsman sits without a shirt, wearing only shorts, towel and hat?

What I am getting at is obvious. I am extremely offended by Fr. Perron’s sexism. In addition, I do not appreciate his defamation of my character by insinuating that the photograph of me implies “lust among the ruins.”

Praised Be to God

Thank you, Fr. Bruce C. Perron for your comment on the picture in the January/February issue. It reminded me to look at the picture again. Praised be God who has made such a work of beauty.

Exposing the Present

The acidulous comment of Fr. Bruce Perron concerning Ms. Canalizo’s quite modest costume is in sharp contrast to a wry comment by the incomparable Yigael Yadin. (Having been invited to an evening in his home remains a bright jewel on my rosary of memories.)

One of the photos in his book Masada [Random House, 1966] includes a bikini-clad volunteer sifting sherd-filled rubble under a blazing sun. Professor Yadin commented: “There was a feeling at times that some of the volunteers were concerned as much with exposing the present as with uncovering the past.”

He was a great man.

May/June 2005

What a Bead!

My 84-year-old husband, who still appreciates female pulchritude, gave 049your January/February 2005 cover a proper amount of interested attention before putting it aside and remarking that it was an unusual cover for BAR.

Me: “You don’t think an Iron Age clay bead is an appropriate subject?”

Husband: “Bead! What bead?”

I do not want to cancel my subscription. I enjoy your magazine too much, and I find Hershel Shanks unfailingly interesting whether he is writing about feuding archaeologists or more scholarly subjects.

If you must put diggers on your covers, perhaps you could have a handsome young male digger—holding an artifact, of course.

Cancel My Subscription

January/February 1988

No Cigar-Smoking Archaeologists for Her

I recently subscribed to BAR and cancelled when I received my first magazine. I was very upset. The first thing I saw when I opened it was a picture of a man [Avraham Biran] with a cigar in his mouth (“BAR Interview: Avraham Biran—Twenty Years of Digging at Tel Dan,” BAR 13:04). Couldn’t you have something better to offer? I am appalled that a religious publication would stoop to such a low profile.

January/February 1985

Appalled at Drinks

We have just received the July/August 1984 issue and are appalled! In the article entitled “Jerusalem Rolls Out Red Carpet for Biblical Archaeology Congress,” you picture several people holding drinks [including Hebrew University’s Jonas C. Greenfield]. We are firm in our belief that no magazine with Biblical in its title should include or participate in such activities.

We would appreciate your canceling our subscription and refunding our money immediately!

It was punch, anyway.—Ed.

050

May/June 1985

Avoid the Bible

I was surprised by the letter of Randy and Sherrene Walker (Queries & Comments, BAR 11:01). They were appalled that someone in the photos might be drinking alcoholic beverages. You should tell those people that, if that is their criteria for reading something or not, they really shouldn’t read the Bible, since there is murder, incest, rape, adultery, total destruction described in it. It is a very graphic book. The Walkers, using their criteria, should toss their Bible away.

November/December 1989

Teaching Kids Pornography

As a Sunday School teacher of 12- and 13-year-old youths, mostly boys, I find the photographs that accompany the article “What Happened to the Cult Figurines?” BAR 15:04, by Ephraim Stern, revolting and totally inappropriate for a “Biblical” magazine.

Your magazine has always been used in our Sunday School class. How can this kind of photo be necessary?

The figurine of the woman holding her breasts is not as offensive as the one with the woman pointing to her genitals. It is disgusting and offensive to your women readers and to any person who has subscribed to your magazine for Biblical learning.

I am an artist and find that the human body is a thing of beauty that God created. But pornography is not part of God’s creation. If these kinds of photos are in your magazine, then how can one teach young boys that purchasing pornographic books is wrong. They will only say, “Look at the picture that was in that Biblical magazine, it’s the same thing.”

March/April 2008

It Ain’t Easy

Your magazine has been regularly accused of atheism, agnosticism and, for all I know, alcoholism. But you weave a mostly successful and respectful path among science, 051archaeology, literature, religion and history—and that ain’t easy! No publication will please all of the people all of the time (including me), but those who do not want to hear new information, those who preserve their faith and religion in a vacuum where contradictions and conundrums dare not be acknowledged, are best advised to read only their Bibles and comforting religious tracts.

The Bible itself is full of apparent contradictions. Therein lies our work. Many of us enjoy the challenge and grow from processing all of the information that is out there—the religious, the archival and the archaeological.

November/December 2001

Faith Need Not Fear

I am a Protestant Fundamentalist who believes that “If the Bible says it, it must be true!” Yet I love having a magazine with very beautiful photography, a secular viewpoint that did not come off my denomination’s presses.

Why? Because if my faith is genuine, it has nothing to fear from science. It will stand the test. I am quite able to stand hearing other viewpoints. I am quite able to sift through the other viewpoints to see just how the Scriptures (which do not change) are stacking up against archaeological findings and views (which constantly change).

September/October 1990

Boycott of BAR Urged

Cancel my subscription immediately! It seems that the management and staff grasp at any semblance of Biblical connection, supposedly Adam and Eve in the full-page nudity of the latest issue (“Polydactylism in the Ancient World,” BAR 16:03), to perpetrate BAR’s brand of pornography. Your magazine will not be in our home nor in any church of which I am pastor. The management and staff of your magazine seem insensitive and aloof to the standards of decency which many U.S. citizens have.

Copies of this letter will be sent to every advertiser who appears in your magazine. Also, I will do everything I can to make my opinions known to 36,000 pastors. I will ask them to discourage any use or reference to your magazine and to encourage their acquaintances to cancel their subscriptions.

Today, when I mail this letter, I am filing a complaint with the Postmaster, asking that your magazine be put on a list of undesirable publications that will not be delivered to me because of their pornographic content.

January/February 1980

Whn Ws Hbrw Wrttn Wtht Vwls?

1. When was the last time ancient Hebrew was read and written without the vowels?

2. Was there difficulty in reading and pronunciation without the vowels?

It’s still written that way in Israel. Pick up a Hebrew newspaper.

T’s nt dffclt whn y knw th wrds. Y cn rd ths, cn’t y?—Ed.

049

Brawn and Beauty

May/June 1988

The picture in the January/February issue (“1988 Excavation Opportunities: Sites”) of the girl carrying four buckets of earth should have been your centerfold picture.

I am in the construction business, and we cannot get men to work that hard. She is doing it and paying to do so. Those buckets of dirt are close to five-gallon size. It is extremely difficult for me to pick up and carry one. Two are easier than one because of balance. But four are impossible for me.

I would guess your picture of her will get her a pick of positions if she stays in archaeology.

050

Heathen Humor

A recurring theme in Q&C is “letters about letters.” In anticipation of our 200th issue, a reader suggested we rerun the letter about a defective set of idols, which (spoiler alert!) is a staff-written joke. If the author’s name didn’t tip you off, then Terah’s residence surely should have (see Genesis 11).

My favorite bit of writing in your magazine was a group of letters about someone’s objection to an advertisement offering replicas of heathen idols. Over several months, letters pro and con enlivened the Queries & Comments pages. One letter charmed me into a fit of laughter. He purchased the idols from BAS, but the idols didn’t work and he wanted his money back. It was signed, Terah ben Nahor (March/April 1982).