Long-Winded in the Windy City

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“Overwhelming” is the only word to describe the 1994 Annual Meeting,^a where 7,500 scholars attended more than 700 presentations. Imagine jumping into a huge wave high above your head, extending for miles along the shore on either side. Imagine trying to embrace it, and you will understand the feeling of someone trying to encompass the Annual Meeting as it has now evolved. That’s not a complaint. It’s just a statement of fact. To pretend that what I write is in any sense a comprehensive review of the meeting would only be to deceive myself—and the reader.

This is my eleventh report on the Annual Meeting. In most of these reports I discussed specific lectures I attended, as I ran from one session to the next to catch as many as possible.

It’s getting harder to do that. The hotels are getting bigger and my legs are getting slower. The archaeological sessions organized by ASOR are now in a different hotel, blocks away; and in Chicago it’s too cold to run between hotels without a coat.

But another more important reason why it’s more difficult to flit from session to session is that many of them are integrated sessions, lasting several hours, with related papers, scholarly responses and discussions that expand a single topic still further. This is a welcome development, but it reduces the number of sessions one person can attend.

Thus I missed what looked like a wonderful session on the Age of Solomon, another on the Ammonites, and still another on Access to Ancient Materials. In the latter, I am told, my absence was publicly remarked upon, since BAR had fought for so many years for more open access to the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as to other archaeological materials. I was absent not because I was uninterested, but because I thought I had pretty much canvassed that issue. Instead I attended a competing session on “Epigraphic Forgeries and Other [Related] Issues,” especially because we are developing several articles in this area, including a reconsideration of whether the famous “Shapira Strips,” denounced as forgeries, might have been authentic early Dead Sea Scrolls. (Soon after the denunciation, in the late 19th century, Shapira blew his brains out in a Rotterdam hotel.^b)

I did attend a session on copyright law as it affects Biblical studies. The implications of the Israeli court decision holding BAR liable to Elisha Qimron, for infringement of his copyright in a reconstructed Dead Sea Scroll text known as MMT, was the focus of special attention and concern. Copyright expert Professor 075Peter Jaszi of American University’s College of Law suggested that the decision would have been different in an American court—an American court would probably not have held Qimron to be the author of the reconstructed text. As long as a Dead Sea Scroll editor’s goal is to arrive at a copy of a document now lost, the expertise he brings to the task should not give him a copyright in the reconstructed document, Professor Jaszi said.

On some topics there were a series of sessions extending over several days—in effect, mini-conferences within the larger setting. Scholars with particular expertise in these topics simply confined themselves to these sessions. One such mini-conference was devoted to “Galilean Archaeology and the Historical Jesus.” Three half-day sessions on successive days discussed how archaeology and textual studies could be integrated in New Testament interpretation, how issues of class, economy and social structure at the turn of the era affect our understanding of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee, and the religious and ethnic context in which Jesus lived. One major issue involved the relationship of urban centers (like Sepphoris, just a few miles from Nazareth) to the countryside. How isolated was Jesus in a rural setting? Or was he “urbanized”? What were the available roads, and was this enough to “urbanize” the attitudes of the countryside? Did the cities dominate the villages or was it a kind of partnership, with each side making its contribution to a symbiotic relationship? How can we answer these questions methodologically? Should we look to various anthropological models? How reliable are the archaeological materials and how can we make them speak? Is it helpful to study the relationship of the city to the countryside in various cultures today?

If you want to find the frontiers of scholarship, this is where it’s at. And there is plenty of disagreement, though expressed civilly and with respect.

It is also interesting to observe that this series of sessions on “Galilean Archaeology and the Historical Jesus” was held under SBL’s auspices, rather than ASOR’s. SBL is gradually filling the gap left by ASOR’s sometime reluctance to address matters of Biblical archaeology, and particularly New Testament archaeology. The number of scholars who attended this series of sessions reflects the intense interest in the subject. It is difficult to understand ASOR’s failure to respond to this interest in so many areas relating to archaeology and the Bible. (Another session, relating to Egyptian archaeology as it bears on the Bible, featured Kenneth Kitchen from the University of Liverpool, England, and Frank Yurco of the University of Chicago; extremely well-attended and enthusiastically received, this session was sponsored by SBL, rather than ASOR.)

Another mini-conference consisted of a series of sessions on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Much of it was technical, but the field is burgeoning. And—with four Israeli exceptions—even those scholars who bitterly opposed open access are now enjoying the new state of affairs. Dead Sea Scroll scholars, young and old, men and women, newcomers and oldtimers, are now celebrities, sought after as lecturers. They work today in the midst of exciting developments in all aspects of Dead Sea Scroll research—from the publication of new texts and new interpretations of long-published texts, to disputes concerning the nature of the Qumran site and its archaeological artifacts. Scholars also reap the benefits of scientific developments that enable us to see more in the surviving fragments and to preserve them in new ways for future generations.

An entire Dead Sea Scroll session of five lectures was devoted to MMT.^c The session included a lecture by Elisha Qimron, who successfully sued BAR in an Israeli court for republishing his reconstructed text of MMT that had previously appeared without his authorization in a Polish journal. Qimron had a cold, however, so he decided to save his voice for the question-and-answer period. Someone else read his paper to the assembled scholars while he sat silently on the dais. In the end, there were no questions of him, so the audience never heard a word from the lips of Elisha Qimron himself.

His paper began with a denunciation of BAR for printing in the November/December issue the 135-line text of MMT in both Hebrew and English (“For This You Waited 35 Years,” BAR 20:06). He did not mention that Oxford University Press had granted permission to reprint the text. (See BARlines in this issue for a discussion of this new dispute.)

Honored at the Annual Meeting
Philip King	Marvin Pope	David Noel Freedman	Bruce Metzger
Ben Zion Wacholder	James Barr	Frank Moore Cross

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A more heartening feature of this year’s Annual Meeting involved receptions, dinners and sessions honoring senior scholars. Here we saw the warm, human face of great teachers, scholars and friends. Among those honored was our good friend Philip King, who was presented with a festschrift at a reception to mark the occasion. The festschrift, entitled Scripture and Other Artifacts, included 24 papers by scholarly colleagues.

At a session on “Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy,” Marvin Pope, a long-time professor at Yale and now retired, was honored with several tributes by colleagues and students. Nostalgia was definitely in. Pope’s questionable modesty (a sign in his office read: “I once thought I was wrong, but it turned out I was mistaken”) was recalled in his renunciation of any claim to papal infallibility; indeed he often signs his letters “Marvin the Fallible.” I myself treasure several of these missives from Marvin. Someone else recalled that the great Hittitologist Albrecht Goetze used to address Marvin as “Your Holiness.” The play on his name continued. Hebrew University professor Jonas Greenfield, in a gracious tribute, claimed he had received a papal dispensation for his remarks and went on to accuse Marvin of sometimes engaging in pure popery. A book of his collected essays has just been published, titled Probative Pontificating—by who else but Professor Pope.

At a dinner for that scholarly polymath Cyrus Gordon (followed by an evening of scholarly papers on the subject), Gordon was contrasted with an ancient worthy who shared his name. It was Cyrus the Great; but the honoree was “Cyrus the Greatest”—illustrated with a photograph taken 50 years earlier of Gordon standing before the tomb of the earlier Cyrus at Pasargadae in Iran.

Several other scholars whose names will be familiar to readers of BAR and of our sister magazine Bible Review were also honored at the Annual Meeting. David Noel Freedman was presented with his second festschrift, entitled Fortunate the Eyes That See. At a special session on textual criticism of the New Testament, Bruce Metzger received the first copy of The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research, a collection of essays in his honor. Ben Zion Wacholder, known for his computer reconstruction of unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls, was honored on the occasion of his seventieth birthday with the publication of Pursuing the Text. Last, though not least, James Barr, professor of Hebrew Bible at Vanderbilt University, was presented with a festschrift entitled Language, Theology and the Bible.

The Biblical Archaeology Society itself held a reception for Harvard professor Frank Moore Cross to mark the publication of Frank Moore Cross—Conversations With A Bible Scholar. It was a warm, wonderful affair that for me was, in many ways, the highlight of the Annual Meeting.

A surprise at our reception for Cross—our nemesis, Dead Sea Scroll scholar Elisha Qimron, showed up. Noticing him at the fruit and cheese table, I went over to him hoping that we might have a sulkha (Arabic for a peace-making meal). I greeted him and shook his hand; however, he quickly told me of his anger at our printing the text of MMT in the November/December issue (“For This You Waited 35 Years,” BAR 20:06). That we had received permission from the publisher, Oxford University Press, who acted as agent in this regard, did not placate him. He refused to be photographed shaking hands with me.

Another, more pleasant, feature of the Annual Meeting was the exhibit hall with over 200 booths of books. And not only books. The computer age has arrived and the CD-Rom age is not far behind. Everyone was talking about high-resolution images, electronic databases and other jargon I couldn’t understand. New scholarly tools are enabling scholars not only to do their research faster and more efficiently, but also to do things they never dreamed of being able to do. It is an exciting time to be a scholar—and a student. The popularity of the new computer materials is reflected in the advertisements in BAR and the fact that these advertisers keep coming back again and again—our readers are interacting on all levels, leaving this writer confused and far behind.

Our exhibit booth was one of the most popular in the huge hall. In addition to our own books, replicas and slide sets, we also offered the publications of the Israel Exploration Society, the Israel Antiquities Authority, Yad Itzhak Ben-Zvi and the hot-off-the-press publication of Roland de Vaux’s Qumran excavation field notes and photographs.^d

Regardless of what scheduling adjustments are made, it will be impossible to take in everything at the Annual Meeting, but ASOR is doing well to consider its options. For years ASOR has been sidelined at the Annual Meeting, in recent years with a relatively minuscule program consigned to a different hotel from the one where the main events are held. Next year—in Philadelphia—ASOR will be in the same hotel as the SBL and AAR sessions, but the problem remains: You cannot be in two (or more) places at once. Perhaps ASOR should hold its annual meeting at another time, so that people who are interested in archaeology can relax and take in the variety of archaeological offerings. This is not an ideal solution. Some people say they cannot afford to come to two meetings (but still, even at one meeting, they either miss the ASOR sessions or the other sessions). And there is a problem finding an alternative time. After Christmas, when the AIA (Archaeological Institute of America) meets, is not good, some say, because scholars want to be with their families then. There appears to be no solution that will make everyone happy. Perhaps the best thing would be for ASOR to experiment with several different formats.

One last point. A number of the finest papers given at the Annual Meeting will eventually become articles in BAR and Bible Review. I won’t say more now, except to add that next year promises to be even more exciting in the pages of our magazines. We look forward to sharing them with you.

“Overwhelming” is the only word to describe the 1994 Annual Meeting,a where 7,500 scholars attended more than 700 presentations. Imagine jumping into a huge wave high above your head, extending for miles along the shore on either side. Imagine trying to embrace it, and you will understand the feeling of someone trying to encompass the Annual Meeting as it has now evolved. That’s not a complaint. It’s just a statement of fact. To pretend that what I write is in any sense a comprehensive review of the meeting would only be to deceive myself—and the reader. This is my […]