The Religious Message of the Bible

058

Hershel Shanks: Père Benoit, you are in a consummate way representative of the French in Jerusalem, or of the scholarly world of France in Jerusalem. Most people in the United States are not aware that so many different nationalities have their scholarly representatives in Jerusalem and have worked here for many, many years.

We’re sitting here in the couvent (convent) of the École Biblique et Archéeologique Française, and outside, within a few hundred meters, is Damascus Gate, with all the hustle-bustle of Jerusalem. Damascus Gate, of all the gates to the Old City, is the most raucous, I think, and the most crowded. It is the noisiest part of Jerusalem. Yet, here, just a half block away is the beautiful peace and serenity where we sit inside the walls of the École Biblique. How did the couvent itself originate at this site?

Père Benoit: Well, when the founder of the couvent, Father Lecomte, came to Jerusalem in 1882, he bought the ground where tradition said St. Stephen was put to death. He was the first Christian martyr, a Hellenized Jew who preached Christianity. He was taken outside of the city and stoned. Tradition says it was at this place. It is quite possible. It seems that there was a place for stoning criminals near Bezetha. The Empress Eudocia, the wife of the Emperor Theodosius II, came to Jerusalem in about 450 [A.D.]. She was greatly devoted to St. Stephen because she had been converted and baptized in Constantinople in a votive church of St. Stephen. When she came to Jerusalem, she wanted to honor St. Stephen. The patriarch Juvenal told her that the traditional site of St. Stephen’s martyrdom was here. So she built a church here. She was even buried under the main entrance to the church. So, at the end of the last century, the Dominican fathers bought this site where Eudocia’s church had stood and rebuilt the church and built a convent beside it. When they excavated in connection with the rebuilding of the church of St. Stephen, they found the tomb of Eudocia, but it had been robbed many centuries earlier. They could not leave it open because of the new construction, so it is once 060again covered by the facade of the church.

In our excavations, we found the plan of Eudocia’s church and even some of the original mosaics, and we rebuilt the church following the original plan and preserving the original mosaics.

HS: Do the mosaics still exist in the church?

PB: Yes. I can show them to you. They consist only of geometric designs, however. After Eudocia’s time, this place is always identified as the site of St. Stephen’s martyrdom. We read about it in pilgrim texts—we have many of them—until the middle of the 12th century. The Damascus Gate was called St. Stephen’s Gate. When Jerusalem fell to the Persians in 614 A.D., they burned and destroyed many Christian churches, including the church Empress Eudocia had built to honor St. Stephen. Then in 638 the Moslems came. In the Moslem period, Christians were poor and had neither time nor money to rebuild the church. They had enough to do with the Holy Sepulchre and the major holy places. This one was a minor holy site, so it was not rebuilt. Later on, a small chapel was built near the street where our gatekeeper lives. But the location of the church was always remembered. So Father Lecomte and the other fathers excavated and found the plan, complete with three apses, thresholds and mosaics, as well as the columns, and they rebuilt it according to the pseudo-Byzantine style of the late 19th century, following the ancient plan. It was a very big church for its time, second in size only to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. To the church was added the convent. Then the École [the school] was founded in 1890 by Father Lagrange.

HS: Was it he who built the wall all around the complex?

PB: No. This wall was already standing before his coming, probably built by Father Lecomte. In the beginning the Fathers dwelt in an old Turkish slaughterhouse. Later on, in 1900, Father Le Vigourex built the church and the convent with very thick walls and large terraces, supposedly because of the hot weather. This is no longer the style, but we don’t regret it. We have space.

HS: You have space, you have isolation, peace. And beautiful trees.

PB: Yes. But we had to plant them. Before we came there were no trees here.

HS: What kind of trees are they?

PB: Mostly pine trees.

HS: And the wildflowers are out. It’s quiet and serene within the walls, and outside is great bustle.

PB: Yes.

HS: You also have a very famous library here, don’t you?

PB: Yes. Father Lagrange used to say with a smile that he came here with his breviary, a prayer book, a Baedeker and a Bible. That was all. And slowly, with much prudence and with money from his family and from gifts, we built the library. Then we began a scholarly review, a periodical, the Revue Biblique. It was started two years after the school. The school began in 1890 and the Revue Biblique in 1892. Now the library is surely one of the best in the world in its own specialties: the Bible and the Near East.

HS: When did you come here?

PB: I came in September 1932.

HS: Where are you from?

PB: I was born in Nancy, Lorraine, in eastern France. I came very early to my religious vocation. I took the Dominican habit when I was 18 years old. After one year of novitiate I went to Le Saulchoir in Belgium, because you know in the beginning of this century the French government expelled the religious orders. The government was anticlerical, so 061we had to go out of France. We had a convent in Belgium, quite near the border. I stayed there seven years. I became a novice in 1924. In 1925 I went to Le Saulchoir for studies of philosophy and theology. In 1932, at the age of 26, I came here.

HS: Did you decide on your own to come here?

PB: No! Today the younger people are more autonomous. But in my time religious people did what they were ordered. One of the old fathers wanted me for the École Biblique. Others wanted me to go elsewhere. But the one who wanted me here was successful. I was sent here, yes. I don’t regret it.

HS: And you’ve been here now for over 50 years.

PB: Yes, I had 15 years under British mandate, 20 years of Jordanian regime, and since 1967 under the Israelis.

HS: What was Jerusalem like when you came here in 1932?

PB: It was much smaller. The Old City was not so different, but all the area around was less built-up. The Mount of Olives—I could see it clearly from this window—was bare. Nothing but the church and the village of Et Tur. The Hebrew University had only one small building—the library. Now it is quite different.

HS: How has life in the city changed in 50 years?

PB: In 1932 it was very quiet.

HS: This school has been the home of many very distinguished and revered scholars.

PB: Yes. First Father Lagrange, then Father Janssen, Father Vincent, Father Abel, Father Savignac, Father Dhorme, Father Carrière. They all came when they were 18 years old. Father Lagrange persuaded them to give their lives to this work, to the École. And he directed each one of them—to archaeology, to geography, to Arabian studies, to Sumerian, to Akkadian—and to the Bible, of course.

HS: Did he himself have a specialty?

PB: Yes, the Bible, and first the Old Testament, later on the New. His ideas were quite modern for his time. Now they would seem to be very. …

HS: Old-fashioned?

PB: Yes, old-fashioned. But at that time, there were objections to him among some Catholics.

HS: What were his new ideas?

PB: His way of understanding the Bible, what was called the “historic method”—to understand that the Bible is the book of God, yes, but written by men. God, inspiring men, allowed them to write according to their mind and culture, some of them not 062scientifically accurate. God accorded theological truth to the Bible. But He let the people write on geography, history, astronomy, with opinions which are now for us scientific errors. At that time Catholic attitudes toward the Bible were a little, let us say, childlike, too simple—taking each word of the Bible as divine truth, for example, to say that 600,000 Israelites came out of Egypt or that the world was created 6,000 years ago, or that each word of the Gospel is exactly what Jesus said. Father Lagrange gave scholars some liberty to understand how God used man, with his own way of thinking and speaking, in what we call in France “genre litéraire,” the fashion of writing history in the past. For some scholars and some theologians, that was scandalous. Lagrange was attacked. But he was one of the scholars who gave a new face, a serious scholarly face, to the Catholic study of the Bible.

HS: How did the school get involved in 063archaeology?

PB: At first we had no money to undertake any major excavations. Archaeologically speaking, we had three periods. In the first period, we simply observed and studied the archaeological work of others. Father Vincent followed all the archaeological digs in Palestine. He helped many of them. In the City of David, he worked with the Parker Mission;^a and it is happy because these people did not write anything about their work. Father Vincent published the work of the Parker Mission.

After the First World War, we conducted our own small excavations—at Amwas, Beth Gubrin, Naaran (the synagogue). And the third period was with Father de Vaux. After the Second World War, he got a budget from the French government, and he could undertake major excavations. First Tell el-Farah (North) and then Qumran.

HS: Father de Vaux was the greatest of them all, wasn’t he?

PB: No, I don’t think so. I should say that Lagrange was, but it’s difficult to say. Lagrange was a genius, and Father Vincent was very good, and Father de Vaux was full of energy. He, too, was very important.

HS: He’s still regarded as an authority today. His work lives today.

PB: Yes, but you see he came later. He was more in the modern current. The others were pioneers.

HS: Father de Vaux’s Ancient Israel, his The Early History of Israel and his excavations of Qumran and Tirzah are still consulted and treasured, aren’t they?

PB: Yes.

HS: He died quite young.

PB: Young by today’s standards. He was 67. He died in 1971.

HS: All these great scholars, I believe, are buried here. Savignac, Abel, de Vaux and Vincent.

PB: Yes, but Lagrange is buried in the church itself, in the choir.

HS: Can you describe the crypt where the others are buried? How do you get there?

PB: It’s underground near ancient tombs. And according to the latest studies, these tombs could be of the seventh century B.C.^b

HS: It’s very poignant that these great scholars of the Old Testament are buried in a necropolis which is from a period that they did so much to illuminate.

PB: Yes. Of course, you know the place. It is nearby. The Fathers built beside the old Israelite tomb in the rock a place where we bury our Fathers—in the same compound.

HS: In Old Testament times, the area of the École Biblique was really a cemetery, wasn’t it?

PB: Yes, but that’s true all around Jerusalem. There are tombs everywhere—north, south, east, and west of the ancient city.

HS: This area is north of the ancient city, actually outside the city. Is there a relationship between the Old Testament tombs here and the Garden Tomb^c in which some think Jesus was buried, which is just adjacent to the École Biblique?

PB: Yes, it is the same complex. If you make a plan, you will see that between the southeastern corner of our necropolis and the so-called Garden Tomb there are only three meters. It’s quite the same cemetery. Gaby Barkay found some pottery sherds and some lamps, dating from the seventh century B.C., that come from this so-called Garden Tomb. Unfortunately, we don’t have any sherds from our tombs. I don’t know whether our Fathers, who originally cleared the tombs—they were not archaeologists—found any pottery or not. I don’t know. But we don’t have any now.

HS: The Garden Tomb was made into a beautiful garden because it was thought to be the tomb of Jesus.

PB: Yes, but the identification is quite fanciful. Surely wrong, surely wrong.

HS: It is, in fact, a First Temple tomb, isn’t it?

PB: Yes, we believe that now, yes.

HS: Your research has been instrumental in debunking a few traditional sites which are 064archaeologically unsound. I believe one of them is the lithostrotos. What is the lithostrotos?

PB: It is referred to in the Gospel of John (19:13). It is associated with Pilate’s praetorium. Pilate had Jesus brought to a place of judgment called lithostrotos, which means stone pavement. It is generally translated “pavement.” Here Jesus was condemned. By the way, it is faulty Greek grammar to say lithostrotos. It should be lithostroton.

HS: For many years it was thought that the beautiful pavement in the basement of the Sisters of Zion Convent was the lithostrotos.

PB: Yes. That was the discovery of Mother M.-Godeleine de Sion and Father Vincent. They believed it to be the lithostrotos. You see, when it was discovered, Father Vincent was quite astonished and full of admiration for this beautiful pavement. But now, today, we know that much of Jerusalem was paved like this—in the time of Herod [37 B.C.–4 B.C.], in the time of Herod Agrippa [41 A.D.–44 A.D.], even in Byzantine times [4th–7th centuries A.D.]. Everywhere we find such pavement slabs. Benjamin Mazar found many south of the Temple. Nahman Avigad found them in the Jewish Quarter. It was a method 065of paving. In the Sisters of Zion Convent, it is a beautiful pavement but not the one referred to in the Gospel of John. The pavement in the Sisters of Zion is beautiful, but it is one among many others. And it is not from the time of Jesus.

HS: How do you know it isn’t from the time of Jesus?

PB: Because it is built above a large cistern called the Struthion Pool. From Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian, we know that this pool was still not covered at the time of Titus’ siege of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. It was then open to the sky. The present pavement is built above the pool. It seals the pool. But in Jesus’ time [c. 30 A.D.], the pool was an open-air pool, like the Bezetha pool, like the Birket es Sultan pool. So there was no pavement here in Jesus’ time.

HS: What is the relationship of the Ecce Homo arch to the pavement? And what is the Ecce Homo arch?

PB: Ecce Homo means “Behold the man.” According to one tradition—surely wrong—it was beneath this arch that Pilate displayed the scourged Jesus to the crowd, proclaiming “Behold the man” [John 19:5].

Father Vincent believed the Ecce Homo arch was built on top of—rested upon—the pavement. Unfortunately, we don’t know enough from the excavations about the relationship between the arch and the pavement. It is sure, however, that the arch does not sit on the pavement. Father Vincent said it did, but he was wrong. Recent excavations [1966] show that the pier of the arch rests on rock. The pavement is built around it. Before these excavations, I thought, like many people, that the arch and the pavement were built at the same time, together, but now I think the pavement was constructed later.

HS: So to what period do you date the Ecce 066Homo arch?

PB: Formerly, I thought that it was built by the Roman emperor Hadrian [117–138 A.D.]. After all, he built many triumphal arches throughout the empire. But recently one of our French students, Yves Blomme, completed an excellent study that showed that this was not the type of arch built by Hadrian. On stylistic grounds, it must be earlier, from Herod Agrippa’s time [41–44 A.D.]. I agree with this opinion. This arch is much like the city gates of Augustus’s time.

But this was still after the crucifixion of Jesus [c. 30 A.D.]. And the pavement under the arch was built still later, I believe, in Hadrian’s time. That is, the arch was built by Herod Agrippa and the pavement by Hadrian, after 135 A.D.

This explains why this arch is not in the middle of the pavement as it should be. It is on the western side. Hadrian wanted to have a small forum there. So he accommodated the pavement as much as he could to the arch, but he could not put the arch in the middle.^d The pavement, or forum, was built by Hadrian after he suppressed the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome in 135 A.D. The forum was part of the Roman city called Aelia Capitolina. But it did not yet exist in Jesus’ time. It cannot be the lithostroton of the Gospel.

HS: Can you tell me a little about the highlights of your scholarly life here? You’ve been here for almost 54 years.

PB: It is not so easy to say. One aspect is the wars. We have had several. The Second World War from 1940 to 1945. Then the 1948 war when Israel became a state. The Suez war in 1956. The Yom Kippur War in 1973, and so on. After the 1945 war we had no students.

HS: But you go on studying all the time. That goes on through peace and through war.

PB: Yes.

HS: You live a beautiful life that almost nothing can interrupt.

PB: Yes, I like this type of work. I regret I have not published more. That is a problem. I have some work begun long ago that I am still trying to finish. It was promised long ago. I am still writing.

HS: You are one of the few people who writes about archaeology and also about theology. Has archaeology illuminated the Bible for you?

PB: Yes, but sometimes it contradicts it and can cause problems. For instance, in the Israelite conquest of Canaan, it appears the Israelites—according to Joshua—conquered a city (Ai) that was already in ruins. This is a problem.

HS: And how do you deal with this? You are certainly a man of faith.

PB: Yes.

HS: Is this a problem for your faith?

PB: No. But I must adjust my concept of the inerrancy of the Bible. I can no longer think that every historical event happened exactly as it is written in the Bible. One must accept the fact that the people of the Bible spoke in a different way than we do. The Bible is written much like an epic.

HS: Did you start out with a different view of the Bible?

PB: Yes. At the beginning of my studies here, I wrote on inspiration, revelation, inerrancy, truth in the Bible. Later, I had to adjust my thinking to the fact that Biblical truth is not the same as what positivist historians imagine. The Bible is written in a more epic style. For example, the Exodus, which tells of 12 tribes, of so many people, coming together out of Egypt. We now know it did not happen exactly this way. Many of my colleagues, not here but elsewhere, think that some of the tribes never even went to Egypt. Some of them, a smaller number, surely did. Thus we must correct the beautiful epic story of Exodus in the Bible.

HS: What about the details of history that are recounted in the New Testament?

PB: The problem is different because we are dealing with a much shorter period of time. But even there the synoptic Gospels [Matthew, Luke and Mark] have Jesus coming once to Jerusalem and John’s Gospel has him coming several times. We have to make a choice. I think John is right. I think John is more exacting in his history and geography than the synoptics. There are also some differences in itineraries among the Gospels.

HS: Has your acceptance of this view of Biblical history jeopardized your faith or has it deepened it?

PB: Faith is not engaged in that. Faith does not depend on the details of history.

HS: What does faith stem from? Does faith come from the Bible?

PB: Yes, but from the religious message of the Bible. And, of course, from some historic foundation. The message of God’s revelation is founded on facts, but not on each precise detail of fact.

Hershel Shanks: Père Benoit, you are in a consummate way representative of the French in Jerusalem, or of the scholarly world of France in Jerusalem. Most people in the United States are not aware that so many different nationalities have their scholarly representatives in Jerusalem and have worked here for many, many years.