Footnotes

1.

See Solomon Landers, “Did Jephthah Kill His Daughter?” Bible Review, August 1991.

3.

See Philip C. Hammond, “New Light on the Nabateans,” BAR 07:02; Avraham Negev, “Understanding the Nabateans,” BAR 14:06; and Judith W. Shanks, “A Plea for the Bedoul Bedouin of Petra,” BAR 07:02.

4.

The excavations are sponsored by Andrews University in consortium with Atlantic Union College, Canadian Union College and Walla Walla College.

Endnotes

1.

Some European scholars think that Tell Hesban was Moabite. See Ulrich Hubner, Die Ammoniter Untersuchungen zur Geschichte, Kultur und Religion eines transjordanischen Volkes im I. Jahrtausend v. Chr. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1992).

2.

E. N. Lugenbeal and James A. Sauer, “Seventh–Sixth Century B.C. Pottery from Area B at Heshbon,” Andrews University Seminary Studies 10 (1972), pp. 21–69.

3.

Although in the Bible Heshbon is identified as an Amorite city, by the end of Iron Age II the Ammonite kingdom seems to have been in firm control of the region. We hear no, more about the Amorites after the Israelite victory over them (Numbers 21:21–32), and the tribe of Reuben, which was originally allotted some of this area, seems to have faded away early. See “Frank Moore Cross—An Interview, Part 1: Israelite Origins,” Bible Review, August 1992, p. 62; and Frank Moore Cross, “Reuben, Firstborn of Jacob,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 100 (1988), Supplement: Lebenudige Forschung im Alten Testament.

4.

See Larry Herr, The Scripts of Ancient Northwest Semitic Seals, (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1978). Also Walter E. Aufrecht, A Corpus of Ammonite Inscriptions (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1989).

5.

See Cross, “Ammonite Ostraca from Heshbon: Heshbon Ostraca IV–VIII,” Andrews University Seminary Studies 13 (1975), pp. 1–20.

6.

See Randall W. Younker, “Israel, Judah, and Ammon and the Motifs on the Baalis Seal from Tell el-‘Umeiri,” Biblical Archaeologist 48 (1985), pp. 173–180.

7.

My colleague André Lemaire favors a slightly later date in the early fifth century—personal communication.

8.

The most comprehensive publication is still that of Nahman Avigad, Bullae and Seals from a Post-Exilic Judean Archive (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1976).

9.

Ephraim Stern, The Material Culture of the Land of the Bible in the Persian Period 538–332 B.C. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1982), pp. 202–206.

10.

André Lemaire, “Populations et territoires de la Palestine a l’epoque perse,” in Transeuphratene 3 (1990), pp. 31–74.