Strata

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Temple Mount in Congress

Bill Seeks to Halt Construction

Congress is considering a bill that would cut American aid to the Palestinian Authority until it stops construction on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount—construction that critics charge has been destroying remains from the First and Second Temple periods.

The Temple Mount Preservation Act was introduced in July by Republican Eric Cantor, who represents the seventh district of Virginia. His bill would halt $200 million in aid to the Palestinians this year.

Construction atop the Temple Mount—the platform that once held the First and Second Temples and which today holds the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock—was begun in late 1999 by the Waqf, the Muslim religious council responsible for the mount, ostensibly to enlarge an emergency exit for an underground mosque in the southeast corner of the mount. Since then many truckloads of earth filled with ancient artifacts have been hauled off the mount and much of the southeast corner has been paved over. None of the work has been supervised by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), as required by Israeli law.

At a Capitol Hill press conference at which he introduced his bill, Cantor charged that Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestinian Authority, had barred Jews and Christians from the Temple Mount and was bent on erasing Jewish or Christian connections to the mount.

But Cantor’s bill may be misdirected. Recent discussions held by BAR with top IAA officials and with members of the Committee for the Prevention of the Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount, who have been harshly critical of what they see as the IAA’s ineffectual response to the construction, made clear that the power to preserve antiquities on the mount lies not with Arafat but with Israel.

Both right- and left-wing governments in Israel have been loath to crack down on the construction for fear of sparking riots and of scuttling negotiations with the Palestinians. “Israeli law is not enforced on the Temple Mount,” an IAA official confided.

The official also noted that the impetus 019behind the construction came not from Yasser Arafat nor even from Waqf officials, but from Raed Salah, the mayor of Umm el-Fahm, the second largest Arab city in Israel, and the leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel. Salah raised the funds for the work on the Temple Mount and brought in hundreds of volunteers to carry it out. Similarly, the decision to bar non-Muslims from the mount was made not by Arafat but by Israeli police out of concern for public safety in the wake of the Palestinian uprising that began in September 2000.

It was clear from discussions with IAA officials that they feel hamstrung. They are obligated by law to oversee the work on the Temple Mount, but they are barred from the mount by Israeli police. “Our role is to observe and to report, and the government has to decide what to do,” another IAA official said. He added that the construction could easily have been stopped, but at a heavy cost in lives—50 Palestinian rioters and 10 Israeli policemen, in his estimate.

This IAA official added that the work on the Temple Mount had been slowed over the previous three months because the Israeli government was not allowing construction materials onto the mount. Archaeologist Eilat Mazar, a leading member of the Committee for the Prevention of the Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount, countered that new construction materials were no longer needed. She produced a photo showing a truck that had dumped ancient stone blocks near a stone-cutting saw. On the other side of the photo were piles of smaller stone blocks, freshly cut from the old blocks.

Mazar also produced two aerial photos; the first was taken in November 1999, just before construction began, while the second was taken in June of this year. Much of the southeast corner of the Temple Mount has been greatly altered: Two arched doorways now lead to the underground mosque, while much of the area leading to the entrances has been cleared of trees and paved over.

The work on the Temple Mount seems to be nearing completion, but what will Israel’s government do if construction begins in another area of the Temple Mount? Perhaps more important, can Israel reverse the perception that it has ceded control of the mount?

Qimron Ruling Questioned

Copyright Expert Says Israeli Court Was Wrong

If Professor Elisha Qimron wanted to achieve “fame”—as a Jerusalem court quoted him as saying he did—from his work on the Dead Sea Scroll known as MMT, he certainly achieved it in the lawsuit he won against the Biblical Archaeology Society and BAR editor Hershel Shanks.^a Known as Qimron vs. Shanks, the case has already spawned three scholarly conferences and several law review articles. The most intensive analysis, however, is now available in an article in the Houston Law Review by one of the most prominent copyright lawyers in the world, David Nimmer, who publishes the leading publication in the field, Nimmer on Copyright (started by his father). Nimmer’s article, comprising the entire spring 2001 issue, is 217 pages long with 1,087 footnotes. Qimron has thus achieved fame not only in Dead Sea Scroll scholarship, but in legal annals as well.

Like most legal scholars, Nimmer would have decided the case differently from the Israeli courts. One of the responses to Nimmer’s paper was written by Senior Judge James L. Oakes of the United States Court of Appeals for the region that includes New York; it has been called the second most important court in the United States. In his response, Senior Judge Oakes writes, “[David Nimmer’s] exposition is compelling, and it is far deeper than that of the Israeli judges [of the Supreme Court and the Jerusalem District Court]. His conclusion, of course, is at total odds with that of the Israeli courts, and while one is persuaded by his reasoning, one can nevertheless understand how those courts went awry, as it were.”

Copies of the law review are available from the Houston Law Review, University of Houston Law Center, Houston, Texas 77204–6391.

Ironically, since the Israel Supreme Court’s decision, noted Dead Sea Scroll scholar Florentino García Martínez has analyzed old photographs of the history of the reconstruction of MMT and has determined that the scroll had been almost completely reconstructed by Qimron’s coeditor, Harvard Professor John Strugnell (who declined to join Qimron’s lawsuit), before Qimron became associated with the project.^b As of this writing, Professor Qimron has not responded to García Martínez’s charges, although he has been asked to comment.

ASOR Reaches Out

This year’s annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) will feature two programs aimed at a wide audience. On Friday, Nov. 16, from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m., the group will host a public session titled, “The Archaeology of Jerusalem Through the Ages.” Ronny Reich, of Haifa University and the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), will speak on Iron Age Jerusalem; the IAA’s Hillel Geva will discuss the city during the Second Temple period; and Mahmoud Hawari, of the Oxford archaeological unit, in England, will survey more than a millennia of Islamic architecture in Jerusalem. The program will take place at the Omni Interlaken Hotel in Broomfield, Colo., near Boulder.

On Saturday, Nov. 17, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., ASOR’s Outreach Education committee will cosponsor a workshop at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, in Boulder, for teachers in grades 4 through 12. Workshops will cover such topics as interpreting historical and personal artifacts and designing activities for the classroom. Participants will receive a guided tour of the museum and a packet of classroom-ready teaching materials. The workshop is not part of ASOR’s annual meeting and requires a separate registration. Contact Jim Hakala at 303–492-4843 or at james.hakala@colorado.edu.

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A Match Made in … Bethsaida

Couple Who Met at Dig Tie Knot at Dig

In a ceremony that recalled ancient rituals, Toni Fisher and Denny Clark were married in June at the archaeological site of Bethsaida, Israel. The two met while excavating at the site, which is best known for its key role in Jesus’ ministry; in the past several seasons, however, a large Iron Age city, probably the capital of the Geshurite kingdom, has been uncovered by American, European and Israeli scholars and volunteers.

The wedding ceremony was performed after the popsicle break, a daily cooling-off ritual at the site. Guests included dig staff and volunteers and friends of the couple from Kibbutz Ginosar and Kibbutz Gadot, the present and former “home bases” of the Bethsaida Excavations Project.

The ceremony was held at the threshold of the ninth-century B.C. (Iron Age) city gate, one of the largest and best-preserved in Israel. Rami Arav, director of excavations and research, “gave the bride away” by removing his sandal, recalling the symbolic gesture in Ruth 4:7. The “elders” of Kibbutz Ginosar were seated at the gate, overseeing the activities. The couple read passages from Song of Songs, and the crowd chanted responses from the same book. Toni and Denny exchanged their vows atop the “high place,” where just four seasons ago a stela depicting a bull was found, demarcating the area as under the rule of the bull god (the stela is on display at the Israel Museum; a photo appears in “Bethsaida Rediscovered,” BAR 26:01). Following an ancient custom, the couple marked the end of the ceremony by smashing a ceramic vessel—not one found by the excavation, but a replica—inside a cloth sack.

Toni Fisher is completing her Ph.D. at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville on the zooarchaeology of Bethsaida. She has been working at Bethsaida since 1991, one of the first alumni of the University of Nebraska at Omaha (where she was an undergraduate) to excavate there with Arav, a faculty member at UN Omaha. Denny Clark joined the expedition some years later, bringing a group of his own students from Albertson College in Caldwell, Idaho.

The wedding was not the first rite-of-passage to be held at Bethsaida. In June 2000, more than 100 people gathered to celebrate the bar mitzvah of Yoni Freund, oldest son of Richard Freund, project director at the dig. That ceremony was held in an open-air chapel built to mark Pope John Paul II’s visit to the Holy Land in the spring of 2000. The natural beauty of the site, combined with the reconstruction work done by the Israeli Ministry of Tourism, make Bethsaida an ideal place for celebrations such as weddings and bar mitzvahs. But you have to provide your own village elders.

Lectures in Los Angeles

The University of Judaism in Los Angeles presents its 12th annual lecture series on Bible and archaeology. BAR editor Hershel Shanks begins with “The Dead Sea Scrolls—What Do They Really Say?” (October 22). Subsequent speakers will be Ziony Zevit, “Who Were the Gods of Ancient Israel and How Do We Know About Them?” (October 29); James Hofmeier, “From Joseph to Moses—How Does an Egyptian Archaeologist Look at the Bible and Read the Text?” (November 5); Avner Goren, “Jerusalem Now and Then—How Much of Today’s Old City of Jerusalem Could Have Been Seen in the Days of Herod, Hillel, and Jesus?” (November 12); Jehon Grist, “The Wisdom in the Wine—What Does Archaeology Teach Us About the ‘Blood of the Grape’?” (November 19); Jonathan Kirsch, “The Use and Abuse of Biblical Archaeology in the Modern Middle East” (November 26); Yair Zakovitch, “Why Were the Israelites Enslaved in Egypt?” (December 3); and Gideon Foerster, “From Priest Rebels to Warrior Kings: The Hasmonean-Maccabees in the Archaeological Record” (December 10). Call (310) 440–1246 for more information.

Temple Mount in Congress

Bill Seeks to Halt Construction