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Finkelstein’s “Shiloh” Wins Best BAR Article Award

“Shiloh Yields Some, But Not All, of Its Secrets,” BAR 12:01, by Israeli archaeologist Israel Finkelstein, has received the Fellner Award as the best article to appear in Biblical Archaeology Review during 1985 and 1986. The award carries a prize of $500.

Finkelstein’s article, published in the January/February 1986 BAR, describes his excavation of Shiloh, a site in the hill country north of Jerusalem. During the first half of the 11th century B.C., Shiloh served as the religious center of the Israelite tribal federation. The Ark of the Covenant rested in the Tabernacle at Shiloh until it was captured by the Philistines in the battle of Ebenezer recounted in 1 Samuel 4. As the Bible reflects and Finkelstein’s excavations confirm, Shiloh never recovered from the Philistine attack in about 1050 B.C.

Finkelstein, a professor at Bar-Ilan University, directed excavations at Shiloh from 1981–1984. He is also co-author, with Avraham Perevolotsky, of “The Southern Sinai Exodus Route in Ecological Perspective,” BAR 11:04.

John Laughlin, associate professor of religion at Averett College in Danville, Virginia, and Fredric Brandfon, assistant professor of religion at the College of Charleston, South Carolina, served as judges for the first-time award. The judges commented that the Shiloh article fulfilled BAR’s mission. “It reported on new findings and was full of excellent illustrations including informative maps, plans and photos of special finds.”

Funds for the award were donated by the Leopold and Clara M. Fellner Charitable Foundation. A corresponding award for the best article in our sister publication Bible Review will be announced in the February (Spring) Bible Review.

Ancient Empires

Jewish Museum Exhibit

“Among Ancient Empires: Recent Excavations in Emeq Hefer, Israel,” a small exhibition featuring recent results of ongoing excavations undertaken by the Emeq Hefer (Alexander River Valley) Archaeological Research Project in Israel, opened on October 27 and runs through March 22, 1987, at the Jewish Museum in New York City.

The exhibition features 22 artifacts unearthed at Tell el-Ifshar, Tel Mikhmoret and other sites on the coastal plain north of Tel Aviv—once important trade centers along the Via Maris, the ancient coastal road linking Egypt with Mesopotamia. The objects reflect the changing nature of Israel’s relations with neighboring lands and date from c. 2000 B.C. through the Roman era in the first through fourth centuries A.D.

Elaborately painted pottery, cult figurines and objects inscribed in foreign scripts provide eloquent testimony to the waves of invaders and conquerors—Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, Romans—that washed over the Holy Land in the more than two millennia covered by the exhibit.

But of equal importance are the traces left of the far-reaching trade and exchange networks between ancient Israel and Greece, Cyprus and Turkey.

Among the exhibited artifacts is a jug imported from northern Syria that dates to c. 2000–1900 B.C. Its sophisticated design contrasts sharply with the crude, locally made pottery of Middle Bronze (1900–1500 B.C.) Israel. The internationalism and eclecticism of the Late Bronze Age (1500–1200 B.C.) is reflected in the bronze figurine of a Canaanite war god that wears an Egyptian-style crown and a Hittite costume.

Apply Now

Summer Seminar on Roots of Anti-Semitism

Stipends of $3,500 each are available to college teachers to attend a summer seminar at Yeshiva University in New York City on “Classical and Christian Roots of Anti-Semitism.”

Sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the three-week seminar will examine critically significant texts—pagan, Jewish, and Christian—that shed light on the political, economic, social, religious, and cultural origins of the phenomena of anti-Semitism and philo-Semitism. It will consider how governments, the masses, and intellectuals viewed the Jews during the period from Alexander’s death in 323 B.C. through the fourth century A.D., and, above all, the degree to which Christianity inherited these attitudes or added unique elements. The seminar will particularly 008interest teachers in the fields of the classics, history, Judaism, and Christianity, and especially those concerned with the factors that led to the Holocaust and with the problems inherent in Jewish-Christian dialogue.

The seminar will be limited to 12 participants and will run from June 15 to August 7, 1987. Application deadline is March 2, 1987.

For further information write to Professor Louis H. Feldman, Yeshiva University, 500 West 185 Street, New York, NY 10033.

Who and When?

Exodus Symposium

Was Rameses the Great the pharaoh of the Exodus? When did the Exodus take place? Does the archaeological record support the Biblical account of the Israelite invasion of Canaan? These and other questions will be examined at “Who Was the Pharaoh of the Exodus?” a symposium sponsored by the Memphis Area Chapter of the Near East Archaeological Society, April 23–25, 1987, in Memphis, Tennessee.

According to its organizers, the symposium’s objective is “not to prove or disprove a particular theory or position, but to provide a context in which all sides of the question leading to Israel’s departure from Egypt and entry into Canaan can be represented by qualified exponents.”

Scheduled symposium speakers include David Ussishkin (see “Lachish—Key to the Israelite Conquest of Canaan?” in this issue; also “Answers at Lachish,” BAR 05:06), Hans Goedicke (see “Goedicke Defends His Exodus Theory,” BAR 08:02), Rivka Gonen (see “Was the Site of the Jerusalem Temple Originally a Cemetery?” BAR 11:03), John Bimson, David Livingston, Max Miller, and other noted Biblical archaeologists and scholars.

For more information, please contact Professor James E. Powell, Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary, 1255 Poplar Avenue, P.O. Box 3624, Memphis, TN 38173–0624; (901) 726–9171.

Corrections

In “Herod’s Mighty Temple Mount,” BAR 12:06, by Meir Ben-Dov, an error occurred in the last sentence of the article. The sentence should read “From a distance, the walls of the Temple Mount looked like a pyramid with its top lopped off. The meticulous attention to detail in such a monumental project is one of the factors that made the Temple Mount one of the most renowned wonders of the Roman world.”

Because of a printer error, Ben-Dov’s name is missing from the title page of his article, although it appears in the Table of Contents and in Inside BAR. We regret these errors.

Several readers have pointed out errors in the maps in “An Archaeologist’s Secret Life in the Service of the OSS,” BAR 12:05, by Floyd S. Fierman. The map of Europe was intended to show the alignment of forces in October 1942. However, the political alignment actually shown is that of June 1940. To be correct for 1942, France, which had by that time capitulated to the Germans, and Greece, which had been overrun by the Germans, should be shown as part of the Axis alignment and Russia, which was then fighting back the invading Germans, should be shown as an Allied nation.

The reference in the caption to “German” troops led by General Erwin Rommel should have read “Axis” troops, of which only a portion were Germans.—Ed.

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