BARlines

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Linguistics Scholar Jonas Greenfield Dies

How do you write the obituary of a friend who at the end of his life wouldn’t speak to you? Assign it to a staff member and avoid the issue? Or meet it head on?

Jonas C. Greenfield, a towering figure in Semitic linguistics, professor of ancient Semitic languages at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, editor of the prestigious Israel Exploration Journal, expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls and former member of the editorial advisory board of this magazine, died suddenly, in his sleep, on March 12 at the age of 68. The cause, apparently, was heart failure.

Jonas was a scholar’s scholar. If there was one thing he had no patience for, it was shoddy scholarship. He spoke with disdain of anything less than first-rate scholarship. Yet he was also full of laughter and wonderful stories. And the more arcane the point of the story, the heartier the laughter. He loved people—that’s why so many people felt he was their good friend—and good gossip.

Jonas looked like a prophet and often spoke like one. He had a piercing voice that carried undoubted authority. I often called him a closet autocrat.

I shall always treasure the memories of shabbat meals at the Jerusalem table of Jonas and his wonderful wife Bella, often in the company of renowned scholars from abroad. Bella knew just how to control Jonas, when to take him seriously and when not to.

When I was in high school, I had a good friend who was a boxer. I had no athletic ability whatever. I certainly knew nothing about boxing, but I used to put on the gloves and spar with my friend, confident that he would never hurt me. That was how I felt with Jonas. We would talk, argue, sometimes vociferously, but, seemingly out of character, he was always gentle with me, even supportive. He showed me, a non-scholar, the respect a good teacher shows an inquiring student. I was grateful.

Then came the Dead Sea Scrolls. He was on the other side. He had no doubt that I was wrong and that what I was doing was harmful to Israel. He resigned from BAR’s editorial advisory board and refused to speak to me.

So now, sadly, I must write his obituary. How can I say how much I admired him, how much his death has saddened me, how sorry I am that now there is no longer time to try to make amends, to reconcile, to remember old times together?

May his memory be for a blessing.

Jonas Greenfield: An Appreciation

Jonas Greenfield was a special kind of scholar and teacher. His untimely passing has left a great void, both in Israel, where he lived and worked since 1971, and throughout the academic world.

Jonas mastered many languages. His knowledge of Aramaic and his command of the extensive corpus of Aramaic texts were exceptional, as seen in his fine treatment of the Aramaic version of the Bisitun inscription, in studies dealing with the Aramaic papyri from Egypt and, most recently, in his commentary on the marriage contract from Nahal Hever of a famous ancient woman (Babata).

His scores of articles, many undertaken jointly with other scholars, have advanced our knowledge in a wide range of fields in addition to Aramaic: Qumran studies, Ugaritic literature of the Bronze Age, apocryphal literature of the Hellenistic period and, of course, Biblical Hebrew. The proper meanings of numerous Biblical words and idioms, legal clauses and poetic themes was established for the first time as a result of his insights. He was one of a group of three who prepared the new Jewish Publication Society translation of the third major section of the Hebrew Bible Kethubim (the Writings). In all of his work, Jonas freely utilized the great treasures of rabbinic literature, which he knew so well.

Jonas Greenfield’s writings have an air of intellectual freedom and exhibit broad comparative reach and interdisciplinary scope. Although often focused on small units of knowledge, they are expansive in their cultural and historical implication. In the classroom, Jonas enabled his students to share in the learning process by revealing to them the workings of an analytical mind.

Jonas Greenfield was also a special kind of person. In little more than 20 years after making aliyah from the United States, Jonas became an indispensable component of the academic and scholarly community in Israel; it’s hard 021to think of Jerusalem without him. He was unusually devoted to students and colleagues, and had loads of friends all over the world. Everyone knew Jonas! It was not in his nature to limit his relationships; anyone associated with him ran the risk of becoming a close personal friend in the process! We will miss his wry wit, his ingenious puns and the many occasions of elevated conversation. He has left us grieving for his warmth.

All who knew Jonas Greenfield realized how much his dear wife, Bella, meant to him, and how much she had to do with his fulfillment. To her, and to the Greenfield children and their children, go our condolences. May the All-Merciful console them among the other mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

William Moffett: He Stood for Intellectual Freedom

William A. Moffett, who played a major role in liberating the Dead Sea Scrolls, died February 20th at the age of 62. The cause was cancer of the bladder.

At the time of his death, Moffett was librarian of the Huntington Library, in San Marino, California, one of the largest private research libraries in the world. In that capacity, he was instrumental in breaking the 40-year monopoly on scholarly access to the scrolls.

The Huntington had a microfilm of all the scrolls as the result of a dispute between a nearby institution, the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center (ABMC), and the center’s major benefactor, Mrs. Elizabeth Hay Bechtel. In the early 1980s, Mrs. Bechtel and the ABMC arranged with Israeli authorities to have pictures taken of all the scrolls in case something happened to the originals. By the time the photographer returned from Israel with the photos, Mrs. Bechtel had a falling out with the director of the ABMC. Mrs. Bechtel eventually lost her fight with the director, but unbeknownst to almost everyone, she placed a second copy of the scroll photos in the Huntington, even providing special security measures and a special environment for the photos. Mrs. Bechtel died in 1987.

In 1990, Moffett was appointed librarian of the Huntington and learned about the scroll photos. Several institutions had fall-back photos, but all, including the ABMC, had signed written agreements with the Israel Department of Antiquities to allow access to the photos only to those designated by the small official editing team. The Huntington, however, had signed no such agreement, and Moffett decided he was not bound by the agreement signed by the ABMC.

Shortly after the Biblical Archaeology Society started to publish computer-reconstructed texts of the unpublished scrolls, Moffett announced that he would make the library’s microfilm of scroll photos available to all qualified scholars. On September 22, 1991, The New York Times published the announcement with Moffett’s picture above the fold of its Sunday edition. It was a shot heard round the world.

Thereafter the official editing team and the Department of Antiquities tried to reverse Moffett’s decision. First, they charged him with unethical conduct and threatened a lawsuit. But Moffett held firm: “When you free the scrolls, you free the scholars,” he said.

The official editing team and the Department of Antiquities next announced a meeting for December to which all depositaries of unpublished scrolls would be invited so that the situation could be reviewed and appropriate procedures for access established. Moffett refused to come. The meeting was cancelled.

Then the authorities suggested a compromise by which scholars would be allowed to see the scrolls only if they signed a statement agreeing not to publish an edition of the scrolls they were permitted to see. By now, however, because of Moffett’s courageous leadership, such half-measures failed to impress other prominent critics of the scroll monopoly.

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In the meantime, the Biblical Archaeology Society published its two-volume facsimile edition of unpublished scroll photos. The genie was out of the bottle; there was no way it could be put back. Both the official editing team and Israel’s Department of Antiquities (now the Israel Antiquities Authority) dropped their objections and eventually published their own microfiche of all the scrolls, both published and unpublished.

Moffett received some of the highest honors bestowed by the library profession, including the American Library Association’s Immroth Memorial Award for Intellectual Freedom, in 1993. That same year he was named librarian of the year by the Association of College and Research Libraries. He is survived by his wife, Deborah Moffett, four children and three grandchildren.

Giza Exhibit Reveals Healthy Semitic Museum

The Harvard Semitic Museum’s lavish new Giza exhibition suggests that rumors of its demise were greatly exaggerated.

A little over a year ago, the museum was plagued by bitter staff tensions, accusations of mismanagement and a $1 million debt.^a In November 1993, a faculty committee formed to look into these problems urged that the museum drastically reduce its staff, disperse its collection of 19th-century photographs and ethnographic materials among other university institutions, and cease hosting costly traveling exhibits.

Those recommendations—which led to the dismissal of the museum’s entire staff—drew a heated response. At the center of the storm was Harvard professor Lawrence Stager, director of the museum since 1987, who also chaired the eight-member committee set up to determine the museum’s future. Critics of the report—prominent among them New Republic editor Martin Peretz—claimed, among other things, that since Stager had presided over the museum’s decline into debt and chaos, he should have recused himself from the committee. Stager was part of the problem, critics charged, and should himself have been replaced.

Now a different picture is emerging. Buoyant over the early success of the Semitic Museum’s first major exhibition since the “restructuring,” Stager told BAR that the museum has “found a new sense of mission.”

The museum has balanced its budget, Stager said, by reducing salaries and drawing on its endowment. Its former staff of ten employees has been replaced by an assistant director, a curator of archaeological materials and a part-time administrative assistant. About half of its collection of 18,000 photographs are being distributed among other Harvard museums (800 photos by the French Bonfils family are being taken over by the Fogg Museum), with the Semitic Museum keeping photos of archaeological and excavation sites.

The museum’s current exhibit, The Sphinx and Pyramids: 100 Years of American Archaeology at Giza, will run through the end of the year. It displays materials excavated by the joint expedition to Giza by Harvard University and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) earlier in this century; replicas of tombs and monumental Egyptian sculptures, including a statue of Pharaoh Menkaure and his queen Khamerernebty II of the IV Dynasty (c. 2613–2494 B.C.); and computer and video presentations about life in ancient Egypt, archaeological interpretation and excavation techniques. A dedication to former Harvard professor and MFA curator George Reisner, who spent 30 years excavating at Giza until his death in 1942, includes a recreation of his office at Giza’s Harvard Camp, complete with his ancient black typewriter.

The Giza exhibit was organized by Mark Lehner of the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, and designed by Richard Riccio of Harvard’s Peabody Museum. Some of the materials on display are lent by the MFA.

Stager said that in the future the museum will make deliberate use of its greatest assets: materials in its own collection from excavations in Iraq, Israel, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. Stager added that he intends to draw on the department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization (in which he is Dorot Professor of the Archaeology of Israel, and which supplies the Semitic Museum’s director) for honorary, non-paid curatorial work, such as a curator for tablets.

The museum’s next project is in the planning stages: a 1996 show on the history of writing. The exhibit will move from some of the earliest examples of writing through the modern era, covering the origins of scripts, the development of the alphabet and the establishment of rules of accentuation and pronunciation.

Golan Archaeologist Receives Israel Prize

The prestigious 1995 Israel Prize has been awarded to Claire Epstein, who is preparing the final report on the Chalcolithic Period in the Golan.

Shortly after Israel captured the Golan in 1967 during the Six-Day War, Epstein began exploring the Golan on foot. She has almost single-handedly brought to light an extraordinary civilization that flourished in the Golan 6,000 years ago. Although Chalcolithic remains have been discovered all over the Near East, it apparently had an unusual flowering in the Golan, where Epstein identified 25 Chalcolithic sites. Epstein has written a wonderful article for BAR on her finds, and we look forward to publishing it in the near future.

For Epstein’s views on archaeology’s greatest achievement, failure and challenge, see “Scholars Speak Out,” in this issue.

Museum Guide

Art and Empire: Treasures from Assyria in the British Museum Assyrian Origins: Antiquities in the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin

May 2, 1995–September 10, 1995

Known for their military strength in ancient times, the Assyrians have now invaded New York: Art and Empire, the largest collection of Assyrian art ever shown in the United States, is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Objects lent by the British Museum include immense stone reliefs depicting scenes of conquest, and hunting and court ceremonies, along with delicate ivories, bronzes, seals and tablets, all discovered in the 19th century at Nineveh and Nimrud, the capitals of the vast northern Mesopotamian empire in the first millennium B.C.

A concurrent exhibition of Assyrian objects lent by Berlin’s Vorderasiatisches Museum highlights art from Assur, the center of Assyrian religion and the empire’s capital in the third and second millennia B.C. Assyrian Origins: Discoveries at Assur on the Tigris includes finds from the city’s Ishtar Temple, royal sculpture, and a hoard of copper objects found beneath the Assur Temple, dedicated to the state god.

It’s A Mad World

Mad editor Nick Meglin comments on the magazine’s Hebrew edition:

“It’s breathtaking that Mad will be in the same language as the Dead Sea Scrolls. What a thing! The eternal language, for the most temporary literature on Earth. Mad is forgotten about 17 minutes after it’s read, so it’s a beautiful, strange contradiction.”

Linguistics Scholar Jonas Greenfield Dies

How do you write the obituary of a friend who at the end of his life wouldn’t speak to you? Assign it to a staff member and avoid the issue? Or meet it head on?