BARview: Annual Meetings Offer Intellectual Bazaar and Moments of High Drama

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Almost 4,000 scholars and laypersons, including a Biblical Archaeology Society contingent, attended the combined annual meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature, the American Academy of Religion and the American Schools of Oriental Research in Chicago last December 8 to 11. This was the largest attendance in the history of the annual meetings.

What accounted for the unusually large attendance was not immediately clear. Increased interest in the Bible, the easy accessibility of Chicago and a more convenient time than the usual late December date of the meetings were all possibilities.

The facilities of the elegant and beautifully appointed Palmer House Hotel were clearly overtaxed. Poor management contributed to the discomfort. Hundreds of registrants with confirmed reservations, including a number of prominent scholars, discovered they were without rooms. Professor John Strugnell of Harvard Divinity School found himself housed miles from the meetings. Dr. Harry Orlinsky, emeritus professor at the Jewish Institute of Religion/Hebrew Union College in New York, threatened to return home until he was finally given the bridal suite.

An apron of attendees formed outside many lecture halls as registrants sat crosslegged on the floor, straining to hear the scholarship being offered inside. Poor audio-visual equipment and overheated rooms often added to the discomfort. The University of Chicago’s distinguished scholar Ignace J. Gelb was forced to deliver his talk on “Ebla and Lagash: Environmental Contrasts” in competition with a blaring jazz band performing in an adjacent hall separated from the lecture hall only by a paper-thin wall. This, indeed, provided an “environmental contrast”—with a disturbing vengeance.

Intellectually, however, the meetings were thrilling, vital and exciting. It was a scholarly embarrassment of riches. Hundreds of lectures, dozens at a time, were crowded into the four and one-half days of sessions.

As usual, there were terrible time conflicts. For example, one evening the following lectures were given simultaneously:

1. James Charlesworth of Princeton Theological Seminary, editor of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, spoke on “Pseudepigrapha in the New Testament.”

2. J. Maxwell Miller of Emory University and co-editor of Israelite and Judean History spoke on “Old Testament History and Archaeology.”

3. Gary O. Rollefson of San Diego State University spoke on the fantastic life-size statues found at the Neolithic site of ‘Ain Ghazal in Jordan.

4. Louis H. Feldman of Yeshiva University spoke on “How Deeply Was Judaism Hellenized in the Hellenistic Roman Period?” and, at the same session, Edward P. Sanders of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and Oxford University spoke on “Hellenistic Judaism as the Matrix for Early Christian Theology.”

5. Mircea Eliade of the University of Chicago and author of The Myth of the Eternal Return, Patterns in Comparative Religion spoke in response to a special award given to him for “Distinguished Contributions to the Study of Religion.”

All this at the same time!

Even in the strictly archaeological arena there were impossible time conflicts. A session of ten lectures, chaired by Professor William Dever of the University of Arizona, on ancient economies (with special emphasis on floral and faunal remains) conflicted with a session of eight lectures, chaired by Dr. Seymour Gitin of the Albright Institute, Jerusalem, on ancient settlements and city planning (with special emphasis on architectural remains).

Some of these conflicts are avoidable and should be avoided. Others obviously cannot be. A better effort should be made, however, to achieve a manageable schedule. It would probably be a mistake to limit the number of offerings, although there may be mechanisms to assure a more uniformly high quality of lectures.

No one wants to discourage attendance, either. The interest is wonderful. Indeed, only a few elitists were not pleased with the wide interest the large attendance reflected.

As the above titles indicate, the range of topics was vast and there were more than 014enough subjects to satisfy every taste and interest. Interestingly enough, despite the wide array of presentations, the Society of Biblical Literature does not have a section on the Pentateuch, and only very limited sessions are devoted to archaeology as it relates to the Bible. This suggests that the array of lectures may not be wide enough! In these circumstances, it is difficult to recommend limiting the number of presentations.

The session chaired by William Dever, reflecting the so-called “new archaeology” and emphasizing floral and faunal studies of archaeological remains, was not only new, but especially interesting. Most of the presenters were Dever’s students. The big question is whether the data being collected will eventually yield broader generalizations of significance—something beyond the narrow statistical details. The fact that a site yields ten barley seeds to every wheat seed is in itself of limited value. Finding no seeds from summer weeds in Middle Bronze Age dung fire ashes at the site may indicate that the animals or even the whole settlement moved on in the summer. This is a generalization, but it is of limited value unless it leads to higher levels of generalization. Whether it will remains to be seen.

The question of the delay in publication of Dead Sea Scroll materials was raised in at least one session, and a new explanation was given for the nearly 40-year delay.^a David J. Wilmot of the University of Chicago presented a paper arguing that the Copper Scroll was, in fact, characterized by attributes of other known ancient lists. There was in ancient times, he contended, a literary genre consisting of lists. Wilmot’s paper was based on over five years of study for his doctoral dissertation. The appointed respondent was Professor John Strugnell of Harvard who, with a few deft strokes, rendered much of Wilmot’s research irrelevant. Professor Lawrence H. Schiffman of New York University agreed with Strugnell: Wilmot was belaboring the obvious. Of course the Copper Scroll was a list of hidden temple treasures; the question is whether it is a real list of temple treasures or a fictitious list. In the course of the scholarly discussion, the question arose as to whether there were non-religious texts among the Qumran documents found in the Dead Sea caves. Strugnell asserted that there were many contracts and administrative documents containing lists among the Dead Sea fragments. “Why haven’t you published them?” shot back Wilmot, eager to score against his tormentor. “Because they’re boring,” Strugnell replied.

The intellectual jousting has a serious side: it reflects why scholars feel it is so important to have access to the entire corpus of Dead Sea Scroll fragments. The corpus as a whole affects an extremely wide range of scholarly concerns.

The dramatic high point of the meetings occurred at a plenary session honoring Professor Jacob Neusner of Brown University. Each year a special session at the annual meetings is devoted to an especially significant scholarly contribution of some years ago, in order to assess it from today’s vantage point. The scholar is invited to discuss his work and explain how he has, or has not, changed his mind. Several other scholars are invited to deliver prepared comments on the appointed work.

As the subjects of this year’s plenary session, two books by Professor Neusner were chosen,^b one on the Mishnah^c and the other on the Palestinian Talmud.^d

To appreciate the drama of what happened at this plenary session, attended by 400 or 500 people in a large, ornate ballroom, one must know that Professor Neusner is an extremely controversial scholar.^e His area of special interest is rabbinical literature. At age 52, he has published over 200 books and countless articles. Neusner rejects traditional interpretation of rabbinic texts, with its careful attention to detail and its minute consideration of every word of the text in light of every other text in the entire rabbinic corpus. Neusner, in contrast, asks broad, humanistic questions of the major elements of the rabbinic corpus and tries to understand their ideological place in history. Professor Shaye Cohen of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America has called one of Neusner’s major books

“idiosyncratic, unconvincing, and inconsistent, [but] there is no doubt about its power and brilliance. The reader senses immediately that he is in the presence of an original and inquiring mind which has had the ability and courage to depart from the traditional methods of rabbinic study. Neusner articulates a new vision, a new approach, and a new set of methods for understanding [rabbinic texts] … [But his] book is a brilliant failure … [Neusner interprets a rabbinic text] in the light of his own pre-conceived ideas about [its] humanistic value and its existential concerns. His inattention to matters of detail is notorious and disgraceful. A failure, then, but a provocative and immensely valuable one.”

More recently, Neusner published what he calls a “preliminary translation and explanation” of part of the Palestinian Talmud.^f This preliminary translation was reviewed in a 1984 fascicle of the Journal of the American Oriental Society (JAOS) by Professor Saul Lieberman, the 016acknowledged dean of traditional talmudic interpreters.^g Professor Lieberman called his damning review “A Comedy or a Tragedy?” Lieberman was, he wrote, “stunned by [Neusner’s] ignorance of rabbinic Hebrew, of Aramaic grammar, and above all of the subject matter with which he deals.” Lieberman cited instances where Neusner was ignorant of a fact “with which any rabbinic student is familiar,” where Neusner’s “translation is incoherent and has no basis whatever,” where his “translation is pure invention,” where he makes “atrocious errors,” where the translation is “sheer nonsense,” where Neusner “translated the identical word in three different ways, all three of them false,” where Neusner’s translation “created new rabbis, new officers, split some of them into two individuals, and some of them he eliminated.”

Lieberman concluded:

“I have presented only a few examples of our translator’s learning and I conclude with a clear conscience: The right place for our English translation is the waste basket. A preliminary translation is not a mockery translation, not a farce of an important ancient document.”

Yet, Lieberman added, Neusner’s essays in the book “abound in brilliant insights and intelligent questions.”

A principal actor in the drama that was to take place at the plenary session honoring Neusner was Professor Morton Smith of Columbia University, one of Neusner’s teachers.

At the beginning of the session Smith walked with an almost military gait to the front row of the hall, seating himself directly before the lectern. He set down in the aisle beside him a shopping bag containing two cardboard boxes. Smith sat erect and stiff as he listened to the presentations.

After Neusner spoke and two scholarly assessments of his work were presented—one by Dean A. T. Kraabel of Luther College and the other by Professor Anthony J. Saldarini of Boston College—the floor was opened to the audience. Smith’s hand shot up. Professor W. D. Davies of Texas Christian University, who was presiding, promptly recognized Smith, who proceeded to the podium and read the following statement:

“Since I have often and deservedly recommended Professor Neusner’s earlier historical works, so that his reputation reflects to some extent my sponsorship, I now find it my duty to warn you that his translation of the Palestinian Talmud contains many serious mistakes. It cannot be safely used, and had better not be used at all. This was shown by Professor Saul Lieberman in a review now published in the Journal of the American Oriental Society. I have checked Lieberman’s statements against his own copy of Neusner’s translation and have found not only that they are correct, but also that the mistakes he enumerated are, as he declared, only a few of the many he marked. Therefore, the translation cannot be saved by publishing his few ‘corrections’ in a supplement. The translation is a serious misfortune for Jewish studies, because the people who use it will not only repeat Neusner’s mistakes, but make new ones based on the misinformation his work will provide them. Therefore please warn your colleagues, your students, and your librarian. In Lieberman’s words, the place for this translation ‘is the waste basket,’ an opinion with which I completely concur. So that you can see for yourselves that the mistakes are not merely trivialities but often major matters entire textual sources ignored, critically important passages omitted, assertions translated as negations, unknown rabbis invented, and so on—to show you the importance of the mistakes, I have brought Xeroxed copies of Lieberman’s review, and these I shall now pass around in the hope that they may do something to diminish the coming crop of Neusnerisms.”

Smith then descended from the dais, ripped open the cardboard boxes in his shopping bag and, with reviews in hand, began marching up the aisle like a staff sergeant, distributing the reviews to a stunned audience.

Professor Davies asked Smith if he would wait until the end of the session to distribute the reviews. Smith replied that he would not and continued to pass out the reviews.

Davies asked Neusner if he would like to respond. While Smith continued distributing the reviews, Neusner took the podium:

“Things don’t always turn out the way one expects. [A ripple of muffled laughter.] Professor Smith was my teacher and I honor him. He has helped me in difficult times. I honor and respect his criticism, and I am always happy to hear it.”

Then he sat down. Subdued applause flowed through the hall as Smith finished passing out the reviews.

The session was ended without further discussion. But the talk in the halls went on into the night.

Almost 4,000 scholars and laypersons, including a Biblical Archaeology Society contingent, attended the combined annual meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature, the American Academy of Religion and the American Schools of Oriental Research in Chicago last December 8 to 11. This was the largest attendance in the history of the annual meetings. What accounted for the unusually large attendance was not immediately clear. Increased interest in the Bible, the easy accessibility of Chicago and a more convenient time than the usual late December date of the meetings were all possibilities. The facilities of the elegant and beautifully appointed […]