Books in Brief

010

The Land and People Jesus Knew: A Comprehensive Handbook on Life in First-Century Palestine

Written and illustrated by J. Robert Teringo

(Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1985) 263 pp., $24.95

This is a fine, even elegant production in the tradition of the “handbooks” that churches turn to around the time of Christmas pageants.

To understand what I mean, readers need only refer to their church libraries, where they will probably locate A. C. Bouquet, Everyday Life in New Testament Times (1954). Bouquet was long on text, but short on illustrations (pen and ink drawings), nor did he seem to have consulted with any archaeologists of note. Of similar value is Henri Daniel-Rops, Daily Life in the Time of Jesus (1962), which presents the author’s own understanding of ancient texts (but little of archaeology) relating to his subject matter.

On the other hand, one may also find Everyday Life in Bible Times, published by the National Geographic Society in 1968. The editors of this manual, lavishly illustrated in color, consulted freely with such greats as James B. Pritchard and Samuel Noah Kramer, both from the University of Pennsylvania, John A. Wilson of the University of Chicago, G. Ernest Wright of Harvard University, H. W. F. Saggs of the University of Wales, Roland de Vaux of the École Biblique et Archéologique Française in Jerusalem and Emil G. Kraeling of Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University.

Finally, one may find Great People of the Bible and How They Lived, published by the Reader’s Digest Association in 1971. This manual, also lavishly illustrated in color, benefited from expert advice and counsel from some of America’s leading archaeologists and other scholars, including G. Ernest Wright, Vaughn E. Crawford of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, James B. Pritchard, Robert H. Johnston of the Rochester Institute of Technology, Nahum Sarna of Brandeis University, Patrick W. Skehan of the Catholic University of America and Marc H. Tannenbaum of the American Jewish Committee. These last two volumes are a hard act to follow.

There has been an evolution from manuals that stress text to those that stress illustration. The work under review exactly fits this development. The text of Teringo’s The Land and People Jesus Knew is comfortably brief, generally accurate and likely to be read, at least in part, by the Sunday School reader. But the real tour de force of this volume is the hundreds of detailed, sepia-tone illustrations, more than one per page, that Teringo has also produced personally. He is just the one to create such art, for he is associate art editor 011for National Geographic magazine.

Teringo used a group of midrank to senior scholars with whom he doubtless consulted on details of ancient Palestinian archaeology, though only one, Robert L. Hohlfelder of the University of Colorado, is a practicing field archaeologist. My own conclusion about the errors in this text is that they likely result from occasional lapses in consultation or from using dated reference material.

The book is organized into 13 chapters of remarkably comprehensive coverage. The text surveys town and country (the land), daily life, housing, costume, food production and preparation, shepherding, crafts and trades, Jerusalem, temple and synagogue observances, customs (including burial customs), trade and the Roman army.

An excellent map of first-century Palestine appears on page 13. (For some reason Sepphoris and Acco do not appear on the map.) Another clear map of the Roman world of the first century A.D. appears on pages 240–241.

There is a valuable scripture index on pages 258 through 263. Readers looking for an object discussed in a Biblical text may easily find the page from this index. What is missing is an index that would allow the reader to search for general subjects, such as customs, as well as an index to the drawings.

I think it is remarkable that real problems only appear in 14 of Teringo’s 250 drawings. That is an excellent track record. Readers can expect to feel delight and amazement at some of Teringo’s excellent inclusions, such as a typical Palestinian house on pages 40–41, the aerial view of Jerusalem on pages 150–151, the depiction of the grandeur of Herod’s palace on pages 162–163, or better yet the majestic architecture of the courts of the Temple on pages 176–177. Also included are some artistic gems such as the laughing children on page 187, the spare grouping of early Christians on pages 190–191 or the traveler tying his donkey load while he casts a suspicious glance at us on page 224.

This is a book worth having. It is not the last word on the subject, but then no book ever will be. Perhaps this will be one of those endless projects; we can be glad that Robert Teringo has taken it on and we hope that he continues to correct and redraw as new evidence comes from ancient texts and artifacts.

(This book may be purchased at a discount from the BAS mail order bookstore.)

Jerusalem: Rebirth of a City

Martin Gilbert

(Jerusalem: Domino Press, 1985) 238 pp., $25.00

Nineteenth-century Jerusalem was, in many ways, both a reflection of the past and a prophecy of the future. Beneath its narrow streets and among its ancient quarters lay the remains of the city’s 5,000-year-long history. In the hearts and minds of its resident communities were the national and religious aspirations that would transform the city in the 20th century. With Jerusalem: Rebirth of a City, Martin Gilbert, historian and lover of Jerusalem, has provided his readers with some fascinating glimpses of life in Jerusalem during a period of dramatic change. His book skillfully combines firsthand travelers’ reports, anecdotes and historical commentary with a wide-ranging collection of 19th century and more recent photographs to recreate the atmosphere of Jerusalem during the last century.

Jerusalem: Rebirth of a City is in no sense a connected history. Those who seek a more analytical treatment of Jerusalem’s modern transformation can consult such works as A. L. Tibawi’s British Interests in Palestine, 1800–1901 or Yehoshua Ben-Arieh’s Jerusalem in the 19th Century. What Gilbert has attempted here is a more impressionistic rendering of Jerusalem’s people and places. And he has succeeded in drawing a sensitive portrait of the city that will not disappoint either those who seek an introduction to Jerusalem’s modern history or those who already are familiar with the course of Jerusalem’s 19th-century awakening.

Gilbert begins his story in 1838, a year in which, at least superficially, Jerusalem still retained its pre-modern character. Although the city was temporarily under the rule of the pasha of Egypt, Mehmet Ali, its administration remained more or less as it had been established with the Ottoman conquest of 1517. Under the watchful eyes of a small 012military garrison, Jerusalem’s Jewish, Moslem and Christian communities lived in close, if not always harmonious, coexistence. The difficulties of travel to the Holy Land made pilgrimage inaccessible to all but a few outsiders, yet as Gilbert points out, a new type of pilgrim began to appear in Jerusalem in this period. The establishment of the British consulate in the city in 1838 and the arrival, in the same year, of the American Biblical scholar Edward Robinson and the Scottish painter David Roberts were signs of a renewed western interest in Jerusalem that would have far-reaching significance for the city’s future.

With the return of the city to Ottoman rule in the 1840s, the foreign presence and activity in Jerusalem began to intensify. By the end of the decade, not only Great Britain, but also France, Prussia, Austria, Spain and Russia had permanent consuls in the city, and their conflicting national interests injected into the Jerusalem scene the contemporary politics of the Western world. Of the foreign residents, the British continued to be the most active, and Gilbert describes the controversial missionary activities of the London Jews Society among the members of Jerusalem’s Jewish population. Despite the society’s limited success in gaining converts, the British influence was profound. James Finn, who arrived as British consul in 1846, was a tireless advocate of the city’s modernization, and it was he who first encouraged the development of the city beyond its confining walls.

The Crimean War of 1854–1856 brought renewed religious strife to Jerusalem’s Christian communities. France, the official protector of the city’s Catholics, vied with Russia, the patron of the Orthodox, to lay claim to the city’s most important pilgrimage sites and to establish new institutions as well. At the same time, the reaction of the Jewish community to the early British missionary efforts encouraged the founding of the first Jewish hospital in the city and the construction of the new Tiferet Israel synagogue in the Jewish Quarter. It also prompted Sir Moses Montefiore, one of the leaders of British Jewry, to contribute funds to construct two of modern Jerusalem’s most famous landmarks: a windmill and the long, low cottages opposite the city walls called Mishkenot Sha’ananim, “dwellings of delight.” All this activity did not go unrecorded, for as Gilbert observes, the first photographs of the city’s landmarks were taken at this time.

Distinguished visitors soon began to make Jerusalem one of the most important stops on their grand tours of the Near East. Gilbert quotes extensively from the 1862 travel diary of one such visitor, Edward Albert, Prince of Wales, showing how Jerusalem appeared to the refined sensibilities of the future king. Archaeology also became a permanent feature of the Jerusalem scene in this period. Charles Wilson’s survey of the city (1864), the establishment of the Palestine Exploration Fund (1865) and Charles Warren’s pioneering excavations around the Temple Mount (1867–1810) are all described in colorful detail.

By the time of the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and the beginning of regular steamship service to the Middle East, a visit to Jerusalem became practicable for ever greater numbers of Western tourists. The leveling of a carriage road from Jaffa to Jerusalem was just a first step; the increasing flow of western visitors to Jerusalem encouraged the establishment of the first modern hotels in the city and the development of a booming tourist trade. Among the most popular souvenirs brought back from a trip to Jerusalem in this period were the mass-produced landscapes and character studies taken by such prolific photographers as the members of the Beirut-based Bonfils family.^a These views of Jerusalem in the 1870s and 1880s remain one of the most important sources for reconstructing the state of Jerusalem’s monuments in the pre-modern period, and Gilbert includes some of the most famous examples of the work of these Victorian photographers.

With the expansion of all of Jerusalem’s ethnic and religious communities, the ancient city walls could no longer contain all the activity. As a result, suburbs began to ring the Old City: new Jewish residential neighborhoods on the west and northwest, the American Colony and Sheikh Jarrah on the north and various Christian establishments on the slope of the Mount of Olives to the east. The religious conflicts were far from over. Disputes 013over the precise site of Jesus’ crucifixion, burial and resurrection gained new intensity in the 1880s. The Protestant position was championed by General Charles Gordon, who rejected the authenticity of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in favor of the “Garden Tomb” to the north of the city walls. There were also some signs of the conflict that would dominate Jerusalem’s life in the 20th century. The birth of the Zionist movement and the arrival of Jewish refugees from the pogroms in Russia led the Ottoman authorities to impose restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine.

Near the end of the century, the government of Sultan Abdul Hamid began to recognize the strategic and political importance of Jerusalem, and this recognition brought still more changes to the life of the city. In 1892, a railroad line between Jaffa and Jerusalem was officially inaugurated, bringing the city closer to the outside world. In the surrounding countryside, sporadic outbreaks of Bedouin raids and warfare were forcefully subdued by the Ottoman government. And within Jerusalem itself, development went hand in hand with exploration as the antiquities of the developing city were intensively examined by a new Palestine Exploration Fund expedition headed by Frederick Bliss and Archibald Dickie. The changes that Jerusalem had undergone were now too advanced to turn back, and Gilbert concludes his survey in 1898, precisely six decades after his story began.

In 1898, Jerusalem became a focus of international politics on the highest level with the official visit of Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, the recently proclaimed ally of Sultan Abdul Hamid. The officials and people of Jerusalem made every effort to accommodate the arrival of the guest of honor; among the preparations was a breach in the city wall near the Jaffa Gate to accommodate the entry of the imperial carriage. Yet as Gilbert points out, there was another distinguished visitor in the city at the same time: Theodore Herzl, the founder of the modern Zionist movement. Herzl’s private meeting with the Kaiser in Jerusalem did not result in German support for a Jewish return to Palestine, but it clearly marked the direction of Jerusalem’s future as it entered the 20th century. The city was no longer a small, neglected backwater of the Ottoman empire. It had become a bustling commercial and religious center, a focus of great-power conflict and nationalistic claims.

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Since Jerusalem: Rebirth of a City is such an enjoyable reading experience, the few errors that have crept into the text are of little concern. It might be noted, however, in the interest of accuracy, that the Egyptian occupation of Palestine lasted from 1831 to 1840, not just 1836; that the proper name of the founder of modern archaeological excavation in Palestine was William Matthew Flinders Petrie, not W. M. Flinders-Petrie; and that Frederick J. Bliss was not a British archaeologist, but an American pioneer in this field. But these are minor points in an otherwise well-conceived and well-executed book. Jerusalem: Rebirth of a City is recommended both for readers with a previous background in Jerusalem’s 19th-century history and for those seeking an introduction to the events and personalities that helped determine the character of the Holy City as it exists to the present.

Gods and the One God, Library of Early Christianity, Volume 1

Robert M. Grant

(Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986) 207 pp., $18.95

For some Christians the notion that the language and the imagery that they use in speaking about God might ultimately derive from a non-Christian cultural setting or even from non-Christian religious sources is quite intolerable. Their interest is in stressing the uniqueness of Christianity, and they sometimes push this even to the point of separating its development altogether from other religions and religious movements. Yet “incarnation,” i.e., the genuine “enfleshment” or real humanity of Jesus, is a fundamental term in Christian usage. And if Jesus is allowed to be fully human (as is stressed, for example, in the Letter to the Hebrews), cannot the Christian revelation as a whole be allowed to be “incarnate” in the midst of human cultural life and development?

Although he does not state this in so many words, this is the precise point that Robert Grant is making in this inaugural volume of the Library of Early Christianity series. Indeed, he says more. The God-language and God-imagery used by early Christians were at times directly influenced by the pagan religious environment in which these men and women lived and against which they struggled.

Grant’s book begins by recalling a series of vivid encounters between nascent Christians and the pagan environment of the Roman world described in the Acts of the Apostles. Among other things, this late first-century text offers (idealized) accounts of the Apostle Paul’s reflections on the religious life of Athens (Acts 17); of an almost comic effort on the part of crowds at Lystra to deify Paul and Barnabas (Acts 14); and of the riot incited by the silversmiths at Ephesus, whose trade in images of Artemis was being threatened by the new movement Paul was promoting (Acts 19). The point is clear: Christianity from its very inception had to move in a world that was, so to say, “full of gods.” And Grant takes time in chapters 2, 4 and 5 to give us something of the flavor of this religious environment.

To deal with such a milieu, early Christian preachers and teachers had to make use of language that would be intelligible in such a context and gradually had to fix their own positions against competing philosophies and religious movements. While Grant emphatically rejects the position that Christian theology simply became in time a sort of Platonism “with a faint Palestinian accent” (p. 172), he does insist upon the continual influence of pagan religious language upon the developing Christian understanding of God.

Much of this book is a thumbnail sketch of this development of Christian theology from the early first century through the third and early fourth centuries. The usual topics of patristic surveys and handbooks are taken up (God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Trinity and the development of Christian creedal statements), but always from the perspective of the influence of pagan philosophy and religious imagery upon this unfolding picture.

Especially interesting is a chapter, “The Cosmic Christ,” in which Grant sets the biblical and patristic images of Christ as a cosmic figure responsible for the creation and preservation of the universe side by side with similar pagan descriptions of their gods and divine heroes. Here as elsewhere Grant rejects crude theories of “borrowing” as sufficient explanation for such imagery. Rather, people in a common cultural setting will share common hopes and expectations with respect to the divine beings they worship.

Although Grant’s previous publications demonstrate his penetrating knowledge of many aspects of biblical and patristic Christianity, it is not surprising that in such a sweeping synthesis of Roman-period religious phenomena some outmoded theories are presented. To describe, for example, the Egyptian god Sarapis as “invented” by the early 055Ptolemaic rulers is not satisfactory. (A Hellenistic cult image for an indigenous Egyptian god is almost surely the “invention” described in ancient texts.) In general, Grant is on surer ground when he describes Christian as opposed to pagan phenomena. Furthermore, his overall depiction of pagan phenomena is overly influenced by sophisticated ancient philosophical sources and not enough by the inscriptions and archaeological data that attest to the powerful strength of popular religion. This approach makes it somewhat more difficult to take Greco-Roman paganism all that seriously. For many centuries, however, such religious forms and practices certainly did put many people in contact with the divine.

We are told in the general introduction that this book is intended for college and seminary students. Grant’s treatment of the material is certainly solid and basic enough, but in my judgment there are not enough connecting paragraphs and explanatory sections to make all of the data he presents fully intelligible to such an audience.

Such criticisms aside, however, this book remains a quite interesting and often perceptive study of the development of the Christian understanding of God. In no way is Grant alone in emphasizing the impact of pagan “theology” upon the development of Christianity in Roman times. Recently, in a fascinating book in which he described a series of pagan comments and perspectives upon nascent Christianity, Robert Wilken made precisely the same point (The Christians as the Romans Saw Them [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984]—see my review in Books in Brief, BAR 11:05). Christian theology did not develop in a hermetically sealed vacuum jar but in contact with and even in dialogue with the powerful imagery and language of traditional Greco-Roman religion.

Today’s Handbook of Bible Times and Customs

William L. Coleman

(Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1984), 303 pp, $11.95

Today’s Handbook of Bible Times and Customs is not exactly what it purports to be. Coleman generally uses “Bible times” to refer to New Testament times, obviously the period of his greatest interest. He refers to earlier Israelite times and customs only as they illuminate New Testament references.

For example, in the chapter on food and drink, Coleman lists the primary uses of salt in the ancient world and then cites and explains several Old Testament references to salt. Next he identifies the most likely source of salt in Israel, and comments on how Jesus and Paul mentioned salt to illustrate their teaching.

This book is presented as “an authoritative and reliable” reference work that pastors and Bible teachers can use with confidence, we are told, because it incorporates “all the recent archaeological findings” (my italics). However, this handbook hardly draws upon all the recent archaeological findings. In fact, the text contains little archaeological information.

In the caption to an illustration of oil lamps a reference to the Bronze and Iron Ages appears but these terms are not explained, nor are we given a chronology of Bible times.

Indicating how objects familiar to Jesus and the Apostles were used appears to be of major interest to Coleman. The result is a book containing much information that is useful to lay readers and pastors, as well as many interesting observations. However, these are seldom based on archaeology as much as on scriptural references.

Occasionally, the information given is open to question. For example, we are told that baking bread was one of the activities Biblical women engaged in on the flat roofs of their homes. That is hardly likely, as can be seen from the illustration of an outdoor oven on page 47. Ovens were large, heavy, clay constructions and were used in courtyards rather than on roofs. On page 31 we are told that despite the scattering of the Jews starting in 586 B.C., “most remained in Palestine until the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70 and the expulsion of the Jews from Jerusalem in A.D. 135.” Archaeological evidence, however, shows that the population in Judah became seriously depleted after 586 B.C. The region slowly recovered its population base with the return of some Jews in the Persian era.

I was surprised to find that ancient shoes were made from camel, jackal or hyena hide (p. 55). I can imagine the difficulty that Simon the tanner, Peter’s host in Jaffa, had in obtaining enough jackal and hyena hides to keep his business going. Another interesting piece of information has to do with old age:

“It probably was not threatening to most Jews to have one’s hair turn white. Some were youth conscious, and went to extremes to hide wrinkles, gray hair and bulging midriffs, but most accepted aging as a mark of dignity” (p. 114).

Perhaps this statement could be made of some individuals in any culture in any time, but it sounds as if the author is reading a major contemporary concern back into Biblical times.

However, despite a modicum of misinformation and occasional explanations based on 056what appear to be the author’s conjectures, this book has value for its intended audience, particularly for laypeople. This is not a book for archaeology buffs.

The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth

John M. Allegro

(Buffalo: Prometheus, 1984) 252 pp., $19.95

John Allegro claims a significant scholarly distinction: Of all those on the original team assigned in the mid-1950s to publish the Dead Sea Scrolls, only he has completed the task. However, the quality of Allegro’s publication has been severely criticized. He is notorious as one of the most irresponsible of the sensationalists who have tried to popularize unfounded, would-be shocking theories about the scrolls. He fully lives up to his reputation with this book, which was originally published in England by Westbridge Books in 1979.

The scrolls refer in several places to a figure called the “Teacher of Righteousness,” who played a formative role in the early history of the community. Allegro wants to claim that this figure was the real historical Jesus. His arguments are of the flimsiest kind. A Qumran document that is a commentary, or pesher, on the Book of Nahum refers to a “Lion of Wrath” who hangs men alive. This passage has been generally recognized as a reference to King Alexander Jannaeus, who crucified a number of Pharisees about 88 B.C. There is no evidence anywhere that any Essene leader was among those crucified, but Allegro assumes that “the events would not have been recalled so pointedly in the Essene commentary if the Essenes’ own leader had not been involved” (p. 41). Having thus “established” that the Teacher was crucified, Allegro proceeds to identify him with Jesus. A key element in his argument is a passage in the Sybilline Oracles, book 5, a work composed in Egypt, in Greek, about 100 A.D. Pages 257–259 read as follows: “There will again be one exceptional man from the sky (who stretched out his hands on the fruitful wood) the best of the Hebrews, who will one day cause the sun to stand. … ” (The line cited in parentheses is usually regarded as a Christian interpolation.) Since the one who caused the sun to stand was Joshua, and Joshua is the Hebrew form of Jesus, Allegro concludes that the man in question is Jesus. He also assumes, with no evidence whatsoever, that the figure in the Sybilline Oracles is the Essene leader. Allegro’s identification of the Teacher with Jesus depends then on the idiosyncrasy of his own fantasy.

According to Allegro, Jesus was an Essene teacher who was rapidly mythicized after his death. The most accurate information about him is found in the writings of John and Paul. The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) are later, mythical elaborations.

But Allegro mainly draws at random on Gnostic material, which is presumed to come from a movement continuous with the Essenes. The Joshua/Jesus cycle, represented by the Synoptics, was, we are told, “a piece of propaganda to deflect from the nascent movement the suspicion and hatred of the Roman civic authorities. It brought the Essene ‘Joshua/Jesus’ more or less up to date, and placed him in the historical circumstances of the first century, naming names, citing places and authorities, and, above all, giving this Jewish prophet … an improbable pro-Roman stance … ” (pp. 159–160). In short, the relatively realistic Gospel accounts are dismissed as historically worthless, while the few obscure references to the Teacher become the 057foundation for a fantastic structure. This structure is amply embellished with citations from Epiphanius, a fourth-century bishop, and others on sexually deviant rituals alleged to have been practiced by Gnostic sects. These embellishments highlight the real function of Allegro’s book—to titillate readers who are both prurient and ignorant.

Allegro gives his book some claim to scholarly importance by appending “a hitherto unpublished document” 4 Q Therapeia. This is a fragment of ten lines that is illegible in some passages in Allegro’s published photograph. Allegro interprets it as “a clinical report on some aspects of Essene therapy” (p. 7) that mentions the names Caiaphas (of which the initial k, on Allegro’s own admission, looks like a b) and Peter (which is broken between two lines). One of the remedies is translated as “the smegma (found) in the sheaths of the penes of kids” (bnwbn bsry gdy) but this choice of translation is not discussed in the notes. The fragment is enigmatic and may well testify to some superstitious (by our standards) practices at Qumran, but it is difficult to have any confidence in Allegro’s interpretation.

In the preface to the American edition, Allegro reports that his English publisher demanded the exclusion of the controversial letter of Clement published by Morton Smith and reprinted here as Appendix 2. This episode provides some comic relief in the whole Allegro enterprise. How could a publisher have been offended by Smith’s “secret gospel” and still have thought Allegro’s book fit to publish?

Two Films Reviewed

Explorers of the Holy Land

Produced by Idan Films, Israel (1984)

27 minutes, color, 16mm, sound; rental: $14.00

Secrets of Jerusalem

Produced by Israel Film Service, Israel (1980)

27 minutes, color, 16mm, sound; rental: $14.00

Both films distributed by Alden Films, 7820 20th Avenue, Brooklyn, New York 11214–1293; (718) 331–1045

These two recently released 16 mm films, produced in Israel, stand out because they are so much better than most of the old mainstays. Well-photographed and informative, either one could be put to good use by a creative teacher.

Explorers of the Holy Land presents a fast-paced, coherent survey of 19th-century exploration. Included are vignettes about the little-known German doctor and explorer, Ulrich Seetzen, the first European to scale Masada, and about the American naval lieutenant William F. Lynch, who charted the course of the Jordan River and investigated the Dead Sea. The film also includes the famous Charles Warren, whose 27 shafts and many tunnels around the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City yielded a view of ancient Jerusalem that even today’s archaeologists cannot duplicate, and Claude Conder and Horatio Kitchener, leaders of the British Palestine Exploration Fund’s survey of Western Palestine, who meticulously mapped every historic site and wadi from Tyre to Gaza.

The film relies on 19th-century etchings and lithographs, including some lovely colored prints by David Roberts, to provide the atmosphere of those times. In addition, each explorer is played by an actor seen in some beautiful on-location shots in Israel. While the acting is occasionally rather wooden, these scenes add needed movement between the static shots of graphic art. An informative narrative ties the film together.

Secrets of Jerusalem concentrates on recent archaeological discoveries in Jerusalem, moving rapidly—sometimes too rapidly—from site to site showing some of the riches of the past decade of work. Several well-known archaeologists appear on-site speaking in Hebrew with an English voice-over.

Yigal Shiloh takes a break from his ongoing dig at the City of David to show Warren’s freshly cleared shaft and the important bullae, inscribed clay document seals, discovered nearby. Gabriel Barkay, in a charming sequence, visits an Arab home in Silwan whose back room is an eighth-century B.C. burial cave. Hillel Geva displays a handful of arrowheads, evidence of the Babylonian siege, found in the Jewish Quarter and Meir Ben-Dov walks the viewer up the Herodian staircase outside the southern wall of the Old City and through the long tunnel dug along the western face of the Herodian Temple Mount wall. In quick and often bewildering succession, the film treats the viewer to shots of many important sites: the Cardo, the Burnt House, the Israelite Wall and Tower in the Jewish Quarter; the stepped stone structure, Warren’s shaft, Hezekiah’s tunnel and the important bulla of “Gemaryahu son of Shaphan” from the City of David, as well as the magnificent Israelite tombs at the monastery of St. Etienne.

Secrets of Jerusalem is a rich resource but its “secrets” are best unlocked by viewing the film in conjunction with a teacher familiar with Jerusalem archaeology. The film itself moves too swiftly for full comprehension by the unprepared viewer.

The Land and People Jesus Knew: A Comprehensive Handbook on Life in First-Century Palestine

Written and illustrated by J. Robert Teringo

(Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1985) 263 pp., $24.95