Inside BAR

004

The Philistines have a three-millennia-old reputation for being a society of warlike pagans, devoid of aesthetic or intellectual values. But the world’s leading expert on the Philistines, Israeli archaeologist Trude Dothan, is convinced that this reputation is undeserved. In “What We Know About the Philistines,” Dothan describes stunning archaeological evidence of the distinctive artistic repertoire that made the Philistine material culture far more colorful and elaborately decorated than others in Canaan in the 12th and 11th centuries B.C.

Dothan, a native of Jerusalem, was a student at Hebrew University in 1948 when the War of Independence began and she left to serve in the Israeli army. After the war, she completed her education at Hebrew University and joined its faculty of archaeology in 1960 where she recently served as director of the school’s Institute of Archaeology.

Dothan has lectured throughout the world and has excavated at Hazor, En Gedi, Tel Qasile, Tell ‘Aitun, and at Athienou in Cyprus. She is presently director of the Deir el-Balah project and codirector of the Israeli American excavations at Tel Miqneh (Muqanna), probably the Philistine city of Ekron.

After 20 years of excavation and research, Dothan has just published The Philistines and Their Material Culture, reviewed in this issue in Books in Brief. This work is the only comprehensive study of Philistine culture from textual and archaeological sources.

Dothan’s husband, Moshe, also a distinguished Israeli archaeologist, has directed numerous excavations in Israel, including Ashdod, one of the most significant Philistine sites ever uncovered.

Three shorter comments accompany Dothan’s article—“Philistines in the Patriarchal Age,” “Did the Philistines Write?” and “Philistines After David,” all by Robert R. Stieglitz. These interpretive comments deal briefly with three puzzling questions about the Philistines. Stieglitz is chairman of the Department of Hebraic Studies at Rutgers University. His many publications include articles on Ugaritic and on the languages of the Minoans and the Philistines. Stieglitz wrote his doctoral dissertation on “Maritime Activity in Ancient Israel,” an interest he brings to this issue in his contributions about the Philistines, one of the Sea Peoples.

Also in this issue is a review-article, “John Bright’s New Revision of A History of Israel.” Since its first publication 23 years ago, Bright’s History of Israel has been a major influence on Biblical scholarship. In this review-article on the new third edition, Norman K. Gottwald applies his distinct sociological perspective to Bright’s historical work. Gottwald previously published a fascinating article in BAR entitled “Were the Early Israelites Pastoral Nomads?” BAR 04:02, which is written from the same perspective as his review-article in this issue. Gottwald, a Fulbright scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1960 and a former Baptist minister, is presently professor of Biblical Studies at New York Theological Seminary. He has lectured at numerous universities, including Princeton, Brown, Brandeis and the Universities of California at Santa Cruz and Berkeley. He is the author of The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion-of Liberated Israel 1250–1050 B.C.E. (Orbis Books: Maryknoll, N.Y., 1979).

In 1977, archaeologist Gershon Edelstein, a senior excavator for Israel’s Department of Antiquities, was conducting salvage excavations at Mevasseret Yerushalayim, a settlement in the Judean Hills near Jerusalem. He soon became more fascinated with the site’s agricultural terraces on the hillside than with the settlement at its summit. Since then Edelstein and his colleague, Shimon Gibson, have focused their attention on the network of farms that once surrounded and supplied ancient Jerusalem. Their article, “Ancient Jerusalem’s Rural Food Basket,” describes the considerable planning and engineering that went into creating these terraced farms, some of which have been in use for millennia.

Edelstein, born in Argentina, and Gibson, born in England, have both lived in Israel for many years.

Oded Borowski, a frequent contributor to BAR Jr., has come up with another winner in “Sherds, Sherds, Sherds,” where he describes the importance of potsherds—pieces of broken pottery, strewn profusely over most archaeological sites, that seem so ordinary and insignificant. Borowski teaches at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

Following up on “Even Briefer,” premiered in our last issue, BAR is inaugurating another new department, “Scholars’ Corner.” Many of our readers do not have access to the scholarly journals nor time enough to read and understand them. “Scholars’ Corner” will be the place where our readers can enjoy abstracts of especially interesting articles which have recently appeared in scholarly journals. In this issue we inaugurate this new department with “Has Jerusalem’s Millo Been Found?” and “Dating the Cardo Maximus in Jerusalem.”

Also in this issue is the first announcement of BAR’s Biblical Archaeology Essay Contest. The winner receives a $1500 traveling fellowship to Jerusalem. If you’re an amateur archaeologist or Biblical scholar, you may win the opportunity to experience Biblical history where it occurred, in the land of Israel.