Inside BAR

004

Over 18 months ago, deputy managing editor Steve Feldman, who doubles as keeper of the calendar, notified us that our 20th anniversary was fast approaching (our first issue was dated March 1975), and that if we wanted to do something special, we had better get a move on.

What you hold in your hand has been in the planning stage since Steve called us together to make that announcement.

Actually, what you hold in your hand is only about half of what we have planned. It turned out that our creative energies produced more special pieces than we could stuff into one issue. So we decided to prolong the celebration, like an old-fashioned wedding.

We are going to have our 20th anniversary in two issues! This issue is part one, and the next issue will be part two.

It has been enormously exhilarating putting this together. We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed producing it. Altogether it has a pace somewhat different from our usual issue.

Of course there are some lighthearted things, like BAR editor and founder Hershel Shanks’s history of BAR (“A Short History Of BAR”). But we also wanted our 20th anniversary to be memorable for its serious contribution to what we are all about. So you will find two specially commissioned articles that are in some ways at the opposite ends of the spectrum. The first is by one of the world’s greatest Egyptologists and Biblical scholars, Kenneth Kitchen of the University of Liverpool, England (“The Patriarchal Age: Myth or History?”). We asked Kitchen to think afresh about an issue that has long plagued Biblical studies: Was there really a patriarchal age, or were the patriarchal narratives made up hundreds of years after Israel became a nation in order to give her a legendary past? As is well known, earlier attempts to locate a patriarchal age—led by the foremost Biblical archaeologist of his day, William Foxwell Albright—ended in failure.

Surprisingly, Kitchen comes up with an extraordinary demonstration that certain elements in the patriarchal stories are found in the early second millennium B.C.—and at no other time. His highly sophisticated analysis shows that at least some elements in the patriarchal narratives are time-specific. And the specific times are approximately when the Bible says they occurred.

For an entirely different kind of analysis, we turned to a brilliant young Israeli scholar who few people outside the academy are familiar with and whose last name few Americans will find easy to pronounce—Shlomo Bunimovitz. We asked Bunimovitz, who teaches at Tel Aviv University and digs at Beth Shemesh, to discuss the new perspectives in archaeological theory that are opening up fresh questions and answers in our effort to understand the ancient world (“How Mute Stones Speak: Interpreting What We Dig Up”). The result is an extraordinarily illuminating discussion of the history of archaeological interpretation—how we know what we know—and how we can now learn more if we look in new ways.

For those who fear that an anniversary celebration will be all froth, let them start with Kitchen and Bunimovitz!

005

Then for something different from our usual fare, we bring you a special report on the little-known archaeological situation in Saudi Arabia, written, we are proud to say, by Hamid Abu Duruk, the director of the Department of Antiquities (“A BAR Special Report: Archaeology Thriving in Saudi Arabia”).

The frosting on the anniversary cake, of course, is our 20th Anniversary Reader Survey (“Readers Speak Out”). Over 8,000 readers responded, almost overwhelming our tabulation capabilities. Some of the answers will surprise you, some are quite expected, some comforting and some perhaps disturbing.

The rest of the issue will be familiar, like an old friend. Our Queries & Comments section, as usual, contains some no-holds-barred debates and powerful rejoinders, but also an unusually important statement by one of the leading New Testament scholars of our time, Harvard’s Helmut Koester. Another great Biblical scholar, David Noel Freedman, editor of the Anchor Bible Series and of the Anchor Bible Dictionary, and graduate student Jeffrey C. Geoghegan, join the ongoing debate over the “House of David” inscription from Dan (“‘House of David’ Is There!”).

Here, too, is Shanks’s eleventh annual report on the extravaganza known as the Annual Meeting—held last November in Chicago (“Long-Winded in the Windy City”). And three exciting new books on the Dead Sea Scrolls are reviewed—one is reviewed by Oxford don Geza Vermes and another by New York Times writer John Noble Wilford. All in all, a very special issue. And what’s coming next time? Just a hint: Ten Great Biblical Archaeology Finds. Subscribers write about how BAR has touched their lives. And fourteen leading scholars talk about Biblical archaeology’s greatest achievement, its greatest failure and its greatest challenge. And much, much more. See you then.

Coming in May/June: BAR’s 20th Anniversary, Part 2

Highlights include:

• Leading scholars on Biblical archaeology’s greatest achievement, greatest failure and greatest challenge
• Subscribers tell how BAR changed their life
• Biblical archaeology’s ten most important finds

Over 18 months ago, deputy managing editor Steve Feldman, who doubles as keeper of the calendar, notified us that our 20th anniversary was fast approaching (our first issue was dated March 1975), and that if we wanted to do something special, we had better get a move on. What you hold in your hand has been in the planning stage since Steve called us together to make that announcement. Actually, what you hold in your hand is only about half of what we have planned. It turned out that our creative energies produced more special pieces than we could […]