Queries & Comments

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Editor Relieved by Half

I will re-subscribe if you can get Editor Shanks to reduce his “contributions” to the magazine by 50 percent!

It’s a deal.—Ed.

Can’t Do Without It

I have a very limited income and cannot really afford to spend much on reading material, but I find that BAR gives me more satisfaction than any other magazine. Sometimes I think that there won’t be any more really interesting “digs” in BAR, but then I get an issue that has some real treasures, and I decide I just can’t do without it.

Where Is BAR Coming From?

With all the papers I read each day, I dread seeing my issue of BAR in the mail. Seeing it, and knowing it may be months before I will get a chance to read it, frustrates me. One of my worst fears in life is to die before I’m caught up with my reading.

Even after subscribing for several years, however, I remain unable to comprehend BAR’s philosophical point of view. When I read the articles and stories, I think I am reading an interpretation resulting from an archaeological and scientific process that relies on the available evidence. Yet reading the letters and advertisements, you would think this is a magazine presenting evidence of supernatural powers and a process to discover truth that relies on faith. Am I missing something?

Silwan

Racist Shanks Wins Tour of Silwan

I was shocked and outraged by the blatant racism expressed in Hershel Shanks’s article, “The Tombs of Silwan,” BAR 20:03. What gives Mr. Shanks the right to slander the population of an entire neighborhood in Jerusalem, and what place does the perpetuation of racial stereotypes of Arabs have in a magazine that is supposed to be devoted to archaeology and the edification of the reader?

To depict the people of Silwan as filthy, inhospitable, unscrupulous, etc., as Mr. Shanks does is outrageous. Until recently, I lived in Jerusalem for two years as the United Methodist Liaison in Jerusalem. I visited Silwan on numerous occasions. I found the people there to be exceptionally hospitable, friendly and warm. The neighborhood is a poor one, to be sure, but almost without exception, the homes of the people are meticulously tidy and clean. If Mr. Shanks had a different experience during his foray there, perhaps it is because he set out with a jaundiced disposition toward the people. Certainly, to invoke the comments of British archaeologists of the 19th century does little to lend credibility to Mr. Shanks’s perception. Would it be considered appropriate if a writer made such comments about the people of Mea Shearim [the ultra-Orthodox Jewish of Jerusalem—Ed.]? I hope not. That neighborhood does not have a reputation for hospitality either, but reputations are frequently based on prejudice.

Not too long ago, Mr. Shanks led a crusade against the anti-Semitism of a well-known Harvard scholar. Surely, we should be vigilant against broad, negative generalizations about people. But I would hope that you would be every bit as concerned about Mr. Shanks’s racism as you are about anyone else’s anti-Semitism.

One of the most pleasurable components of BAR is the letters from readers. I suspect that these comments are screened and I would bet that this one won’t find its way into print. If I lose this bet, I will be happy to take Mr. Shanks on a personal tour of Silwan to meet and visit with some of the residents there. I am sure he would come away with a different impression.

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Finding a Wife for the Royal Steward

Regarding the Royal Steward lintel inscription (“The Tombs of Silwan,” BAR 20:03), you rightly discuss the difficulty of the word amah—the slave-wife or similar who was buried with the Royal Steward.

I am surprised that the recently deceased Nahman Avigad and those after him read the word as htma (“his amah”). The leg on the letter mem is quite insignificant: On the transcription the paleo-Hebrew leg looks quite clear as , whereas if you look at the original in the Palestine Room of the British Museum it could easily be read as , without the leg (which is just a small scratch in the very rough stone surface). In that case the word, in square letters, would be htca, that is, ishta, “his wife.” There would then be no problem. The sepulchre contained the bones of the Royal Steward and those “of his wife.”

André Lemaire replies:

Mr. Rosenberg is both wrong and right. He is wrong paleographically, but his interretation is right.

I have examined several pictures of the inscription and a squeeze made by Charles Clermont-Ganneau in the 19th century when the inscription was still in situ. Although it is true that the mem is not among the clearest letters, the reading is almost certain: ’MTH, not ’SðTH. For the letter in question to be a Sð, it would have to be rotated nearly a quarter turn counter-clockwise.

However, in this instance ’MTH may well mean wife. True, in ancient Hebrew, it generally means “his maidservant,” that is, a person of lower status, and, true, it could be used for a “slave-wife,” but in this context it could also mean wife. As is often the case, context is everything. At this time, the husband was generally called ba‘al, meaning lord or master. (Compare Hosea 2:18: “You will call me ‘my husband’ [ishi] and no more ‘my master’[ba‘ali].”) Similarly, a wife speaking to her husband used the deprecating expression, “your servant” (See 1 Kings 1:13, where the prophet Nathan tells Bathsheba to go to her husband King David and say: “Did you not swear unto your servant [‘amath-ha].”) This is the same word that appears in the tomb inscription (The absolute form ’MH [amah] is the basic form that becomes ’MTH [amtah] with a possessive suffix.)

For other indications that a wife addressed her husband as your servant or your maidservant, compare 1 Samuel 25:41 016and Ruth 3:9.

This same designation appears to have been used on some Hebrew seals. Although the wife is generally called ’SðT, wife, of her husband, during the Persian period we have the seal of Shelomit who is designated ’MT of Elnatan, the Gove[rnor].” Just as in the tomb inscription, Shelomit is probably the wife of the governor. The same thing appears on several Ammonite seals where we find ’MT, but never ’SðT.

Thus Mr. Rosenberg is correct in suggesting that the woman in the inscription is probably the Royal Steward’s wife.

Yahweh and the Sun

Is There a God, and What Are We Doing About It?

I enjoy reading BAR. It’s relaxing, kind of like reading 1001 Nights or a good yarn. For instance, “Was Yahweh Worshiped as the Sun?” by J. Glen Taylor (BAR 20:03) made me “see” the gizmo shown as Adam and Eve playing in the garden of Eden with their pet animals—she with her lion friends and Adam, not with a bull/horse, but with his favorite poodle.

So-called “science” has reached the pinnacle of over-stretched imagination, which results only in something new and different.The true meaning of religion lies in asking, is there a God and what are we doing about it, and not in counting the number of angels (asherah) dancing on a pinhead.

No Surprise

J. Glen Taylor’s article examining the question of Israel’s God having a consort or being “worshiped as the sun” is informative and interesting, but for even a casual Bible student the issues raised hardly depend on an archaeologist for confirmation.

If there is a common subject in the Old Testament, it is the apostasy of the Hebrews from the pure, original faith and practices imparted by revelation. Prophet after prophet berated them for these departures, so can there be much doubt that the corruptions and changes (and worse), documented by archaeologists, actually existed?

J. Glen Taylor replies:

I agree that confirmation of the Israelites’ involvement with idolatry should come as no surprise to Bible readers. Curiously, however, at least one scholar (Jeffrey Tigay, in his book You Shall Have No Other Gods [Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1986]) has argued on the basis of the high frequency of personal names that contain as an element the name Yahweh (and not some other deity) that the prophets grossly exaggerated their claims concerning Israel’s flirtation with other deities. As Mr. Rimmer implies, this is hard to reconcile with the archaeological evidence concerning Yahweh and his asherah and Yahweh and the sun!

If there is any surprise in my article, it is perhaps the implication that sun-worship had become a part of Yahweh worship rather than something the Israelites flirted with in addition to their involvement with Yahweh. No wonder many of the prophets were so upset! (By the way, this helps to explain why there are so many personal names with Yahweh and so few with other deities; often, so it seems, the worship of other deities was somehow incorporated into the matrix of Yahweh worship, which always clearly dominated in ancient Israel.)

Did the Taanach Stand Contain a Flame?

J. Glen Taylor explores once again the fascinating imagery of the four-tiered cult stand from Taanach.

I have a layman’s suggestion for the interpretation of the enigmatic “vacant” space in tier three, which by his analysis is meant as a representation of Yahweh as an invisible presence. I think he might consider an alternative: Through the opening in the cult stand, would not a flame within the stand have been visible? If so, it suggests references to Yahweh as a fire god in, for instance, Exodus 13:21, where the God of Israel is represented by a “pillar of fire.” A flame would also echo the imagery suggested by the sun in tier one.

J. Glen Taylor replies:

The suggestion of Mr. Kase is insightful and indeed plausible but for one major problem. The excavator, Paul Lapp, stated, “There is absolutely no trace of smoke or burning to be associated with its use” (“The 1968 Excavations at Tell Ta’anek,” BASOR 195 [October 1969], p. 44). For this reason, he refused to call the stand an incense stand, choosing rather the more general designation cult stand. Unfortunately for Mr. Kase, we must rule out any notion of flames burning within the stand. A good suggestion nonetheless!

And the Twain Shall Never Meet

J. Glen Taylor (BAR 20:03) writes, “Further, Solomon’s Temple was oriented to the east.” It can equally be said that it was oriented to the west. (Solomon’s Temple was aligned 6 degrees south of west. See Asher S. Kaufman, “Where the Ancient Temple of Jerusalem Stood,” BAR 09:02.)

Solomon’s Temple was designed after the Tent of Meeting in the wilderness. We are informed of the latter: “As for the overlapping excess of the cloths of the tent, the extra half-cloth shall overlap the back of the tabernacle” (Exodus 26:12). The rear of the Tabernacle was thus in the west, since the entrance was in the east. The people standing to the east of the Tent of Meeting faced west, as a negation of the sun cult. Moreover, the Holy of Holies, symbolic of the Divine Presence, was situated in the western part of the Tent of Meeting to emphasize this.

J. Glen Taylor replies:

I am honored by the interest of Mr. Kaufman, who I know will plod patiently through the detailed remarks and mathematical charts relevant to the orientation of Solomon’s Temple to be found in my book Yahweh and the Sun (JSOT Press, 1993). Although we differ on how archaeology might best be used to address the problem of orientation, there are many points where we agree. For example, we agree that the design of the Solomonic Temple, whether oriented west or east (I certainly prefer to think in terms of the latter), was not conducive to any type of sun cult that identified the deity directly with the sun (after all, Yahweh dwelt in darkness in the Temple and, as Mr. Kaufman notes, worshipers faced westwards). In fact, I believe that the Temple was built in part as a corrective to a traditional practice attested most clearly in Ezekiel 8:16–17. There several priests are said to have turned their backs to the Temple and faced the sun (which they naively identified with Yahweh). Even if Mr. Kaufman is right that we should think equally of the Temple facing westwards, there could still have been the temptation to turn one’s back on the Temple and to worship Yahweh as the setting sun. Some scholars have argued that it was with a view to preventing this very thing that large structures are said to lie to the west of the Temple in both 1 Chronicles 26:18 and Ezekiel 41:12 (in the latter passage the reference is to Ezekiel’s visionary Temple). This is not to suggest that solar elements played no part in the Temple cult (for example, the sun entering the Temple might have complemented Israel’s understanding of the presence of the glory of the Lord), but to suggest rather that the Temple clearly helped to keep anything like a cult of Aten from taking root in Israel. My thanks to Mr. Kaufman for his input.

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Fishing in the Sahara Desert

J. Glen Taylor’s “Was Yahweh Worshiped as the Sun?” is a good example of stretching a few isolated facts to the point they recoil to knock one off his rocker. It may well be true that many Israelites perceived God as symbolized by the sun and as having a consort or wife, as the article concludes. After all, many of the Israelites worshiped a golden calf while Moses was receiving from God the law that forbade image worship.

But to infer that such perception, or misperception, of God was congruent with Biblical expressions such as “Lord of hosts” who “dwells among the cherubim” (1 Samuel 4:4; 2 Samuel 6:2) is like trying to fish in the middle of the Sahara desert. And to infer that obviously metaphorical expressions, like those found in Deuteronomy 33:2 and in Psalm 80, provide Biblical support for the concept of God’s identification with the sun and stars runs counter to every characterization of God in the Bible.

As Mr. Taylor observed, many Israelites did include icons representing God in their worship. But there is no justification for him to assume that God-inspired writers of Scripture (2 Timothy 3:16) contributed to such misconceptions of God or to perversions of their worship. Mr. Taylor’s weak acknowledgement that “Biblical writers did not ever explicitly condone (such practice)” grossly understates the fact of the matter. Biblical writers, being directed by God Himself, condemned such religion.

J. Glen Taylor replies:

I am grateful for the interest Mr. Hunter has shown in my article. Overall, he seems to agree with most of my conclusions. Concerning where we differ, as I’m sure he will appreciate, it is not possible (or even desirable) to include all of one’s evidence, especially of a more technical kind, in a short article directed at a popular audience. For this reason, I referred the reader, at the end of my article, to a lengthy scholarly monograph I recently wrote on the subject. There Mr. Hunter and others will find a lengthy discussion of some 45 separate lines of evidence bearing on the topic, including the expression “Yahweh of Hosts” and whether Deuteronomy 33:2 and Psalm 80 use merely metaphorical language to describe Yahweh. The topics include, for example, Psalm 104 (which is related to the great Egyptian “Hymn to Aten”) and the famous lmlk jar handles (which bear solar symbols as the royal emblem of the kingdom of Judah). Mr. Hunter may not agree with all of my conclusions, but I am quite sure that he will be reassured by the fact that I have not based them on “a few isolated facts.” Finally, I leave it to the reader to judge whether my statement that the Biblical writers “did not ever explicitly condone (such practices)” is “weak acknowledgement.” I certainly did not intend it to be understood that way.

How Yahweh Was Pronounced

Ya done it again! In a footnote to J. Glen Taylor’s article (“Was Yahweh Worshiped as the Sun?” BAR 20:03), you say:

“No one knows how YHWH was pronounced, but it is usually vocalized as Yahweh.”

This, despite the fact that you had published my letter, “How was the Tetragrammaton Pronounced?” (Queries & Comments, BAR 11:04), in which I gave the epigraphic and linguistic evidence in support of the pronunciation “Yahweh” (I’m still getting correspondence from all over the world in response to that letter).

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First, I mentioned the evidence from Greek transcriptions in religious papyri found in Egypt. The best of these is laoµoueµe (London Papyri, x1vi, 446–482). Clement of Alexandria said: “The mystic name which is called the tetragrammaton … is pronounced Iaoue, which means ‘Who is, and who shall be.’”

The internal evidence from the Hebrew language is equally strong and confirms the accuracy of the Greek transcriptions. Yahweh is from a verbal root *hwy,^a “to be.” This root usually shows up in Hebrew as *hyy. It is a verbal root developed from the third person pronoun, *huwa/*hiya. The grammatical form of Yahweh is the third person masculine singular of prefix conjugation. The ya- is the third person masculine singular prefix.

In Jewish tradition, it is forbidden to pronounce the Sacred Name and its true pronunciation is supposed to remain a secret. The fact is that Jewish tradents (who put the vowel points in the Hebrew text) borrowed the vowels from another word, either ‡doÆnai “my lord(s),” or ^elôhiîm “God.” They avoided the very short a vowel in this borrowing because it might have led the synagogue reader to make a mistake and pronounce the correct first syllable of the Sacred Name, namely –ya. The vocalized form one finds in the Hebrew Bible is usually Yœhôwaµh, from which we get in English the form Jehovah. Yœhôwaµh/Jehovah is nothing but an artificial ghost word; it was never used in antiquity. The synagogue reader saw Yœhôwaµh in his text and read it ‡dônai.

The final syllable of Yahweh, eŒ` is normal for the imperfect indicative form (present-future or past continuous). A form like yahweh developed from *yahwiyu. This development of –iyu to eŒ` is thoroughly demonstrated for the verbal system in general. The form yahweh seems to be from the causative stem (hif>iÆl), and apparently means “He causes to become/be.”

The theophoric component on so many personal names in Judah (i.e., –yaµhuÆ, in such names as Hizqîyaµhû [Hezekiah]) is the normal shortened form of a verb like yahweh. For example, the verb “to do obeisance” in the imperfect is yisûtah‡we` while the shortened form (for preterit or jussive) is yisûtaŒhuÆ. In other words yisûtaŒhuÆ is to yisûtah‡we` as yaŒhuÆ is to yahwe`. This is not hocus-pocus. Any layman can readily comprehend the equation.

You don’t like to put linguistic details in BAR. They’re “too technical.” But this does not prevent you from printing various items of linguistic misinformation without warning your readership. Here I refer to the description of the final component (not a suffix but a component!) on personal names found in seal impressions from Dan (BAR 20:02, pp. 28, 30). The theophoric component in Northern Israelite personal names, written –YW on epigraphic texts, was never pronounced –yô! The final W did not come into use as a marker for a final ô vowel until the post-Exilic period. In the eighth and seventh centuries when we have these personal names ending in –YW, the W was a consonant and the pronunciation was –yaw (or yau). So anyone can see that the difference between northern –yaw and southern –yáhû is not so great, especially since the –h– in the southern form was fairly weak.

Israeli archaeologists avoid Hebrew linguistics like it was poison ivy. Thus, on the basis of modern pronunciation, without asking any linguist, they have created ghost words like Immadiyo, zkryo or Gaddiyo (in the Samaria Ostraca) in your Dan article cited above. The –W in those names should be pronounced like the –W in words like raglaµw “his (two) feet” (written rglyw), cf. Genesis 24:32 et passim. Israelis, of course, pronounce that form raglav because of the European background of many “revivers” of modern Hebrew. Incidently, that same European background is where we get the V in Jehovah instead of the original W.

Obviously, my letter in 1985 did not impress you. But the evidence for Yahweh as the correct pronunciation for the Sacred Name is at least as strong as the view that Sennacherib destroyed Lachish Stratum III. The same can be said for the pronunciation –yaw and not –yo. At least you should ask a scholar whose opinion you do appreciate, such as Frank Cross or Joseph Naveh or André Lemaire.

Speaking of Lemaire, I heartily endorse his new reading of bytdwd, “House of David” on the Mesha stele (“‘House of David’ Restored in Moabite Inscription,” BAR 20:03). Furthermore, I have a gut feeling that both the Mesha and the Dan inscriptions have to do with events in 853–851 B.C.E., namely the battle in which Ahab, king of Israel, died while his ally, Jehoshaphat, escaped unharmed, and the later invasion of Moab. I think the king of Damascus (not a vassal of his—as pointed out recently by S. Ahituv in the Israel Exploration Journal) set up the stele in Dan to commemorate that victory. Likewise, the closing lines of the Mesha stele probably have to do with the invasion of Moab by Jehoshaphat and Ahab’s son Joram, as depicted in 2 Kings 3. Many Bible scholars deny that Ahab died a violent death or that Jehoshaphat took part in the war recounted in 2 Kings 3. After pouring over all the evidence and all the arguments for over 20 years, I am convinced that those negative arguments are specious and that the Biblical testimony to both events is reliable, historically and chronologically. One may refer to maps 126 through 130 in the new revision of The Macmillan Bible Atlas.

Read, You Idiot

Concerning J. Glen Taylor’s article “Was Yahweh Worshiped as the Sun?” BAR 20:03, you could have saved a lot of space simply by reading the Old Testament. It clearly states that there is one God (Exodus 20), and we are created in that image (Genesis 1). No horsies, no suns, no mystery.

Restoring Gezer

Gezer on Day One of Your Tour

I second your request to the Israel National Parks Authority for the restoration of Tel Gezer (“Memorandum Re: Restoring Gezer,” BAR 20:03).

I visited Gezer on my first trip to Israel in 1978, on a field trip from Tel Aphek where I was working as a volunteer. I was thrilled and amazed to see the monolithic stones still standing on Gezer’s high place and the actual remains of the Solomonic gate. There are other gates and other monoliths elsewhere in Israel, but nothing like Gezer.

And the amazing thing is that Gezer is in a perfect location to introduce new visitors to Israel’s rich history. One of my frustrations as a tour leader is losing a day of sightseeing due to a late afternoon arrival. With Gezer just a few miles from Ben Gurion airport, new arrivals would have an opportunity to stretch their legs and fill their lungs with fresh air before settling in at a hotel or kibbutz.

The list of must-see sites in Israel is steadily growing, thanks to the efforts of the Tourism Ministry and the Antiquities Authority. A little attention to Gezer and I think it would go to the top of the list.

Kibbutz Gezer Stands Ready to Help Tel Gezer

I was very glad to read your “Memorandum Re: Restoring Gezer,” BAR 20:03. I absolutely agree with you that the tell needs to be developed, that it is of 068great importance historically and archaeologically and that it could contribute greatly to the increasing interest in Israel. We at Kibbutz Gezer are in a very special position regarding the tell. We share the same name, and we cultivate the same fields as the Israelites did three thousand years ago. We also owe much of our language and alphabet to them, achievements preserved on the Gezer Calendar.

I am a graduate in archaeology who works for the kibbutz seminar center. The tell figures largely in my programs. I have been trying, together with William Dever, to organize excavations on the tell, but for the last two years have been unable to close the circle of archaeologists, students and funding.

The strategic and political value of Gezer passed centuries ago, but it remains a powerful educational tool. At Tel Gezer, Christians, Jews and Muslims can all look back to a common past. Maybe a better understanding of our past can lead us to see where we are at the present, and so be able to build a more constructive future.

We on Kibbutz Gezer are very interested in developing the tell, and can offer a certain amount of help. We run a seminar center with 150 beds, and it can be put at the disposal of an excavation. Should you come to Israel in the near future, I would invite you to visit us.

David at Dan

Disoriented

I find the photographs and diagrams printed with your articles most helpful in visualizing the excavation sites described. They enhance the articles immensely, and when time permits I study them with great care.

In the article “‘David’ Found at Dan,” BAR 20:02, however, I have a small problem with the photograph on page 38. No matter how I turn and twist the fragmentary stela as pictured on page 39, it will not assume the orientation shown on the previous page!

Lest someone has found a way to turn stones “inside-out,” I must conclude that the photograph on page 38 has inadvertently been printed backwards. Interestingly enough, such legerdemain would make the Hebrew read from left to right, but then we’ve gotten rather used to expecting it the other way around!

You are right. The picture on page 38 was flopped.—Ed.

When Did the Separation of Meat and Milk Begin?

In re-reading “‘David’ Found at Dan” for the nth time, I took a more careful look at the ninth-century B.C.E. pottery bowl found at Tel Dan in 1965. The inscription, as reconstructed by Professor Nahman Avigad, reads “letabachia”—of the butchers, to which the writer of the article (Professor Biran, I presume) added that the bowl “had probably belonged to the cooks or butchers in the royal household of Dan.”

This set me wondering why the butchers had a need to incise their mark on a dish. I can understand why, to ensure against theft, an object belonging to the royal household might be inscribed “of the King” or even “of the Royal Chamberlain.” But why would the king’s tabachia go to the trouble of marking a bowl “this belongs to the butchers”? Has a similar inscription ever been found on any cooking utensils elsewhere in the Near East? Why, then, this one at Tel Dan?

Perhaps it was to mark the vessel’s use rather than its ownership or custody. Could this inscription signify that the bowl was to be used only with dishes prepared by the king’s tabachia? And not, with due respect, by the king’s dairymen?

Which leads to the question: when did the Jewish prohibition against mixing meat and dairy food first become widespread? Is it possible that the inscription letabachia was the early equivalent of today’s basari in Hebrew or fleischig in Yiddish, a means of ensuring that a utensil used for the one, not be accidentally used for the other? Was the separation of milk and meat already an established practice in the Judaism of the ninth century B.C.E.?

Perhaps one of your readers conversant with the development of early Jewish law can enlighten us on that point?

Lawrence Schiffman, professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University, replies:

Mr. Bernet’s proposal takes as its model the kosher kitchen of today, which has separate sets of dishes and cookware for meat and dairy dishes, to fulfill the traditional Jewish understanding of the commandment, “You may not cook a kid in its mother’s milk” (Exodus 23:19, 34:26, Deuteronomy 14:21.) Talmudic law prohibits the cooking or eating of milk and meat together, or the derivation of any benefit from such a mixture. Bernet suggests that the bowl from Dan might have been marked for use with meat only. If he were correct, we would expect to find many such inscriptions.

Unfortunately we know nothing about the practice of kashrut (laws pertaining to kosher food) in First Temple times. Further, there is very little information on the practice of kashrut in Second Temple texts earlier than the Mishnah. We do hear repeatedly about Hellenized Jews partaking of non-kosher meat, which the authors of various Second Temple texts considered to be a violation of the Torah and an act of assimilation. But little is said about the prohibition of mixing milk and meat. Although the Mishnah was redacted soon after 200 C.E., we can be relatively sure that Second Temple Jews generally separated milk and meat. But the practicalities of this separation and the extent of its stringency in terms of the use of separate dishes cannot be documented in the extant literature.

In the Talmud (c. 200–500 C.E.) we learn that the issue of separate dishes and cookware for milk and meat was very different from its application today, due to the different eating habits of ancient Jews. By and large, dairy foods were not cooked. They tended to be cheeses and curds that could be preserved. Vegetables and various salads such as those still eaten in the Near East were cooked in specific pots, and meat was usually made on a spit. Frying pans 070were used for some meat dishes. Bread was made in ovens used exclusively for baked goods or on the open hearth. It was the transition to the European system of dining in the Middle Ages that yielded the need for full sets of meat and dairy dishes such as we know from today’s kosher home.

Even if Biblical Jews did observe the separation as we know it, it would have been very unlikely that they would have had to mark dishes for meat and dairy use. But we must recognize the possiblity that the requirement of separate utensils for meat and dairy dishes is a development of the law in Second Temple times, when many “Rabbinic” prescriptions came into effect, since we have no earlier evidence of its practice. In any case, we cannot accept Mr. Bernet’s suggestion.

The Moabite Inscription

OOPS! And One More

Let me thank you for the publication of the photographs of the Mesha stela and of Mark Lidzbarski’s brilliant drawing of the text itself (André Lemaire, “‘House of David’ Restored in Moabite Inscription,” BAR 20:03).

The text drawing is so clear that it can be read without bogging down in decipherment. Moabite script, like the Canaanite, Phoenician and Old Hebrew variants, are more pleasing than the heavy, square, Aramaic-derived letters favored by the Tiberian rabbis and used today.

I recall at Columbia the exchange of secret code messages in this script by fun-loving fellow students, ultimately to be deciphered in—Yiddish!

Unfortunately, there is a chafing error in the first line of André Lemaire’s translation, which should read:

“1. I am Mesha, son of Kemosh[it], king of Moab” (not King of Mesha, as it appears on page 33).

We await the publication of his editio princeps. More power to him! And to you!

André Lemaire replies:

Mr. Cowl is certainly correct. I apologize for this typing mistake and congratulate him—and the other readers who caught this error—for their critical eye.

I will also take this opportunity to correct another error that somehow crept in at the beginning of p. 37: Mesha is not “son of the Moabite god Kemosh” but of “Kemoshit” (the name of his father, containing the theonym Kemosh).

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Advertiser Provides Anti-Catholic Material

Several weeks ago I responded to an ad by Covenant Marble, Roaring River, North Carolina, in your March/April 1994 issue. The ad was for the purchase of granite reproductions of the 10 Commandments.

The product arrived with an added offering. Two free books were enclosed, “What’s Behind the New World Order,” publisher not listed, and “Finding Peace Within,” IBE, Inc., Jemison, Alabama. Both books are an outright attack on the Catholic Church. Writings like these are motivated by prejudice, bias and hatred. They constitute a direct abuse of religion.

Knowing the lengths you go to in BAR to always present balance and perspective in questions that are very sensitive, I know you would not condone the distribution of such literature.

I realize that you are not responsible for the irresponsible and ignorant actions of those who advertise in your publication. Now that I have made you aware of their duplicity I would hope that you would reject future advertising from Covenant Marble, as their use of this ad is not merely to sell a product but to spread lies and falsehood.

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This is a very difficult letter to deal with. The excerpts Pastor Cappelloni sent to us clearly attack Catholic doctrine and religion, often in a historical context, including the concept of purgatory, the Inquisition, the sale of Indulgences, the authority of the Pope, etc. Moreover, the material is certainly not respectful of modern-day Catholicism, nor is it written with the usual objectivity of true scholarship. We would certainly not recommend it, either for its scholarship or its presentation.

Whether we should reject an ad for another product, however, because the seller includes this literature with the product, is a different question. While we certainly disapprove of this literature, we are not sure it crosses the line of offensiveness (which is our standard), although it comes close. Considering that the literature in question is itself not advertised in our pages, we have decided that, at least for now, it is sufficient to warn our readers, via Pastor Cappelloni’s letter, what they may be letting themselves in for in ordering the advertised product.—Ed.

Potpourri

Thiering’s Christian Date for the Teacher of Righteousness

Further to your note on G. A. Rodley’s revision of the radiocarbon dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls (BARlines, BAR 20:02), would you publish also the following facts:

a) Of the 14 pieces given the radio-carbon test, two only (the Temple Scroll and the Thanksgiving Scroll) are relevant to the question of the date of the Teacher of Righteousness, a matter of interest in the debate on Christian connections.

b) The paleographical and radiocarbon datings of these put the Temple Scroll in the first century B.C.E., and the Thanksgiving Scroll in the late first century B.C.E. or up to 70 C.E.

c) These datings are completely compatible with an argument that the Teacher lived in the Christian period. In my 1979 book, Redating the Teacher of Righteousness, I argued from the contents that the Temple Scroll was composed about 25 B.C.E. (when Herod the Great announced his plan to rebuild the Temple), and that the parts of the Thanksgiving Scroll written by the Teacher of Righteousness came from the 30s C.E.

It is therefore contrary to the facts to say, as some publications have done, that the new radiocarbon datings rule out a Christian dating for the sectarian scrolls.

It has rightly been said that the radiocarbon datings support the paleographical findings. It needs to be further pointed out that all the writings referring to the Teacher of Righteousness are in a Herodian, that is Christian, period script, with the exception of two. Of these, one, a fragment of the Damascus Document, is in a semicursive script. Yet, contrary to the rules of paleography (which say that no firm date can be given to a semicursive), it has been given a “date” in the first century B.C.E. This is an error. The other, the Manual of Discipline, is in a very idiosyncratic script with strong Palmyrene features. Its letter forms were used in Palmyra up to the third century C.E. It is also an error to have treated it as a normal script without taking Palmyrene forms into account.

When these two errors are corrected, paleography also supports a date for the Teacher of Righteousness in the Christian period.

072

Model Defended

In reply to the letter of Asher S. Kaufman (Queries & Comments, BAR 20:02) regarding the model of Herod’s Temple that I have constructed, I would like to make the following comments:

In the course of my research, which has taken several years and continues still, I have consulted many sources. My main sources are the Mishnah by Herbert Danby, D.D., and Flavius Josephus by William Whiston, A.M., as I cannot read Hebrew or Greek. As Mr. Kaufman says, most of the details that seem to be contradictory can be reconciled because in many cases they are describing different features. Nevertheless, there are places where, even with the greatest stretch of the imagination, details cannot be reconciled. It is a matter of weighing all the information and arriving at the best conclusion.

I am glad that Mr. Kaufman noticed the difference in the photographs of the Hekhal. One is a flat roof and one is a gable roof on the House of the Lord. The first one I arrived at by researching the work of various people, including Watzinger, and Vincent and Steve and I also considered the gold glass found in Rome. However, I then read an article in Bible Review, “Reconstructing the Magnificent Temple Herod Built,” BR 04:05, by Joseph Patrich. He describes the House of the Lord, taking all his details from the Mishnah; I was convinced that this was nearer the truth than the one I had constructed previously, so I made the necessary alterations.

So far as the accuracy of my model is concerned, after studying many other models, including the examples Mr. Kaufman mentions, I have come to the conclusion that my model is a better representation than any other I have seen.

Dupont-Sommer Linked Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls

In his response to Stephen Brudney’s letter (Queries & Comments, BAR 20:03), Manfred Lehmann asserts that early Dead Sea Scroll scholars who supported the Essene Hypothesis did so out of sheer religious bias. By identifying the sectarian literature found at Qumran with an apparently marginalized and inconsequential Jewish sect, they hoped to preclude any possibility of linking Jewish sectarian literature with early Christianity. “The early Dead Sea Scroll scholars,” states Lehmann, “like André Dupont-Sommer of France, were Christians who were worried about the prospect of discovering roots of Christianity in a Jewish sect, as this would rob Christianity of its presumed originality.”

Besides what I feel to be a slightly paranoid generalization on Lehmann’s part, I also believe that he has thoroughly misrepresented Dupont-Sommer’s views. In fact, Dupont-Sommer was one of the very first to link Christianity with the sectarian literature of Qumran. In 1959 he wrote,

“The documents from Qumran make it plain that the primitive Christian Church was rooted in the Jewish sect of the New Covenant, the Essene Sect, to a degree none would have suspected, and that it borrowed from it a large part of its organization, rites, doctrines, ‘patterns of thought’ and its mystical and ethical ideas.”¹

012

Like Moses or Ishmael?

Jack Neusner “Formerly” of Many Institutions; BAR Ad Fails to Cite Critical Book Review

BAR readers will find puzzling your advertisement’s identification of this writer [see inside back cover, BAR 20:03] as merely “formerly of Brown University.” For the sake of the record, please note that I also am “formerly” of Columbia University, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Brandeis University, Dartmouth College, University of Minnesota, Iliff Seminary, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, University of Frankfurt, Cambridge University, Abo Akademi and the Institute for Advanced Study, where I have held research or teaching positions over the past 35 years. At the present time, I hold the positions of Canterbury Visiting Scholar, University of Canterbury in New Zealand (1994); Von Humboldt Research Professor, University of Göttingen in Germany (1995); and Bard Fellow, Bard College (1994–1996). My tenured position is Distinguished Research Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida, Tampa (1990).

I cannot say I blame you for omitting citations of other expert opinion of your book Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism, that of Dr. Martin Goodman in the last Journal of Jewish Studies, for example, among many.

Editor’s Response: Neusner’s Attacks Create Happy Band of Brothers

Professor Neusner taught at Brown from 1968 to 1990.

With respect to the last paragraph of his letter, we omitted citations to a number of reviews of Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism. For example, Henoch, the Italian journal of Jewish studies, called the book “brilliant.” Although Dr. Goodman’s review in the British Journal of Jewish Studies was somewhat critical (“an ambitious and well-intentioned but only partially successful book”), it also had some good things to say (“Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism performs a useful service, first by providing readers with a large amount of valuable information and bibliography on a wide sweep of religious history, and second by reminding students of the desirability of studying the two traditions together … The chapters are clearly written, sensibly and fully documented, and adorned with a number of citations of primary evidence and some superb photographs”).^b Neither Dr. Goodman’s review, nor any other review of the book, however, contained the vituperative bile of Professor Neusner’s review.

This will come as no surprise to Professor Neusner’s colleagues in the profession. Despite his brilliance, he is widely known as an academic pit bull, with a personal 013subtext in almost everything he writes.^c As he has with countless others, including such long-time friends as the gentle and widely respected Ernest Frerichs, Neusner’s 22-year colleague at Brown, he has now turned on the editor of BAR, something most people regarded as inevitable: A few years ago, Professor Neusner resigned as a columnist in another magazine edited by BAR’s editor because, without notifying Professor Neusner and affording him an opportunity to reply in the same issue, we printed a guest column that took exception to one of Professor Neusner’s earlier columns. Since then, Professor Neusner has been attacking BAR’s editor on all fronts. (When asked to send copies of the attacks he was publishing so we could respond, Neusner refused and, in a letter to BAR’s editor, stated: “My various pieces on you are in so many places I couldn’t keep track [of them] for you if I wanted to.”) His latest foray is his review of Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, which we are distributing free of charge with each copy of the book we sell.

Professor Neusner has called academic book reviewing a “blood sport,” complaining about reviews of some of his own books. For example, the late Saul Lieberman, Professor Neusner’s revered teacher, called Neusner’s English translation of the Palestinian Talmud “incoherent,” “sheer nonsense,” containing “atrocious errors.” Lieberman concluded, “The right place for our English translation is the waste basket.” Of Neusner himself, Lieberman wrote that he was “stunned by [Neusner’s] ignorance of rabbinic Hebrew, of Aramaic grammar, and above all of the subject matter with which he deals.”²

Admittedly, this was excessively harsh language and at least partially undeserved criticism.^d Neusner, however, has “bettered the instruction.” He is now the leading practitioner of academic attack journalism. He has, for example, called Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz (whose Talmud translation has received rave reviews) a “clown” and a “publicity-hound.”³

More recently, Neusner has attacked another one of his revered teachers, Morton Smith, who until his death in 1991 taught at Columbia University. After Smith died, Neusner wrote that the only book of Smith’s that Neusner considered significant was in fact “trivial, wrong, ignorant and misleading … His [Smith’s] work was superficial; his knowledge flawed; his confidence in his own judgment, so far as Judaism is concerned, ill-placed. Smith wrote too much [Neusner himself has written or edited over 500 books—Ed.], too soon, and too hastily, therefore being guilty of the atrocious slovenliness that he quickly, with no evidence commensurate to the seriousness of the charge, gleefully imputed to nearly everybody else [i.e., Neusner—Ed.] whenever he could get away with it.” According to Neusner, Smith was a “pseudo-scholar” who “fabricated … facts,” a “tenth-rate mind.”⁴

Smith is not alone among Neusner’s targets: Of other major Judaic scholars, all now dead (Solomon Zeitlin, Ephraim E. Urbach, Saul Lieberman, Louis Finkelstein 014and Salo W. Baron), Neusner judges them as “overrated lightweights.” Their crime: They tried to “murder” Neusner, presumably by “character assassination.” With characteristic modesty, Neusner compares himself to Moses: “Like Moses in Midian,” Neusner brags, “I have outlived all my consequential enemies.”⁵ (Alas, he is more like Ishmael than Moses—“his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him.” The novelist John Updike, a Harvard classmate of Neusner’s, has referred to “the belligerence that has characterized so much of his professional life.”⁶)

As for his own young successor at Brown (Professor Shaye J. D. Cohen, who is also a contributor to our Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism), Neusner attacks him as guilty of “intellectual incompetence.”^e According to Neusner, Cohen seems to “mak[e] things up as [he] goes along.” The result is “just empty blather.”⁷

Few scholars in the field have failed at one time or another to have received from Professor Neusner a coarse letter, ending with the admonition to “drop dead.”^f

We could go on and on; the scholars Jack Neusner has attacked are legion. As the recipient of such an attack, we join a distinguished multitude, a happy band of brothers who, with advantage, gather on Crispin’s day (or on Hanukkah) “to strip our sleeves and show our scars.”⁸—Ed.

005

A Note on Style

B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era), used by some of our authors, are the alternative designations for B.C. and A.D. often used in scholarly literature.

Editor Relieved by Half

I will re-subscribe if you can get Editor Shanks to reduce his “contributions” to the magazine by 50 percent!