Queries & Comments

022

Eating in Philadelphia

For years I’ve been waiting for that one glorious moment in the sun when I could join the long list of cut-throat letter-writers who vent their erudite spleens over some esoteric point made by a poor archaeologist. So what do I finally do? I take exception to a non-archaeological statement made by the redoubtable Hershel Shanks himself!

In “‘Annual Miracle’ Visits Philadelphia,” BAR 22:02, Mr. Shanks states that “next year’s Annual Meeting has the added attraction of being in culinary heaven, New Orleans” (italics mine). This appears to be a back-handed slap at the gustatory delights offered by Philadelphia, where the November 1995 meeting was held.

Philadelphia has some of the very finest restaurants to be found anywhere in the United States. In Le Bec Fin, for instance, we have what many experts consider to be the greatest of all French restaurants in our country. As the home of such operatic greats as Mario Lanza, Anna Moffo, Frank Guarrera and Enrico Di Giuseppe, we can also lay claim to many fine Italian restaurants that provided the food and wine necessary to nourish some very sensitive vocal cords. I’ve no doubt that we can add other ethnic eateries to support the singing excellence achieved by immortals such as Marian Anderson, Nelson Eddy, Jeanette MacDonald and Paul Robeson.

On your next trip to Philadelphia, Mr. Shanks, give me a call. After proving the validity of my claim of diverse excellence in the area of international cuisine, together we can walk off the calories in the beautiful 4,000-acre splendor of Fairmount Park.

The Bible as Rock

For a long time I have been offended by the ads and some of the people you have let write in your magazine. It seems as though they try to disprove the Bible. The most recent issue of BAR (March/April 1996) was the straw that broke the camel’s back. My soul and spirit were wounded and the Holy Spirit was offended.

You can print whatever you want, but I don’t have to read it. I try to stay away from people who say the Bible is a myth. It’s my rock!

Making Unbelievers Pay

I am bemused at threats to cease subscribing because you allow “blatant unbelievers to advertise their trash” in BAR: If archaeology of the Holy Land is a good thing, and if making the findings thereof known is a good thing, how wonderful that you have managed to get blatant unbelievers to pay for some of the effort!

BAR Calls a Spade a Spade

I enjoy your magazine. You state it as it is instead of catering to readers’ religious opinions.

The Days of BAR’s Lives

Rest assured, I do enjoy BAR. Even the intellectual/professional bickering and backbiting that occurs in Queries & Comments offers me some laughs. Who needs daytime soaps or Crossfire? As one with a lifelong interest in all of man’s history, religion and culture, I have no intention of surrendering to budget-cuts the mother’s milk that keeps my mind stimulated and my morale high.

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Crimea Synagogue Elucidates New Testament Passages

Robert S. MacLennan’s article “In Search of the Jewish Diaspora,” BAR 22:02, sheds light on two New Testament passages. It explains better than does the Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible the “synagogue of the freedmen” in Acts 6:9. The dictionary, with reference to Tacitus, says the term refers to freed Jewish prisoners. MacLennan’s article suggests these may have been synagogues for ex-slaves.

His article also provides a context for Paul’s letter to Philemon, in which the apostle requests that Philemon’s slave be freed because he has become a believer in Jesus.

In light of this article, I am amending my Western Civilization lectures to include these observations when I discuss Jews and Christians in the Roman Empire. (This is not the first time my lectures have benefited from a BAR article.)

“God Knows Their Names”

Christians, Too, Respect the Dead

Okay, it’s been 20 years since I started reading BAR, and here is my first letter to Q&C.

I really enjoyed “‘God Knows Their Names’—Mass Christian Grave Revealed in Jerusalem,” BAR 22:02, by Ronny Reich, a well-written and interesting report. But I’m still looking for the last paragraph.

Christians, like the members of Atra Qadisha and Native Americans of several communities, are also concerned that proper care and respect be shown for the remains of our dear departed and sainted sisters and brothers. The last paragraph of Reich’s article should have read that the “remains were removed from the lab to _________ and reinterred in a ceremony conducted by _________.” It would also be nice if they were reinterred with their personal “cross-shaped pendants.”

Please let us know that these several hundred fellow-believers were not turned into bonemeal for fertilizer while they awaited the general resurrection.

Ronny Reich responds:

The Israel Antiquities Authority is making every effort to bring all human bones to burial, whether Christian, Muslim or Jewish. With every excavation permit, we hand out a written document that specifies the procedures to be taken in case of the discovery of human bones. The final stage of this procedure is the transfer of human bones to the Ministry of Religious Affairs. We indicate the religious identity of the deceased if it is known to us from our study.

The bones of Christians are then given to the Greek-Orthodox Patriarchate for reburial. One such occasion provided the Patriarchate with international publicity—when bones were discovered during the widening of Route No. 1 in Jerusalem. This is the traditional place of the stoning of St. Stephanos. The bones were handed over in a Christian ceremony on the premises of the Rockefeller Museum.

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As for the final fate of the Mamilla bones, we spent several months sifting the bones from the debris and objects (mainly coins and pendants) and prepared the bones for transfer for burial. The Atra Qadisha people then broke into the place one night, removing the bones (almost a complete freight container) for burial in an unknown spot outside Jerusalem. Only God (and Atra Qadisha) knows its location.

Water from Heaven

Ronny Reich’s article made fascinating reading. Your readers will expect further reports, as conclusive evidence comes to hand, of other locations where victims of the 614 A.D. massacre were buried Meanwhile, Reich’s article leaves this reader (and surely others) with a question or two begging for an answer.

Throughout the article we read of the Mamilla Pool. What is its history? How far back does it go in time? Where and when did it get its name? Could it be that there is an article “in the works” that will answer these and related questions?

Reich explains that cisterns were used “until the 1930s” as the means by which residents of Jerusalem caught and stored rain water. That bit of information leads one to guess that the Pool of Mamilla was itself a cistern, serving a community of residents rather than a single private house.

The road sign printed in three languages may help us. The top reads: “Mamillah Road.” The next line is in Arabic. Transliterated it reads: “Shari‘ Ma’ Min Allah,” which (in the Arabic order of words) says: “Street (or Road) Water From God.” At some point, the beneficiaries of the pool must have realized that its water did not come from a river, or from some hidden spring, but directly from the heavens in the form of rain. Thus it would be Water From God, Ma’ Min Allah, from which it is a very short step to Mamillah.

Thank you for whatever light you can shed. And thank you for a magazine that always contains a wealth of information presented in such an appealing way.

Ronny Reich responds:

The Pool of Mamilla (Birkat Mamilla in Arabic) is indeed a significant monument of the Jerusalem topography. The pool’s basin was partly cut into natural bedrock, whereas its walls were built up.

However, no archaeological excavation has ever been devoted to it. One reason might be that the pool is surrounded by an ancient Muslim cemetery. The pool measures 318 by 207 feet and is about 21 feet deep. Recently the Israel Antiquities Authority cleaned the pool and did some conservation work to its walls.

The sources of the pool’s water are questionable. Obviously it drains the area to the west and above, where Independence Park runs uphill to the Plaza Hotel and the main Jerusalem synagogue. No clue has yet been found whether it was also fed by an aqueduct. On the other hand, it is clear that an aqueduct emerged from the pool and ran along Mamilla Street under the Old City Ottoman wall, feeding the so-called Pool of Hezekiah (Josephus’s “Pool of the Towers”). A considerably long stretch of this aqueduct has been excavated by our team. Part of this excavated aqueduct is preserved below Jaffa Road; it is to be conserved and exhibited for view. The aqueduct was in use from the Byzantine period until modern times (there are records that water was running at the beginning of the 20th century). The aqueduct also fed a Byzantine bathhouse, which we discovered just outside Jaffa Gate. No archaeological evidence was found to relate it to Hasmonean or Herodian times.

As for the etymology of the name Mamilla, no study has been devoted to that project. The wording on the street sign (Ma’ min ‘Allah) might be a modern effort to put some meaning into the name. The name Mamilla occurs early in lists of burial locations, as I stated in my article. It should be mentioned that in the Mameluke period (1250–1516 C.E.) we encounter in pilgrims’ accounts the name St. Babilla (Babylla). One can also think of a Semitic root that may stand behind the name Mamilla, the root maleh (“full” in Hebrew).

How Tolerant Was Ancient Persia?

Ronny Reich’s discovery at Mamilla enriches our understanding of the 400-year struggle between Sassanian Persia and Byzantium. It is puzzling, however, that Reich asserts that “the Persian empire was not based on religious principles and was indeed inclined to religious tolerance.”

On the contrary, the Sassanian Persian empire was firmly based on religious principles, namely those of its state religion, Zoroastrianism.¹ In the words of the Persian high priest Tansar, “Do not marvel at my zeal and ardor for promoting order in the world, that the foundations of the laws and of the faith may be made firm. For Church and State were born of the one womb, joined together and never to be sundered.”²

Although some Sassanian rulers, such 026as Hormizd IV, were tolerant of other faiths, the establishment of Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire put Persian Christians in a dangerous position—as is clear from the Orthodox Church’s list of Persian martyrs.

Above all, the Persian King of Kings was the earthly regent of Ohrmazd, the Supreme Being of Zoroastrianism. Sassanian bas-reliefs carved on rock cliffs show monarchs receiving the diadem of kingship from the hand of Ohrmazd.

The investiture relief at Bishapur is especially instructive: On the right, Shapur I sits upon a horse, beneath which lies the body of the Roman emperor Gordian III; on the left, Ohrmazd sits upon a horse, beneath which lies the prostrate figure of the evil god Ahriman; Ohrmazd extends the diadem of kingship to Shapur.

The meaning is clear: The enemies of Persia are confederates of the Evil One, and their historical defeat by the King of Kings anticipates the eschatological defeat of Ahriman by Ohrmazd.

As Reich himself notes, the aim of the Persian sack of Jerusalem was to humiliate the Byzantine Christian empire. By the same token, the aim of the Christian Heraclius’s destruction of the great fire temple of Adur Gushnasp was to humiliate the Persian Zoroastrian empire. Both Persia and Byzantium were founded on religion, and both empires viewed the conflict between them as a holy war.

In Private Hands

One Seal, Two Impressions?

The article by Hershel Shanks and P. Kyle McCarter, “In Private Hands,” BAR 22:02, is fascinating, but I wonder whether the drawings of the two bullae “Belonging to Berekhyahu, son of Neriyahu, the Scribe” are accurate. Although both bullae are described as having been pressed from the same seal, the last letter in the top line does not appear to be the same on both bullae. According to your description, the name Neriyahu appears on the bullae (yahu being a form of Yahweh, the personal name of the Israelite God) in contrast to Neriah, the name without a suffix, in Jeremiah 36:4.

Yet, in the first drawing, the final letter on the top line is hay, the same as in the Biblical text of Jeremiah. And in the drawing at bottom right, the final letter on the top line either appears to be het, or two letters hay-waw. Only the latter yields yahu. In contrast to the drawings, the photograph of the bulla on the cover seems to reveal a letter after the hay, possibly a waw, confirming the suffix yahu.

In any event, some explanation is needed as to why the final letter on the top line is not the same on the two drawings if both are impressions from the same seal.

See P. Kyle McCarter’s response after the next letter.—Ed.

The Wrong Impression

The drawing that you published of the bulla on the cover of BAR 22:02 was very misleading. The copyist wrote LBRKYH. You read this as LeBerekhyahu. That reading would normally imply a terminal waw (w). Its absence would thus make us think that the orthography omitted all vowel letters. That this is unlikely to be the explanation is shown by the very next line where NRYHW is shown for Neriyahu. However, looking at the cover photograph of the bulla, one can see the vertical line of the waw crushed between the hay and the border of the seal. Indeed, I think it possible to see the crossline of the waw as well. Hence, Berekhyahu is actually spelled, as one would expect, BRKYHW. The waw is, by the way, clearly shown on the other drawing, the one of the Israel Museum’s bulla.

Conclusion: you, or your source, needs someone new to draw diagrams.

P. Kyle McCarter responds:

Burton Caine and Stephen Oren are correct in detecting an error in the drawing they refer to. The bulla itself clearly shows the stem of the waw at the end of the name brkyhw, “Berekhyahu” or “Berechiah.” The expected form of the divine name “Yahweh,” when it appears as the final part of a Judahite personal name in this period, is yhw, pronounced yaChuC, and this is the form we have here. Incidentally, this mistake underscores how important it is for scholars studying ancient inscriptions to work from the objects themselves, or at the very least from excellent photographs. We teach our students not to trust drawings made by anyone, even themselves!

Repeal the Antiquities Laws

Your article “In Private Hands,” BAR 22:02 raises questions concerning site looting and antiquities dealers. I would like to present some of the reasons antiquities dealers should be tolerated, even encouraged.

The arguments against the antiquities market are based on a fantasy that antiquities laws might keep artifacts undisturbed until some archaeologist has time to excavate, study and write about them.

For many sites, the major danger is the random destruction by the living. Israel has several laws on the subject, as noted in “God Knows Their Names,” by Ronny Reich BAR 22:02, but these laws can’t hope to do more than limit the damage.

The net result is that for many sites, the antiquities market provides the only means of preserving artifacts. The looters may not preserve as much information as we would like, but that is better than nothing, which is often the alternative we are left with.

Laws against the antiquities market have additional negative effects. They encourage the most destructive kinds of looting. The looter who takes his time and actually allows an archaeologist to look over the site gets caught. The one who operates in the middle of the night and destroys everything not salable gets away and profits.

Then we have the problems of what happens to the artifacts after they are recovered. The claim is often made that those in private hands are no longer available to scholars. “In Private Hands” shows that this is no more than partly true. (Even when true, it is often so only because of laws against the antiquities trade: The owner doesn’t dare allow the scholar to prove this artifact is illegal and thus bars scholarly access. Were it legal, he might welcome scholars.) And just how available are those in scholarly hands? BAR is constantly after scholars who are just sitting on important artifacts and denying others access to them: “The failure to publish, quite simply, is tantamount to looting” (Hershel Shanks, “Jerusalem 3,000,” BAR 21:06).

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How to Stop Looting

Once again, BAR raises the issues of site looting, private collecting and the role of the dealers in the article “In Private Hands,” BAR 22:02; and once again the temptation is to take a purist stand and try to outlaw most or all of these activities.

Following your article on plunder (“The Rampant Rape of Israel’s Archaeological Sites,” BAR 15:02)—which made a compelling case for stopping illegal excavations in Israel and, by implication, everywhere in the world—you encouraged the expression of extreme pro and con positions, but did not attempt to find a workable middle ground.

All those interested in the past condemn looting. The practical problem is what to do about artifacts from all sources, not only looted ones but also those now in collections and those found accidentally, with and without context.

Banning all sales does result in reduced looting, but it also encourages smuggling, particularly of the more valuable items. It destroys the value of collections legitimately acquired over many years and thereby makes enemies of many who might otherwise support moderate antiquities legislation. It severely hinders colleges and museums worldwide from acquiring common artifacts for which they have legitimate uses.

As a historian, archaeologist, maritime museum director, educator, former ancient coin collector, small-scale collector of legal and common antiquities for classroom use, and long-term student of the problem, I believe that a middle-ground solution exists.

I believe the solution is to license the artifacts. Let departments of antiquities authenticate, photograph and indelibly mark every antiquity that anyone wishes to sell, charging a fee for the service. Let the antiquities departments buy the few items that national museums need to fill in their collections. Allow the rest to be sold legally. Very quickly, the assessors would discern which come from old collections, from chance finds or from looting, and they could act accordingly.

Such a program would, in time, bring almost all old collections and legitimate finds to the attention of the archaeological community. It would create support from the widest range of interested persons and institutions, including the numerous coin collectors who depend mainly on hoards that, once recorded, are generally of little interest to the archaeologist. It would provide funds for enforcement. It would establish a climate of opinion in which effective penalties could be enforced against looters, illegal dealers and smugglers, for they truly would become outlaws.

Advocate the middle course rather than encourage the extremists again: License the artifacts; don’t try to criminalize dealers and collectors.

How Else to Stop Looting

In your lust for controversy, you have again done a great service to the Biblical community. You have exposed a huge economic flaw at the heart of archaeology.

The farmer or shepherd, struggling to feed his family, stumbles across archaeological treasure. So he weighs his choices. Reporting his find to the authorities will give him the warm feeling of knowing he’s a good citizen; selling his find piecemeal to vendors will give him the warm feeling of cash in his hand, children and wife well fed and clothed. A rather easy choice. Which of us, in his position, would do otherwise?

This is Economics 101: In order to persuade the finder to report his find, the finder would need to profit from it. (Who would ever drill for oil if the government got all the oil?) It is not the antiquities dealers who encourage desecration; rather it is the legislators (and the archaeologists who advise them) who write laws claiming all finds belong to the state. Socialism in archaeology produces the same decay and stagnation that socialism produces everywhere else.

From a Non-Degreed Reader

I am not a very educated person by comparison to your contributing authors—or for that matter, your readers. But I am a subscriber who is completely enthralled with BAR. I have a tremendous respect for the scholarly community, but trust is another issue.

In the not too distant past, it was the self-educated who contributed mostly to the arts, sciences, philosophy, etc. They seem to have been the cornerstone on which modern universities were built. But today we seem to have lost all respect for the self-educated.

Your recent article “In Private Hands,” BAR 22:02, seems to imply that no one has the right to keep private collections, as if the “scientific” community has never had a hand in ill-gotten loot or unethical digs.

No vote has been taken, but my guess is that the majority of the world’s population does not wish for each and 067every earthly treasure to be entrusted to scholars and museums.

Potpourri

BAR Reader Solves Archaeological Crux

In a recent article (Lawrence E. Stager, “The Fury of Babylon: Ashkelon and the Archaeology of Destruction,” BAR 22:01), you discussed spheres with holes in them that you postulated were stoppers with vents for wine jars. Although this procedure would allow venting, it is an inherently unstable mechanism (tip the jar and the sphere falls off), and provides a ready portal for insects and dirt to enter the jar.

I would like to suggest an alternate mechanism. A string, passed through the sphere and tied loosely to the jar handles, would allow venting of pressure as a one-way valve, and keep the sphere firmly on the jar.

Lawrence E. Stager responds:

I want to thank Dr. McNamara for her creative thinking about how a clay ball might function as a “safety valve” for wine fermenting in a ceramic jar. During fermentation it is essential that the vessel containing the wine, whether a jar or a wineskin, be hermetically sealed. Nevertheless, there must also be some way for the container to expand or for the gases building up inside to escape.

Similes derived from vinification enliven Biblical rhetoric. After listening to Job’s detractors, young Elihu cannot restrain himself further: “For I am brimming with words, / Wind bloats my belly. / My belly is like unvented wine, / Like new wine-skins ready to burst” (Job 32:18–19; Pope’s translation).

Since ceramic jars are not elastic, they must be vented. What I had in mind but didn’t explain fully is this: The pierced spherical clay stopper would be sealed with additional clay at the mouth of the jar, with the venting hole in vertical position. This vent would then be temporarily plugged and unplugged as fermentation continues. This would provide the necessary “safety valve.”

If Dr. McNamara’s solution involves no more than placing a clay sphere in the mouth of a wine jar without sealing it in place, the jar would probably not provide a suitable environment for fermentation; and even if it did, there would be no need for a “safety valve” since gases could easily escape through the unsealed zone between the mouth of the jar and the sphere.

Do some “experimental archaeology”: try wine-making using ceramic jars and clay stoppers, then tell us which techniques produce the best results.

Must Archaeology Clash with Faith?

Allow me to express my sincere thanks for a publication like BAR. It is the only publication I read non-stop.

The contribution by Dr. William Dever, “The Death of a Discipline,” BAR 21:05, aroused my interest because ever since my seminary days, Biblical archaeology has been my foremost concern. Dr. Dever placed his finger on a sore spot in the life of many congregations. Why is Biblical archeology missing in the vocabulary of clergy and congregation alike?

First, because of a lack of instruction in seminaries. Second, because of the possibility that it could be misconstrued to suggest that the plain preaching of the Word is insufficient and has to be undergirded with finds and proofs. Many pastors are rather hesitant, fearing that archaeology implies a need to “find, discover and prove” the validity of the Bible.

Only One Synagogue at Shema‘

I was pleasantly surprised to see my paper on “Synagogue Typology and Earthquake Chronology at Khirbet Shema‘” highlighted in your report on the 1995 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religions, The Society of Biblical Literature and the American Schools of Oriental Research (“‘Annual Miracle’ Visits Philadelphia,” BAR 22:02). To be precise, however, I argue that there is just one synagogue at Khirbet Shema‘ (rather than one synagogue with two phases). My interpretation takes into account all of the published evidence: architectural, stratigraphic, ceramic and numismatic. The paper has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Field Archaeology.

I hope that rather than deterring excavators from publishing the results of their excavations, my paper will help stimulate healthy (and cordial) scholarly debate.

Constructive Criticism, Please

Hershel Shanks’s response to Professor Keith Whitelam’s lecture at the Annual Meeting in Philadelphia seems excessively harsh, especially his use of such language as “mean-spirited,” “faked scholarship” and the like. If this “dangerously” politicized history has the potential of destroying our field, as Shanks asserts, then it might be important for Shanks to avoid polarizing this issue. Whitelam’s book (The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History 068[Routledge, 1996]), while open to serious criticism, is no more “faked” scholarship than is his criticism of William F. Albright. (I found Albright’s statements far more shocking than Whitelam’s exposition.)

As one of the contemporary historians seriously criticized in Whitelam’s polemic, I think it necessary to acknowledge the justice of Whitelam’s central argument that Biblical studies systematically, if not intentionally, distorts the history of the South Levant.

Although I had made a concerted effort in The Early History of the Israelite People (Brill, 1992) to create an appropriate context for the Iron Age states of Samaria and Jerusalem within the context of the diverse regional political structures of the region, when I finally began to deal with the issue of a historical referent for the concept of Biblical Israel in the late Persian and early Hellenistic period, I failed to maintain the very regionalization I had worked so hard to construct. My early Judaism’s “New Israel” smothered other variant groupings of the contemporary population, which were thereby eliminated from their roles in the development of Biblical tradition as well as their place in South Levantine history.

Because of what I have learned from Whitelam’s frequently brilliant book, I am grateful that he has criticized my work.

Locating the Temple

Dan Bahat, in his reply to my rebuttal of one of his statements (Queries & Comments, BAR 22:02), asks the question: “What role did this protruding stone [the large rock es Sakhra in the Dome of the Rock] play in Kaufman’s Temple where it was surely seen?” Moreover, he states: “Kaufman never refers to” es Sakhra.

The answer to his question is clearly stated in my earlier BAR article, “Where the Ancient Temple of Jerusalem Stood,” BAR 09:02: “We may ask what, then, was the purpose of as-Sakhra, the rock under the Dome of the Rock, in late Second Temple times? One can only guess. A reasonable conjecture is that the rock was the Stone of Claimants (Mishnah Ta’anit 3:8) from which announcements of lost and found property were made. This idea is consistent with Middot 2:1, which tells us that the principal activity in the Temple environs was on the southern side.”

It is worthwhile stating part of the Ta’anit 3:8 in full. It concerns Honi (Onias) the circle-maker, who used to draw a circle, stand within it and offer up his prayer. His first prayer was answered by a drizzle, the second by torrential rain. “He said: ‘Not thus did I petition, but for rain of goodwill, blessing and benevolence.’ [Then the rains] fell normally until [the people of] Israel went from Jerusalem to Har Habbayit [the sanctified outer Temple court] because of the rain. They came and said to him: ‘Like as you prayed that they should descend, so pray that they go away.’ He said to them: ‘Go and see if the Stone of the Claimants has been washed away.’” (Another translation for the stone is Stone of Lost [Property].)

So much rain fell that the people had to abandon the lower city (the City of David). One can imagine the people standing in Har Habbayit and viewing the Stone of the Claimants, the rock named today es Sakhra, which, as Dan Bahat rightly asserts, is the highest point in the region.

It’s Really Quite Easy

Regarding Hershel Shanks’s interesting BARlines piece, “Festschrift—Plague or Praise,” BAR 22:02, I would like to comment on what I consider unintentionally misleading statements: “Sometimes very important articles are published in festschrifts, but then are very hard to find … ” While this may be true in some disciplines, in religion, and particularly Biblical studies, such is not the case.

Numerous indexes exist that list festschrift articles, including Religion Index Two, Old Testament Abstracts, New Testament Abstracts, Elenchus Bibliographus Biblicus, Internationale Zeitschriftenschau für Bibelwissenschaft und Grenzgebiete and Bulletin Signaletique 527. Thus, many festschrift articles on Biblical archaeology are indexed in multiple sources.

Furthermore, Shanks comments that “libraries that have festschrifts are few.” While this observation may be true, it is not the case that festschrifts themselves are inaccessible. Once the researcher has found a citation, all that is needed is to consult the local library staff to make an interlibrary loan. These are usually placed through one of the international or national databases. In short, although few libraries may have the festschrifts, other libraries can access their locations through the databases and procure either the book itself or a photocopy of the article for the user.

While traditional index searching and interlibrary loan procedures may be somewhat tedious and time-consuming, nobody ever said scholarship is easy. These comments are not meant in any way to belittle some of Mr. Shanks’s very real concerns, to which others may be added, such as the sometimes mediocre quality of some festschrift articles—since occasionally scholars will submit as a festschrift contribution research that failed to get published in a journal. Rather, I hope my comments shed a little light on just a few of the resources available to the Biblical student.

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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.

Eating in Philadelphia