Queries & Comments

010

No Apology Needed

BAR deserves kudos for the design changes begun in BAR 22:04. Please do not apologize or hesitate to use the word popular to describe the effort. I have been a subscriber for about three years and have no training in Biblical study or archaeology, just a lifelong interest. My 12-year-old daughter refers to BAR and has taken issues to class on occasion. The new format has doubled her interest.

Popularizing appreciation for and study of science specialties is what extends the life of the discipline.

Three Cheers for the Designer!

Congratulations on your great new look! Kudos to Rob Sugar and his staff for their choice of fonts, graphics and striking layout. I have always enjoyed your publication, but now it is even more of a pleasure to read.

Three Raspberries for the Designer!

Before too much praise goes to your art director’s head, you might do some reader testing of the graphic style. I completely passed by four Strata items on my first reading because they looked so much like poorly done ads. I would not even have noticed, except that later in the issue I came across a continuation for which I had seen no head. This has happened to me several times in the last couple of years as various magazines I regularly read “go modern.” Magazines like Wired may be graphically innovative, but they are extremely hard to read.

Will Roseanne Edit BAR?

Initially I was skeptical about your new look—first Tina Brown edits the New Yorker and now BAR changes its look! What’s next?

But I love this magazine! Thank you for thought-provoking, stimulating, entertaining and always enlightening articles.

When I returned to school five years ago, I had no idea that a steady diet of BAR and Bible Review would prompt me to pursue Hebrew studies in conjunction with my studies in geography. It did, and I’m pleased to say that BAR continues to be an invaluable resource.

Don’t Be So Cute

Mazel tov on your new design. I did not start out well with it because change is always hard at first. After so many years, BAR is like an old pair of shoes. But the design really is just great, except I hate cliche captioning like “Take Me to Your Leader”! BAR is one of the last sane places. A little cute and clever originality is okay, but enough is enough.

If You Can’t Be There

BAR keeps getting snappier and more attractive with each redesign.

Those truly wonderful diagrams, drawings and color photographs remain the visual glory of BAR—the next best thing to being on site or holding an artifact. It’s as close as the printed page can come to being there.

Congratulations!

Coin Flip Flop

You’re going forward in your new design, but backwards in your content. In Strata, BAR 22:04, you ask how many of the 30,000 coins found in excavations in Jerusalem since 1967 have been published. Your answer was none. That’s not 012true. At least three responsible excavations in Jerusalem have published some of their coins. The excavations south of the Temple Mount published seven (Qedem 29). The City of David excavation published 230 of the 355 coins it discovered (Qedem 30). Ketef Hinnom published two; one was an Axumite coin (Israel Numismatic Journal 5 [1981], pp. 57–59) and the other was from the island of Cos (Israel Numismatic Journal 8 [1984–1985], pp. 1–5). The latter coin is the oldest coin discovered in Israel and one of the earliest coins ever minted. The answer to your question should be at least 239.

Mr. & Mrs. Joe Neolithic?

While reading the Strata article on the Ain Ghazal statues (“Take Me to Your Leader,” BAR 22:04) and considering in particular the composite statue depicted, I was struck with an idea that some of your other readers may find interesting. The portion of the statue in the photo shows two distinct heads attached to one body. Assuming that both heads are about the same distance from the camera, one head is clearly much larger than the other, with a neck considerably wider in proportion to its face than is the neck of the smaller head. This suggests to me that the dual statue represents a human male and female joined in some way, either physically or socially (or both). I do not know whether the other double-headed statues exhibit similar proportions, but if they do, and excluding the possibility that the culture that produced them would memorialize Siamese twins, it is hard to escape the conjecture that they represent a couple in a socially recognized, stable sexual relationship. The fact that the statues would have taken some trouble to produce and that they likely had a ritual and/or memorial purpose correlates with the qualities of stability and social recognition, while the physical unity suggests a sexual relationship. In other words, they were married. Indeed, this could be a very graphic representation, quite appropriate for a pre-literate people, of the expression contained in Genesis 2:24, “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body.”

The above conjecture seems especially intriguing in the context of James Sauer’s article “The River Runs Dry—Creation Story Preserves Historical Memory,” BAR 22:04. It appears to be consistent with the idea of the continuity of at least some key traditions and concepts between the Neolithic and Iron Ages in the Near East.

Dever Interview

Objection Sustained!

Hershel Shanks reveals his origins as an attorney in his cross-examination-style interview of William Dever (“Is This Man a Biblical Archaeologist?” BAR 22:04). The problem is that after the first few questions Shanks’s insistence on reopening irrelevant issues is objectionable as badgering the witness. Worse, it quickly begins to bore the jury. Quibbling over the semantics of Biblical-period Levantine archaeology is a tired argument and a moot issue, which Shanks seems needlessly bent on resurrecting. Dever, with characteristic grace and good manners, resists the impoliteness of telling the interviewer to change the topic already.

Come on, Counselor. You’ve got one of the most knowledgeable and articulate archaeologists available at long last to 013discuss the important issues. Let’s move to a relevant line of questioning.

Did you think the second installment was any better?—Ed.

Those Amazing Minimalists

Hershel Shanks’s interview with William Dever amazed me: The lengths to which some scholars calling themselves Biblical minimalists or revisionists will go to discredit the Old Testament! I wonder if there aren’t some political factors involved here as well as archaeological ones. They even go so far as to suggest that there is forgery afoot, as in the case of the Tel Dan “House of David” inscription. The theory that Moses was probably a mythical figure is insulting.

One wonders what the reaction would be in Iran and the rest of the Muslim world if some distinguished scholar or archaeologist pronounced Mohammed a “mythical figure” because not enough evidence had been dug out of the ground to prove otherwise. I’m sure the ensuing uproar would be heard around the world.

Messrs. Thomas Thompson, Niels Peter Lemche and Philip Davies theorize that there was no King David and ancient Israel never existed, that it was a literary construct devised by authors of later times to glorify their own history. How much proof would be sufficient to convince these researchers when they even reject evidence carved in stone by people who were contemporary with the Israelites, i.e., the Egyptian Merneptah Stela (1205 B.C.) and the non-Israelite Tel Dan Stela. Neither of these sources indicates friendly feelings towards the Israelites either.

I couldn’t agree more with Mr. Dever’s assessment of certain researchers and scholars as having the attitude “My mind is made up. Don’t confuse me with the facts.”

Making Sense of All the Evidence

Hershel Shanks’s very interesting interview with William Dever touches on some basic questions that scholars working in the field of religion must confront every day. Can a believer write an objective history of Biblical times? Can a committed unbeliever? Would a neutral observer (if such a person existed) do any better?

In the same week that I read the Dever interview, I was also reading When Elephants Weep, by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy. In their 014study of animal behavior, investigators can reach extremely different findings.

Everything depends on whether or not they are willing to admit that behavior that indicates the presence of feelings in human beings also does so in animals. Those who dogmatically reject what they call anthropomorphism have to go through the most astonishing and ludicrous intellectual antics to avoid it.

We are certainly no better off in the study of religion. Whether we study literary texts or archaeological artifacts, an enormous amount depends on the interpretation of the data. And interpretation, in turn, depends on the assumptions we bring to our text, which frequently come from modern concerns and notions. Archaeological discoveries are no more simple facts than literary texts are. They are data requiring interpretation before they become facts to be used in a historical reconstruction.

Given all this, as a scholar trained in the historical analysis of literary texts, I find many archaeologists naive, sometimes even arrogant. Dever appears to admit that he cannot write a complete history of ancient Israel without reference to the literary sources, yet he is prepared to state to a lay audience that there was no Exodus and no conquest of Canaan and that on this basis it is okay to call Moses a myth. He qualifies this somewhat when challenged by Shanks, but he does appear to have made these statements to a Time reporter, in whatever context. He cannot evade responsibility for what he said, since he must know that he cannot use such a phrase to a reporter without its being seized on and made a headline.

Dever rightly points out that there is no archaeological evidence for the Exodus. But why should we expect there to be? In all probability the numbers involved were not as great as those given in the Bible, and even if they were, the Israelites did not build cities or fortifications in the desert for us to dig up. No negative conclusions could be drawn by a responsible investigator on that basis. The evidence is almost exclusively literary, and our conclusions will have to depend on the usual methods of assessing the value of literary sources. Archaeologists should admit that they have very little useful information, so far at least, to contribute to an understanding of these texts and the events they purport to describe.

Would it not be wiser for the present to regard the Biblical account, the only comprehensive ancient source we possess, as the basis of our historical reconstruction and attempt to refine our view as 015archaeological discovery proceeds? This does, in fact, seem to be Shanks’s position.

Where the assured facts are relatively few and presuppositions differ sharply, historical theories are largely projections of the modern mind onto the blurred image of the past. How can we decide that either the minimalist or the maximalist position, or anything in between, is the best starting point for interpretation of fragmentary data? In the end, the only test is fruitfulness: That hypothesis should win out that makes the best sense of all the evidence we have, both literary and archaeological.

If that is so, all would be wiser to be a lot more cautious in their assertions. It is certainly much too soon to tell Jews and Christians that Moses was a myth.

Round 1 to Dever

I’ve just finished reading your interview with William Dever and eagerly await the remainder of your discussion. The exchange you shared with your readers is fascinating, giving us some real insights into significant issues within the field.

As one with no particular ax to grind in the debate over “Biblical archaeology” as a distinct discipline—or in the conflict between the “minimalists” and the “maximalists”—I feel I must say that Dever comes across extremely well in the exchange you share. In fact, it is rather easy to see why a scholar of Dever’s stature would prefer to avoid writing in BAR for so many years—you seem somehow to distort his logical, clearly stated position and cling to your own agenda, to which you have a painfully obvious emotional investment. I realize that you are not presenting this interview as a contest, but judging from what I’ve read so far, you are clearly the loser of round one!

Rivers of Eden?

The Four Rivers Identified

Dealing with climatic changes in the ancient Near East, James A. Sauer (The River Runs Dry “The River Runs Dry,” BAR 22:04) quotes the Biblical description of the land of Havilah (Genesis 2:11–12) to connect the recently discovered dry bed of the “Kuwait River” with the Biblical Pishon.

With two of the four Rivers of Eden 016clearly identified in the Bible as the Tigris (Hiddekel) and Euphrates (Prat), the countless efforts to identify the other two have stumbled over Genesis 2:10, which asserts that all four “became four principal streams” from a common point. This has been assumed to refer to the headwaters in northern Mesopotamia/Turkey, where no suitable candidates could be found. Dr. Sauer avoided this issue.

I believe Dr. Sauer is correct in his identification of the Kuwait River as the Pishon. In my 1995 book, Divine Encounters, however, I resolved the enigma of a common point. Once the three rivers (Tigris, Euphrates and Kuwait) are marked out on a map, it seems clear that they do have a common head—the head of the Persian Gulf! This led me to suggest in my book that the fourth river, Gihon, or Gusher, was the gushing Karun river of Iran, which meets the others at the head of the Persian Gulf.

If the identification of the dried-up Kuwait River with the Pishon is correct, Dr. Sauer wrote, it “implies extraordinary memory on the part of the Biblical authors, since the river dried up sometime between about 3500 and 2000 B.C.E.” In Divine Encounters, I draw attention to the diminishing scale of detail provided by the authors of Genesis in describing the four rivers. Prat, the fourth, is mentioned just by name, as a matter of known fact. The third, Hiddekel, is additionally said to flow east of Assyria. For the second, Gihon, the information is increased to state that it encircles the land of Kush (which is taken to mean the land of the Kassites). But for the first river, Pishon, its location and how to recognize its land are explained in two full verses—perhaps because the river was no longer flowing. Biblical memory and veracity are indeed extraordinary.

Potpourri

How Collectors and Governments Can Work Together

In recent years, both business leaders and diplomats have been learning the wisdom of the old adage “If you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em.” Perhaps it’s time for archaeologists to learn the same lesson.

There is a simple way to break the impasse between the academics and the collectors: Have governments license the diggers as certified archaeological excavators, with the requirement that they hire professional archaeologists to oversee the excavations. The governments would, of course, have the right of first refusal on 017any important objects found. The licensed companies would then be allowed to sell and export the remainder with legitimate permits.

Everybody can win with such an arrangement. The diggers and smugglers can come out of the shadows and operate legitimate businesses. Dealers and collectors will have guarantees of authenticity and provenance. Governments will collect vast sums from license fees and taxes on the trade. Museums will have access to all the best antiquities. And archaeologists will have a lot of new employment opportunities.

Traditionalists will say it can’t be done and will raise many objections. But who would have ever thought that Detroit would be making deals with Japan or that Israel would be negotiating with the PLO?

Household Gods

In your review of Kathleen M. Kenyon’s work on the two caves outside the walls of eighth-century B.C. Jerusalem (ReViews, BAR 22:04), you describe the figurines found in the caves as possibly cultic. With a preponderance of objects that seem to be domestic or commercial in nature, could the cultic figures be household gods?

The mix of possibly cultic and common ware found in the cave brought to my mind Genesis 31:19–30, which describes Rachel carrying off her father’s household gods. Even today there are societies where home altars and cult figures are common.

Thank you for a great magazine.

Twice Victimized

In Lawrence E. Stager’s article “The Fury of Babylon,” BAR 22:01, the caption of one photograph states, “The most disturbing sign of the invaders’ ferocity … [was] the skeleton of a 35-year-old woman … who had sought to hide from her attackers among the shop’s large storage jars. Lying on her back with her legs recoiled in terror, she lifted her arm up to her head, as if to ward off a blow.” And the text in the article states that she “had been crouching down among the storage jars, attempting to hide from the attackers. When we found her, she was lying on her back, her legs flexed and akimbo, her left arm reaching toward her head. The skull was badly fragmented.”

Much of this is clearly fiction, or at least imaginative reconstruction: “recoiled in terror,” “as if to ward off a blow,” “had been crouching down … attempting to hide,” etc. So why stop there? The woman was not crouching down when she died, 018she was on her back with her legs apart, which is not how any human being naturally hides. It is difficult to escape the impression that this woman, grandmotherly in age though she was, was the victim of rape as well as murder. The experience of women in World War II, Rwanda and the shards of Yugoslavia gives us no reason to judge the fury of Babylon less, or more, terrible than that of the 20th century.

Where the Best Ideas Come From

Regarding the letter of M. Eileen McNamara (Queries & Comments, BAR 22:04), I have been thinking about the clay sphere ever since I read the original article (“The Fury of Babylon,” BAR 22:01), and I am unsatisfied with Lawrence E. Stager’s explanation of its function.

This is my thought:

The sphere was placed on the jar as a stopper.

Melted beeswax was poured around the sphere to seal it.

The sphere did not need a string. When it was time to vent the wine, all the winemaker needed to do was rotate the sphere so that the shaft was straight up.

When it was time to stop venting, the sphere was rotated back and pushed down into the beeswax, and the jar was sealed again.

This thought came to me as I was replacing my toilet. The ring around the drainpipe is beeswax.

Thank you for stimulating my thoughts.

Another Suggestion

I have a refinement to bolster the solution offered by Dr. McNamara concerning the hole through the stopper ball for the wine jars.

If the ball stopper and the abutting inside of the jar are unglazed, a good seal can be made by simply grinding the two together until a perfect mating is produced. This is the method mechanics use in grinding automotive engine valves. Artisans in all ages come up with such practical—and ageless—solutions.

The Pagan Anti-Defamation League

Among the many elements in BAR I find offensive is the derogatory use of the word “pagan” since I am “pagan” and proud of it!

Wouldn’t it be more accurate and polite to use either the terms “non-Christian” or “non-Jewish” or the exact description, such as “Hellenic,” Roman,” Phoenician” or “Egyptian,” etc.?

Using “pagan” to describe all non-Jewish or non-Christian influences is highly inaccurate, unscholarly and rude.

I am sure BAR does not intentionally mean to insult its non-Jewish and non-Christian readers by lumping the majority of the world (past and present) into one pejoratively used phrase. Hellenes and Romans can’t fight back, but would you dare to call Muslims and Buddhists “pagan”?

Please do the scholarly and tolerant thing.

Webster’s first definition of “pagan” is “a member of a polytheistic religion.” Neither Islam nor Buddhism is polytheistic.

The second definition is “one who has little or no religion.” Again, neither Islam nor Buddhism can be regarded as pagan.—Ed.

From the Heart of Africa by E-Mail

“Magnificent Obsession,” BAR 22:03, is a wonderful story. I think maybe Hershel Shanks will get things turned around as far as gaining international acceptance for collectors is concerned, just as he got things moving for the publication of Dead Sea Scroll material. Here’s hoping he gets at least one fantastic collector’s item to publish per issue.

Regarding those who decry your inclusion of the “squabbling” over the Dead Sea Scrolls and other problems or personal differences between scholars, I think it is good to know what kind of real problems exist in the archaeological world. And besides, such stories, together with the “cancel my subscription” letters, provide a lighter touch, perhaps a bit of relief from the strict concentration that your scholarly articles demand.

Bahat Knew It All the Time

In his review of Beneath the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (ReViews, BAR 22:04), Dan Bahat’s pen got away from him so that he skipped or slipped over an interesting moment of Jerusalem’s history. He wrote that “the Crusaders who rebuilt the church faced the daunting task of converting an abandoned site into a new church.”

On orders from the Egyptian caliph Hakim, the church (as restored in the wake of the Persian invasions of 614 A.D.) was destroyed in brutal and systematic fashion in 1009. However, and this is the part Bahat ignores, Hakim was succeeded by Muslim rulers who resumed the older habit of tolerance toward the Christian community in Jerusalem. Overtures from the Byzantine court of Constantinople resulted in Muslim permission for the Christians to rebuild their church.

Work began under Emperor Romanus III (1028–1034), and by 1048 new structures stood at the site. One was the Rotunda (a great circular church), covering the tomb of Jesus. The second was a large open courtyard surrounded by colonnades.

In one corner of the courtyard was a chapel enclosing the rock of Golgotha.

So it was definitely not “an abandoned site” that the Crusaders found upon their arrival. Only one portion of the site had been abandoned since the time of Hakim’s destruction. That was the area once covered by the great basilica of Constantine (fourth century, restored in the seventh century). Up to the time of Hakim, the site was occupied by three large structures: the Rotunda over the tomb, the courtyard including Golgotha and the basilica. From 1048 until the coming of the Crusaders, the site included the restored Rotunda and an open courtyard. Crusader construction after 1099 incorporated the Rotunda into a new complex, with a new basilica covering the area once occupied by the courtyard. The 019space once covered by the old basilica received cloisters and dwelling spaces for the imported Western clergy and monks. Portions of the Gothic arches of their refectory and some of their bells are still visible today in the Ethiopian village on the roof of the Holy Sepulchre.

Of course Dan Bahat knows all this. I just checked my old copy of BAR containing his article on the site (“Does the Holy Sepulchre Mark the Burial of Jesus?” BAR 12:03. Accompanying his text are photographs and diagrams taken mostly from two books that he reviewed in his article: Charles Couasnon, The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem (1974), and Virgilio C. Corbo, Il Santo Sepolcro di Gerusalemme (1981–1982). Bahat summarized important aspects of these architectural and archaeological studies of the history of the site and offered a few caveats and suggestions of his own. Then I thought, “Hey! Bahat wrote that wonderful Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem (1989),” so I dragged it down off the shelf and turned to his chapter on the Crusader period. Both in his atlas and in his BAR article of 1986, he offers full-color refutations of his more recent comment about the site’s being “abandoned” at the time of the Crusaders’ arrival.

Chews Us Out, But Stays With Us

I chew you out in my mind every so often but continue to greatly enjoy the tremendous articles and new knowledge about the old Israel I love.

Educational Conflicts

I am renewing my subscription. Even the conflicts are educational!

Correction

The photograph of the forecourt of Sardis’s synagogue that appeared in the last issue of BAR was incorrectly attributed. The credit should have read Gian Barto Vanni, Scala/Art Resource, N.Y.

We also failed to note that the photos of the oil flask and of the bronze bull figurine were provided by the Israel Museum; the objects belong to the Israel Antiquities Authority. The bull figurine was photographed by David Harris. Our apologies.

No Apology Needed