Queries & Comments

008

Bring Back the Beautiful Covers

Thanks for your excellent magazine. I would like to share with you a disappointment, however.

In the past I enjoyed displaying my copies of BAR on my coffee table because the beautiful photos of artifacts added to the decor of my home. My husband was an Air Force pilot for 28 years, and through his extensive travels we have acquired many lovely items from around the world. Won’t you consider returning to the artifact covers?

How do you like the cover of this issue?—Ed.

Top Grade

For many years I have enjoyed and appreciated BAR as a high-quality periodical that far surpasses anything else in the field of Biblical history and archaeology. But the most recent issue (July/August 1997) has achieved an A+ in my grade book because of the splendid photography and the highly informative articles concerning the most recent discoveries in the Holy Land. Keep up your policies regarding diverse viewpoints. You do us all a great service.

Ad-rageous

Are you so hard up for advertisers that you can’t afford to reject any? Or is it illegal to discriminate? Or do you publish the outlandish to amuse or outrage your subscribers?

If none of the above, why the ad for the “Secret Biblical Code” in the March/April 1997 issue?

None of the above. Most of our readers want to know what’s available in the marketplace. We trust them to make their own judgment without censorship from us.—Ed.

Biblical Minimalists

Many Losers, Few Winners

I was mighty turned off by the sophomoric “Face to Face,” BAR 23:04.

The editor had an obligation to redline the childish exchanges between William Dever and Thomas Thompson. The reading audience simply isn’t interested in their personal phlegms, and you have no obligation to let them shower us readers with such juvenile exchanges.

If there were any winners, it had to be the reticent Kyle McCarter. All the others—Dever, Thompson, Niels Lemche and especially the readers—were losers.

Competition for Disbelief

In “Face to Face,” William Dever said to Thomas Thompson, “Tom, I don’t care in the least whether Solomon ever existed. I’m probably more of a disbeliever than you.”

What is this? Competition for the number one disbeliever? I didn’t know there was a contest.

Maybe you should consider changing the name of the magazine to Unbiblical Archaeology Review.

BAR Unaware of Its Own Bias

Judging from the articles and letters published in BAR, it seems fairly obvious that the readership of the magazine is predominantly religious and conservative 012and that the editorial staff is willing to stand up for their readers’ beliefs in order to uphold sales and maintain BAR as a going concern. This is fine. I have no problem with conservatives or conservative publications. I am, however, troubled by the editorial staff’s lack of awareness of its own bias.

The debate between Drs. Dever, Lemche, McCarter and Thompson illustrates what I mean. The title contravenes the principles of open academic debate. The title is too polemical. It sets “Us”—Dever, McCarter, BAR and, ultimately, conservative readers—against “Them”—Lemche and Thompson, the Minimalists, the Copenhagen group. The transcription of the debate itself is not too bad, but before the reader has even read the first argument, her perceptions have been colored by the title.

No Hiding

The “Face to Face” article was great. The format allowed me to put things in perspective and understand the differing views much more easily because the interviewees were immediately confronted and forced to clarify their points, as opposed to having weeks and months to prepare rebuttals tainted with assertions and misleading phrasing. Especially essential to the success of this debate was the facilitation of editor Hershel Shanks. He managed to keep all four participants communicating on a professional level while minimizing the usual name-calling and misinformation. Outstanding concept! Let’s have more articles in this format.

Did Plato Exist?

Of course the Biblical history of Israel is true, even if not completely accurate. If the authors could make up whatever they wanted, why make up that stuff in particular? And is there archaeological proof of the existence of Xenophon or Plato? Or even Tecumseh?

Will Lemche Be Suing?

The “dialogue” between Thompson, Lemche, Dever and McCarter was insipid. Why waste time and pages on the Copenhagen clique (Thompson and Lemche)? They have nothing of value to say. Apart from a few judicious remarks by McCarter, the entire exercise was a waste of time.

For once, I can say some nice things about an article by Nadav Na’aman (“Cow Town or Royal Capital? Evidence for Iron Age Jerusalem,” BAR 23:04). His review of the evidence in favor of a tenth-century united monarchy was to the point. On the other hand, his article was marred by his adoption of the “chiefdom” model for David and Solomon. This chiefdom kick is a new anthropological fad, around which scholars can flap their wings for the next decade. It might apply to the time of Saul and to the early days of David’s reign. But when armies are fielded, large work crews are employed on massive building projects and ritual institutions such as temples are established and supported, then you have a monarchy, an administration, a government.

I once heard an absurd paper, given at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Biblical Literature and the American Schools of Oriental Research, arguing that Mesha of Moab had a chiefdom instead of a kingdom. And yet his magnificent display inscription describes all the public works mentioned above and can stand alongside the display inscriptions of such kingdoms as those of North Syria (Sam’al for example).

Speaking of inscriptions, the Ekron text has now been published and it gives the names of several kings, not just the 014well-known Padi and Akhayush. So Lemche’s assertion that the text is a fake can be filed in the trash like most of his ideas. I have to be careful about what I say about Lemche, however, since he burned up the Internet trying to get support for suing me. His ability to interpret inscriptions he has never seen is comparable to his treatment of inscriptions already published. I will only refer the readers to my article “Who is a Canaanite?” in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 304 (November 1996). It was necessary to give the proper interpretation of the texts that define “Canaanite” and “Canaan” after Lemche had thoroughly muddled the issues in his book The Canaanites in Their Land (Sheffield, 1991).

Egyptian Evidence Supports the Bible

The debate between four scholars was most interesting and stimulating. However, one point raised by Lemche, which Dever did not challenge, requires elucidation. Lemche claimed that Pithom was founded by Pharaoh Necho II, in Dynasty 26. In this, he betrays unfamiliarity with recent work on Ramesside Egypt.

There was indeed a Ramesside Per-Atum, of Pithom. Its ruins are at Tell er-Rataba, midway through the Wadi Tumilat, a site first identified by Alan Gardiner.¹ ir Malek, Atlas of Ancient Egypt (New York: Facts on File, 1980), map pp. 166–167. Further, a Ramesside text, an extract from a border journal kept under Pharaoh Merenptah, mentions that a contingent of Shasu was allowed to pasture its flocks near the Pools of Per-Atum.² Thus, there is unequivocal archaeological and textual confirmation of a Ramesside city, Per-Atum, the Exodus Pithom. That issue, at least, cannot be ascribed to text fabrication by later Biblical editors. Lemche needs to update his files, and so one key minimalist totem falls.

On another issue, just whose son was Rehoboam? Solomon’s, so states the Hebrew king list. Now Shoshenq I (Shishak in the Bible) attacked Judea in Rehoboam’s fifth regnal year, and from Judea and Israel he took enough booty to reopen the Gebel Silsilah quarries and to add a whole new court to the temple of Amun at Karnak, where he depicted his victory (see Nadav Na’aman, “Cow Town or Royal Capital?” BAR 23:04). So, if Rehoboam really existed during Shoshenq I’s reign, can his father, Solomon, be a fiction? Indeed, the Bible further states that Solomon married Pharaoh’s daughter. Kenneth Kitchen has shown that the pharaoh was Siamun, of Dynasty 21, who also sacked Philistine Gezer and gave it to Solomon as a wedding dowry.³ If tenth-century B.C.E. Jerusalem was the cow town some derisively call it, why would Pharaoh marry his daughter to the chieftain of a cow town? How could Shoshenq I acquire so much booty that he could make a major addition to Karnak if Jerusalem were such a cow town under Rehoboam? Rehoboam did not acquire all that wealth in five years. No, it was Solomon who had done so. So the United Monarchy was there in the tenth century B.C.E. after all. Kitchen has frequently scolded Biblical scholars for ignoring Egyptian evidence for Biblical history. Thankfully, there is a large exception to this—Israeli Biblical scholars, of whom Nadav Na’aman is a fine example.

The Minimalists’ Impossible Task

Messrs. Lemche, Thompson and their likes have taken on an unnecessarily difficult task in denying the historicity of David and Solomon. Life is hard when one has to constantly squirm in the face of obvious evidence, declare anything and everything that contradicts one’s point of view to be a forgery and constantly invent contrived and bizarre interpretations.

Earthquake!

No Comparison

In the very interesting article, “Earthquake! Inspiration for Armageddon,” BAR 23:04, by geophysics professors Amos Nur and Hagai Ron, a footnote on page 50 reads: “Based on the length of an active fault, we can estimate the largest potential magnitude (M) of its earthquakes. For the Carmel-Gilboa system, this is M6 to M6.5 on the Richter scale, comparable to the M7.6 earthquake in Northridge, California, in 1994.”

I can’t believe the authors would use the word “comparable” in that context (a BAR editor perhaps?).

In terms of size and energy released, there is no comparison between M6-M6.5 and M7.6, and the statement is misleading. The Richter scale is logarithmic (i.e., nonlinear), so an earthquake of M7.6 is about 12.6 times larger than an M6.5, almost 40 times larger than an M6 and about 251 times larger than the 1984 M5.2 quake mentioned in the text. To say that M6.5 is “comparable” to M7.6 is like saying that having $10,000 in the bank is “comparable” to having $126,000 in the bank!

An increase of 1.0 on the Richter scale translates into about 60 times as much energy released. All of which is not to 018belittle the danger of an M6.5 quake: The M6.3 Long Beach, California, quake of 1933 caused extensive damage and 120 fatalities.

Amos Nur and Hagai Ron respond:

Norm Godfrey is absolutely correct: A magnitude 7.6 earthquake is orders of magnitude more powerful than an M6 or M6.5. As it happens, the 1994 Northridge, California, earthquake was actually an M6.7 event not an M7.6 one. We or the editors accidentally transposed the 6 and the 7.

We apologize for this misleading error and thank Norm Godfrey for catching it.

Strata

Did Prostitutes Murder Them?

Lawrence Stager and Patricia Smith, in their interesting article, “DNA Analysis Sheds New Light on Oldest Profession at Ashkelon” (Strata, BAR 23:04), suggest that infants were killed by bathhouse prostitutes: “Analysis of teeth that had not yet erupted revealed bloodstains, indicating that the infants were either strangled or drowned.”

Such conclusions are not supported by the scientific evidence described. Bloodstains on unerupted teeth do not indicate strangulation or drowning because unerupted teeth are consistently bathed in circulating blood in the living infant and readily exposed to blood in the decomposing corpse (i.e., just after death).

The above-quoted evidence only indicates that the infants died, and considering the high infant mortality of the fourth to sixth centuries, it is most probable that the babies died due to natural causes rather than murder by prostitute mothers.

I also question the deduction that the structure was a brothel because of the inscription “Enter, enjoy and … ” For all we know, the establishment could have been a mineral bath, water bar or restaurant of some kind.

Stretching science with the results of inappropriate tests and fanciful extrapolations makes a nice story but is of little help in advancing our knowledge of the past.

Patricia Smith and Lawrence Stager respond:

Dr. Neiburger is, of course, correct in objecting to the description of the teeth from Ashkelon as bloodstained. Our previously published articles, on which this popular piece was based, refer to a pinkish-brown staining of the teeth. This has been attributed to the presence of red blood cells in the dental tubuli after death from drowning or strangulation. It is, we agree, less common in developing teeth, but when associated with a high iron content, it seems the most likely explanation. Our articles also state very specifically that the reason we assumed that the deaths were the result of infanticide rather than natural causes was that all the infants appeared to be exactly the same age (and since publication more than 50 more have been recovered from the same spot). Were the deaths due to natural causes, the sample should include individuals of different ages—as has been found at every mortuary site excavated so far. Our apologies to Dr. Neiburger and any other readers who feel that our article was insufficiently detailed. They are invited to peruse the original publications in the Journal of Archaeological Science 19 (1992), pp. 667–675, and Nature (January 16, 1997).

Hind-Legged Snakes Are Old News

I enjoy reading your journal and find it, for the most part, informative. I read with some dismay, however, the article entitled “Legged Snakes Identified” (Strata, BAR 23:04). The sentence “Two paleontologists have presented the first evidence that the earliest snakes, like other reptiles, had hind limbs … ,” is unfortunately not true. Having personally seen and handled a number of snakes belonging to the family Boidae (boas and pythons) over the years, I am well aware of the long-known presence of vestigial hind limbs on currently existing species. They are nonfunctional and are the remaining indication of previous organs of active locomotion in primitive representatives no longer in existence.

I agree with Nicholas C. Fraser, quoted in your news item, when he states that “the prospect of a snake with legs is not as improbable as it might have at first appeared.” However, we can make a much more positive statment: At least in some branches of prehistoric ophidians, they did have hind legs.

Estonia Held the Record

Thank you so much for a wonderful magazine! As a teacher of Old Testament in a country where Soviet occupation made library resources scarce to nonexistent, I find both BAR and Bible Review to be excellent and much-needed sources of recent information. I believe that many of my students are also grateful for the spice that BAR and Bible Review add to my lectures. Keep up the good work.

022

I would, however, like to make a small correction to the article on the lighthouse of Alexandria (Strata, BAR 23:03). The lighthouse is mentioned as having “soared to a height of 300 to 500 feet.” In other sources I have seen the exact height placed at 460 feet. The article goes on to add that this “was the tallest structure ever made until the Eiffel Tower was erected in 1889.” This, however, is not quite accurate. The Church of St. Olav, in Tallinn, Estonia, first mentioned in historical records in 1267, reached a height of 521 feet. Unfortunately, the church was damaged by fire in 1931, and even with early 20th-century technology, the spire could only be rebuilt to a height of 406 feet. So much for advancement! Nevertheless, it is still an impressive sight if any of your readers want a holiday in a little-known part of Europe!

The Height of Alexandria’s Lighthouse

If Alexandria’s lighthouse could be seen 35 miles out to sea, it must have been 500 feet tall. If it was 300 feet tall, it would only be seen up to about 26 miles out to sea.

Potpourri

Comfort for Thiede?

Carsten Thiede asked me to respond to statements in BAR in which I was quoted out of context. (See Queries & Comments, BAR 23:03.)

In general I agree with Carsten Thiede’s efforts to promote a paradigm shift in the dating of New Testament manuscripts. However, I do not agree with his dating of P64/67 (Matthew) to before 70 A.D. I think P64/67 belongs to the same codex as P4 (Luke) or, at least, was done by the same scribe, and I posit that P4/P64/P67 should be dated to the early or middle part of the second century (125–150 A.D.). The handwriting style lines up quite well with P. Oxyrhynchus 2404 (second century), P. Oxyrhynchus 661 (c. 150) and P. Vindob 29784 (late second century). It also has some similarities with P. Oxyrhynchus 224 and P. Rylands 547 (late second century) and P. Oxyrhynchus 2334 (second century), but even more likeness with P. Oxyrhynchus 2373 and PSI1090 (late first to early second century).

The Advantages of Paper

Hershel Shanks has forcefully, and rightly, demanded that excavators actually commit 023some of their thoughts to writing. However, I am not sure he has chosen the right way to ensure this. In First Person, BAR 23:04, Shanks asserts that “the day of the complete published report on the printed page is over! It is as obsolete as the quill pen.” He then shades his meaning by implying that, in fact, the final report should have a printed element after all, the “excavator’s own summary and interpretation” (reminds me of the Journal of Evidence-Free Analysis!), with the complicated bits relegated to some electronic medium. He goes on to cry that “software … is in an advanced stage” and that we shall soon be able to “manipulate” [sic] each other’s data to our hearts’ content. Herein lie some problems.

The first is that it isn’t the lack of a proper medium that is holding up publication of results, but a lack of will. Fancy software is no more likely to make a disorganized excavator produce a final report than is a limitation to paper.

Second, there is the archival integrity of the data being presented. Data must be kept separate from the conclusions drawn from them and cannot be presented in such a way that a later user can alter the original information to suit differing hypotheses (to use a phrase familiar to BAR readers, there has to be a canonical version of the data).

Third, there is the intractable problem of a standard format. This (unnamed) fancy archeological software—is it for Windows, Unix, Apple or some other operating system? How much does it cost? How powerful a machine will it require?

All this pales, however, before the question of durability. How can we dare predict that any software we have today will be read by any machine in 50 years? And before you start to mutter about buggy-whip makers and sneer at yet another aging techno-Luddite, I will give you a specific example from only 15 years ago. I still have the computer files for my doctoral dissertation, completed at Oxford in 1982. It is in an unreadable word-processing language (Txed), written on a machine that no longer exists (RML 380Z), in an operating system that has been gone so long that computer nerds giggle when I mention it (CP/M), and saved in a medium superseded years ago (5.25-inch floppy disks). In other words, it is electronically completely inaccessible (and don’t tell me I should have had the wit to convert the disks every time there was an advance in software or hardware). I might as well use the disks as coasters. Meanwhile, as I write, I have before me on my desk a copy of M. le Sieur de Sainctyon’s Histoire du Grand Tamerlan, printed in MDCXCV (1695) in La Haye and still completely usable. Frankly, considering present performance,

I doubt that any electronic medium we have now will be as legible in 302 years as my Grand Tamerlan is today.

Bibliography Update

Readers who were intrigued by our item on the recently identified sundial from Qumran (Strata, BAR 23:04) can learn more from the scholarly article on this object: “Un instrument de mesures astronomique à Qumran,” by M. Albani and U. Glessmer, in Revue Biblique 104:1.

Also in that Strata section, we described the evolution of loomweights (“Weighty Matters,” Strata, BAR 23:04). We referred to a new issue of the journal Qedem in which the weights were discussed, but we did not give the name of the article’s author. She is Orit Shamir.

010

Should We Have Printed Lemche’s Suggestions of Forgeries?

In the four-person interview published in our July/August issue (“Face to Face: Biblical Minimalists Meet Their Challengers,” BAR 23:04), one of the participants, Professor Niels Peter Lemche of the University of Copenhagen, suggested that two very important inscriptions excavated by leading archaeologists might well be forgeries. One was the House of David (Beth David) inscription from Tel Dan, excavated by Avraham Biran, and the other was an inscription from Ekron, mentioning the city of Ekron and some of its rulers, excavated by Trude Dothan and Seymour Gitin.

Two participants in the interview, William Dever and Kyle McCarter, challenged Lemche. Although the exchange was informal, the challenge was clear:

Dever: “Oh geez, come on fellas … This is slanderous to suggest! … Niels Peter, you’re too good a scholar to indulge in this sort of thing.”

McCarter: “Wait a minute, explain … What would be the motivation for forgery?”

Nevertheless, both Dever and McCarter have been criticized for not arguing more forcefully against the suggestion of forgery. And the editor of BAR has been criticized unusually heavily for printing the exchange. Most of the criticism of the editor has been oral and has come from scholars. Some of it has been unrestrained.

We print below some of the written criticism we have received, as well as refutations of the forgery charges. We agree with the sentiments of BAR reader David Carl Argall. My views on the Biblical Minimalists have been expressed not only in BAR^a but also in a lengthy article in our sister magazine, Bible Review, titled “The Biblical Minimalists: Expunging Ancient Israel’s Past,” BR 13:03. (You can purchase a copy of this issue for $4.50 plus shipping—or better still, order a full year’s subscription of six issues for just $14.97, and we’ll include this issue for free. For this offer, call us at 1-800-221-4644 or send your order with payment to us at 4710 41st St., NW, Washington, DC 20016; please mention code MAGJ5.)

I also wholeheartedly agree with the letter printed below from interview participant Kyle McCarter. The question remains, however, whether we should have refrained from printing this exchange. On this question, as on so many difficult questions that arise in the course of publishing this magazine, we turn to our readers for comment. We profit from your wisdom, in its many guises.—Ed.

The more I read about the Minimalists, the more outlandish they seem. The casual charges of forgery sound like the last resort of the desperate.

When the authenticity of the newly discovered Ekron inscription was questioned by Niels Peter Lemche, I found myself at a disadvantage. I couldn’t comment because I had not yet seen the inscription or even a photograph of it. Since then I’ve had the chance to examine the stone and to study the excellent article in which Seymour Gitin, Trude Dothan and Joseph Naveh published it (Israel Exploration Journal 47 [1997], pp. 1-16). I now feel confident in saying that from the point of view of epigraphy, there is no reason to question its authenticity. It presents some surprising features and takes us into new territory—we have no other monumental Philistine inscription—but these things increase our confidence rather than the opposite. No forger’s imagination would have created such an inscription.

I hope you will also permit me to express a strong personal concern about the challenge to the authenticity of this inscription. Trude Dothan and Sy Gitin, the excavators of Tel Miqne/Ekron, and their staff are archaeologists of the highest integrity and competence, and they enjoy the respect and trust of the entire academic community. The implication that such people would be party to the kind of fraud implied by this challenge is, in a word, outrageous, and I find it deeply disturbing. It may be that those who have impeached the inscription are suggesting that Trude and Sy are innocent victims of some unknown perpetrator. But this is also impossible. The Miqne expedition is a tightly and professionally run operation—a model excavation in many ways—and it is inconceivable that such a hoax would have been possible.

These thoughts also apply to the challenge to the Tel Dan inscription. All the scientific criteria that the epigraphist can bring to bear on that inscription support its authenticity. To this I should add that Avraham Biran, the director of the Tel Dan project, is deservedly regarded with the greatest admiration and affection by the archaeological community, and any suggestion, however indirect, that a fraud was perpetrated under his supervision is preposterous.

Serious charges have appeared in this journal questioning the authenticity of inscriptions recently found in the excavations at Tel Dan and Ekron and subsequently published in the Israel Exploration Journal (IEJ). It has been alleged that accompanying photographs may have been fabricated by the contributing authors or that evidence from the field may have been doctored.

Every submission to IEJ is carefully studied by the editors, assisted by expert readers. The editorial process is rigorous and exacting, and submissions that fail to meet IEJ’s standards are rejected. IEJ cannot be responsible for opinions expressed by its contributors, but it welcomes discussion and debate in cases where readings and interpretations are disputed on scholarly grounds, and often publishes responses that express alternative interpretations.

We have great confidence in the personal integrity and professional competence of our contributors, and this applies in every respect to the finds they discover and record in controlled archaeological excavations, including inscriptions, which are assigned to skilled epigraphists for decipherment and study. Given this trust, recent charges regarding the authenticity of the inscriptions are unsubstantiated. We deplore the recent series of unfounded allegations and call upon all editors to insist, as we do, on proper standards of discourse by the members of the academic community whose words are cited and whose writings are published in the pages of their journals.

In the Lemche/Thompson—McCarter/Dever debate, Professor Lemche is quoted as saying that he had “firsthand evidence because [he] had a discussion last summer at a seminar at Megiddo with the person who found [the Tel Dan inscription] … All the pictures of it printed in the Israel Exploration Journal are fakes.” As the person to whom Professor Lemche spoke, please allow me to set the record straight.

In the summer of 1996, Professor Lemche visited the Tel Aviv University/Penn State University Tel Megiddo expedition camp for an informal discussion with the expedition staff. It was a very pleasant interchange on a balmy Jezreel Valley night. When Professor Lemche was told of my connection with the Tel Dan excavations, he plied me with several pointed questions as to the stela’s context (of course, he might have done better to approach Professor Avraham Biran, the excavator, directly).

I never said that I discovered the stela. I wasn’t even in the field at the time. As William Dever pointed out, our keen-eyed surveyor, Gila Cook, found it. A brief account of the discovery was published by Avraham Biran and Joseph Naveh in the Israel Exploration Journal 43 (see also “David Found at Dan,” BAR 20:02). I reminded Lemche that a photograph was included in that article that showed the fragmentary stela as a building stone (i.e., in secondary use) in the foundations of an Iron Age wall (Wall 5017) bordering the outer piazza. Moreover, I indicated that other photos show the stele fragment in its secondary, in situ position at various stages of excavation, before the inscription was recognized, emphasizing how unlikely it was to have been planted.

Since neither Lemche, nor Thomas Thompson, nor Fred Cryer, nor anyone else can provide any evidence for forgery, and since they haven’t investigated this possibility with any rigor, their claims are cavalier. It makes one wonder about the rest of their scholarship.

004

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.

Bring Back the Beautiful Covers

Thanks for your excellent magazine. I would like to share with you a disappointment, however.