Queries & Comments

008

Love Letters

I love Queries & Comments. Studying the Bible and religion is a new interest for me, and I find the letters very helpful. As I read an article, every statement seems so correct; then, in the next issue, there is a response pointing out all kinds of differences of opinion. It makes me realize how much I have to learn. Please don’t ever leave out the letters!!

Who’s the Prejudiced One?

Dr. La Monte Crape calls your use of B.C.E. and C.E. “a slap at Christians” and says he does not “care to subscribe to such a prejudiced magazine” (Queries & Comments, BAR 25:03, ). I wish to inform Dr. Crape that there are many religions in the United States other than Christianity and that as a member of one of them I find it extremely distasteful to have to use abbreviations of terms such as “year of our lord” and “before the Messiah” when writing a date. It is in the spirit of our multi-ethnic society to accept the neutral, nonreligious terms C.E. (Common Era) and B.C.E. (Before the Common Era). I think Dr. Crape should ask himself who is being prejudiced when he makes such a complaint. If it will make him feel better, Dr. Crape can always say that the abbreviations stand for “Christian Era” and “Before the Christian Era.” I also suggest Dr. Crape read what his God said about what to do when one is slapped.

Whatever designations we use, the dates are still measured from the supposed date of Jesus’ birth. Indeed, the 30-volume 1990 edition of the Talmud published by Soncino Press, the venerable Jewish publishing house, states that B.C.E. stands for “Before the Christian Era.”—Ed.

Fine Point

La Monte Crape’s letter, discussing the fine point of your use of B.C.E. and C.E., complains of “endless letters to the editor discussing every fine point of every disputed issue raised in your magazine … ”

Ironic?

We Get It from All Sides

I will not resubscribe to your publications until you use the secular (and scholarly) dating system—B.C.E./C.E.—instead of the sectarian one you insist on in most of your articles.

Hazor

How to Render an Idol Impotent

On reading “Excavating Hazor, Part Two: Did the Israelites Destroy the Canaanite City?” by Amnon Ben-Tor and Maria Teresa Rubiato (BAR 25:03), about the largest Canaanite 010statue in human form ever found in Israel, I was prompted to look up 1 Samuel 5:1–5, in which Dagon, the idol/god of the Philistines, falls before the captured “ark of God” and is found with his head and his hands cut off. The excavators of Hazor found a statue—with head and hands missing! Was the statue found at Hazor the Dagon idol/god of the Philistines? Did the Israelites have a practice of cutting off the hands and heads of captured images—perhaps to demonstrate their impotence?

Given the second commandment, I would suggest that destruction of the statue—a graven image—points to the Israelites as the destroyers of Hazor.

It’s Simple

Your feature article asks, “Did the Israelites Destroy Hazor?” If you read Joshua in the New World Translation of the Bible, it will tell you. The destruction of Hazor was ordered by the almighty God Jehovah through Moses, who conveyed to Joshua the order to throw the Canaanites out of the Promised Land. Read chapter 11 of Joshua!

What’s in a Name?

The otherwise excellent article by Amnon Ben-Tor and Maria Teresa Rubiato on Hazor is marred by the statement that the name Ibni-Addu means “Son of Hadad.”

The personal name Ibni-Addu does not mean “Son of Hadad.” The first component, ibni, is the third person masculine singular past tense form of the verb “to build.” The meaning of the name is “Addu has built.” The idea is that the deity Addu has helped the father of that child to “build” his house, that is, to increase his family. Perhaps Ibni-Addu was the firstborn male.

The mistake was ours, not the authors’.—Ed.

Pillared Buildings

Tax Time?

“Divided Structures Divide Scholars,” by Moshe Kochavi (BAR 25:03), was excellent but leaves me with a question. Rather than being shopping malls, as suggested, could pillared buildings be ancient versions of customs houses used for the assessment of import taxes? The idea occurred to me because of the adjoining storehouse and granary, the location of the complex within a gated city along a trade route, and the presence of imported and unused pottery.

Moshe Kochavi responds:

Lisa Wise might be right if the society we were talking about was that of our day. There is no evidence, however, that in Biblical times (the Iron Age in this case) there were any import taxes imposed by states.

Been There, Done That

Once more the question of tripartite pillared buildings raises its divisive head. The tripartite buildings depicted in the article by Moshe Kochavi are very close 068to structures in Saudi Arabia that I have been in to make purchases!

When closed, each unit is nothing more than a storage closet. Upon opening for business, however, the goods to be sold are stacked on the ground in front of the store or hung from the wall or the ceiling of the central walkway. This naturally narrows the walking area even further, making travel very difficult: The center is a teeming hubbub! The one I visited in Hofuf even had a hole-in-the-wall bakery where freshly made, hot Arab bread could be purchased. Yum!

I am an eyewitness to the 20th-century use of tripartite pillared buildings.

Potpourri

Collect the Whole Set

A Nazareth theme park? (See Strata, “Resurrecting Nazareth,” BAR 25:03.) What next? Jesus action figures?

Nothing is off limits, is it?

Did Josephus Mention Jesus?

Thank you for “The Meaning of Unhistory,” by Hershel Shanks (First Person, BAR 25:03).

I’d like to comment on Mr. Shanks’s statement that Jesus is unmentioned in contemporaneous sources except for one questionable passage in Josephus.

Actually, Jesus Christ rates two mentions in Josephus, one of them a passing reference to him as the brother of James. As far as I know—and my 070exposure to Josephus scholarship is limited—this passage is not controversial, and thus is a strong argument for a historical Jesus.

The other reference, particularly as it appears in William Whiston’s translation, is questionable because it gives Jesus such fulsome praise that one would think that Josephus was a convert to Christianity.

However, in Josephus: The Essential Writings (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 1988), Paul L. Maier provides a rewording of the controversial passage based on an Arabic manuscript by the tenth-century Melkite historian Agapius. According to Mr. Maier’s footnote, this manuscript “corresponds so precisely to previous scholarly projections of what Josephus originally wrote that it is substituted in the text.” (The manuscript was discovered in 1972 by Professor Schlomo Pines of Hebrew University in Jerusalem.) Mr. Maier thus takes the reworded quotation out of the “very questionable category” and allows it to stand as a statement in the original Josephan text.

Louis Feldman of Yeshiva University, a specialist in Josephus, informs us that the first passage—the reference to Jesus as the brother of James—is, in fact, controversial: Numerous scholars doubt its authenticity, though most accept it. On the purported second passage, Feldman notes that Agapius wrote nearly a thousand years after Jesus and that his passage is not a quote from Josephus but a paraphrase. Professor Feldman also questions whether we should have described Josephus’s account as contemporaneous with Jesus, because Josephus wrote almost 70 years after Jesus’ death. For previous discussions, see John P. Meier, “The Testimonium—Evidence for Jesus Outside the Bible,” BR 07:03.—Ed.

Jewish-Christian Identity

Sometimes the obvious escapes scholars. Given the Judaistic nature of Persian Christianity into the Islamic period, it appears that Eilat Mazar’s House of the Menoroth is a Jewish-Christian place of worship, possibly a house-church to judge by the drawing (Strata, “Like Grandfather, Like Granddaughter,” BAR 25:03, p. 20). That would explain the architectural anomaly of the Torah niche.

Christians in the Persian Empire took pains to distinguish themselves from Roman/Byzantine Christians in order to avoid persecution by Persian governments. What better way to do that than by stressing their Judaic roots, in contrast to Rome’s Gentile Christianity? Today, Jewish Christianity may seem like an oxymoron, but it was not an oxymoron in west Asia well into the Islamic period.

Eilat Mazar responds:

In an as-yet-unpublished article about the House of the Menoroth, I refer to the phenomena, well known from the Golan, of menoroth and crosses appearing together on the lintels of many second- to third-century A.D. houses. That phenomena is attributed by C.M. Dauphin to a Jewish-Christian community (“Jewish and Christian Communities in the Roman and Byzantine Gaulanities: A Study of Evidence from Archaeological Surveys,” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 114 [1982], pp. 129–142). We have no information about the existence of such a community in Jerusalem in the Byzantine or early Islamic period, so we cannot attribute the House of the Menoroth to such a community. On the other hand, we do know about a Jewish community that settled in this very area in Jerusalem during the first half of the seventh century A.D. Nevertheless, I don’t think we can ignore Mr. Proffitt’s suggestion. We must keep it in mind as more information becomes available.

Also, I would like to correct a mistake in BAR’s report: I have little doubt that the structure was briefly used as a Jewish public building during the period of Islamic—not Persian—rule.

Why Cones?

I correctly guessed that the terracotta cones with the cuneiform writing were “history books” (Strata, “What Is It?” BAR 25:03, ).

But your answer didn’t explain the odd shape of these items. Those cones, it seems to me, beg to be gripped. And the bases look like they could have designs on the bottoms, to be used for stamping.

The story of Uruinimgina was evidently of great importance in Sumerian history. Why was it engraved on these rather odd cones instead of slabs or cylinders?

William W. Hallo of Yale University responds:

Though your name may be “norrish,” your question is not. (“Narris(c)h” means “foolish” in Yiddish and German.) Clay cones in multiple copies were inserted in the mortar between the bricks (some of which were similarly inscribed) of monumental buildings. They were intended to be uncovered when the buildings fell into disrepair so that future rebuilders would know to rededicate them to their original purpose. They were not meant 071to record history as such, though many of them help us to reconstruct history.

The clay cones pictured in BAR were misidentified, however. The reforms of Uruinimgina were inscribed on a variety of monuments, but these clay cones were not among them! They are rather inscriptions of a considerably later ruler of Lagash, Gudea (c. 2100 B.C.E.). Gudea is famous for the two large cylinders inscribed with one of the masterpieces of Sumerian literature: the record of his (re)building and dedication of the great temple of Ningirsu at Girsu. He has also left us with a large body of sculptured likenesses of himself in various poses; one of them is shown on the page opposite the very one with the “answer” to your puzzle (BAR 25:03, )! Before retouching, it depicts him as the source of flowing water—a symbol of fertility that has, incidentally, nothing to do with milk production. Although too little is shown of the two Gudea cones to identify their text with certainty, the smaller one can be restored as “For the deity NN, Gudea, ruler of Lagash, built his/her house (i.e. temple) of Girsu,” the larger one as “For Ningirsu, Enlil’s mighty warrior, his master, Gudea, ruler of Lagash, built his NN house.” (For full editions, see D. O. Edzard, Gudea and His Dynasty [Toronto, 1997], pp. 56 [for the statue], 68–106 [for the cylinders], 113, 121, 125 or 130f. [for the smaller cone] and 138–141 or 144f. [for the larger cone].)

Pipe Dream

Ian Cuthbertson asks how large building stones were moved into place (Queries & Comments, “How’d They Move ’Em?” BAR 25:03, p. 8). In 1970 I was a volunteer on Benjamin Mazar’s dig at the Temple Mount, where huge boulders had fallen near the southwest wall close to Robinson’s Arch. Under the direction of Ron Gardiner, we moved them by using two iron pipes, each about 4 to 5 feet long and 2.5 inches in diameter. We placed the pipes under the boulder, near the front and the back. The huge rock was then rolled forward on the iron pipes. As the back part of the boulder cleared the pipe, the pipe was picked up and placed under the boulder at the front. This process was repeated until the boulder came to rest at its designated site.

Really, it’s very simple.

BAR’s Fresh Air

The credibility and confidence generated by BAR’s attitude towards criticism is a breath of fresh air.

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.

Love Letters