Queries & Comments

008

Praise at Last

I have to admire the way you handle hostile audiences. You face the archaeologist who is determined to disprove the Bible and the fundamentalist who refuses to admit any error in it.

BAR’s Arrogance

The sheer arrogance of the self-appointed intelligentsia who dominate BAR’s pages is appalling. The reason the general public does not pay more attention to this field is that they have much more sense than the “experts” give them credit for. They can see the obvious political agendas of the ivory tower academicians whose positions on an issue seem to be chosen by whatever scholar they have a petty grudge against.

Help for Sunday School

For a number of years I have been a member of a Sunday school class populated with inquiring minds. Your publications have provided excellent starting points and background sources for our discussions.

First Person

Becoming Tiresome

The scathingly sarcastic “exposé” of Karen Vitelli was rude and hypocritical, Mr. Shanks (“First Person: Biting the Hand that Feeds You,” BAR 25:06). You have diminished your own stature (once again!) to that of a spoiled brat stamping his foot: one who does not work and play well with others.

Your arrogant self-righteousness has become tiresome, Mr. Shanks.

Please cancel my subscription.

BAR as Huckster

In “First Person: Biting the Hand that Feeds You,” BAR 25:06, you decry the actions of Karen Vitelli for receiving money from a private foundation and then denouncing its founders for their practice of private collecting. I register my support for what she believes about private collecting and for speaking out, even though she did so in a project funded by a private collector. She got funds for her own project without losing her integrity; good for her.

To say that she “grabbed the money and ran” is laughable coming from you. You are the chief practitioner of this art. I offer in evidence the fact that BAR, after I subscribed, sold my name and address as if it were your property. I almost immediately began to get other offers, requests, etc., and the way they addressed their mail—because of the formula I used in subscribing—indicates that BAR sold my name. Wouldn’t you say that this is grabbing the money and running, running to greater money grabbing? Don’t tell me that this is a usual practice and recognized as permissible. You are a huckster, plain and simple.

Inappropriate Rage

The intense vituperation fired at Karen Vitelli is certainly unwarranted: “spitting in your face,” “despicably inappropriate.” Come on, Hershel, calm down. Your attack comes close to being despicably 010inappropriate. Her comments seemed appropriately appreciative and only reasonably censorious. Taking the money to obtain a desired result is not playing with the devil. Her action did not aid White-Levy’s collecting activities, which you agree should be discouraged, and was not, as you implied, hypocritical.

I have enjoyed BAR and Bible Review for many years, and I intend to do so for many more. I have also enjoyed Hershel Shanks’s articles and comments. They have provided a human flavor to a field that needs it. But this last issue was too much. Too much inappropriate rage, Hershel.

The Crisis in Museums

“First Person: Biting the Hand that Feeds You,” BAR 25:06, discusses Karen Vitelli’s attack upon two antiquities collectors who were her financial benefactors. This is not unusual behavior for some archaeologists. In my 40-plus years of museum work, I have found that many anthropologists and archaeologists have rather impractical and self-defeating personalities. There is something in the field that attracts this type of behavioral pathology. Perhaps that is why so many are under- or unemployed and often voice silly arguments over definitional purity of archaeological theories.

Museums, universities and other archaeological collecting institutions are money-making enterprises. They have normal facility expenses (climate control, maintenance, insurance, utilities), employee salaries, advertising, supplies, etc. To offset these expenses, they make money via admission fees, tuition, tax receipts, event fees, gift shops, etc. Being a business, museums must balance expenses with income in order to survive.

One of the largest expenses of any museum or other archaeological institution is storage space and curatory expenses for its study collections. Each artifact requires money to be stored, preserved, inventoried and made available to researchers. Resources for expanding artifact collections are finite, and most museums are now short on storage space after years of accumulating artifacts of all types. This has caused a severe crisis in museums that do not have sufficient money to store all their artifacts, many of which are of scientifically marginal value. The end result is curatorial neglect, limits on research and the loss of many important specimens.

Museums and research institutions have responded to this crisis by destroying or discarding “old junk” (artifacts of “limited” usefulness), described in a form of museum doublespeak: deaccession (dump it), permanent loan (give it away), repatriation (give it back to those guys), in vitro preservation (let it rot in the ground), rescue archaeology (wait until it’s too late and then collect only the best stuff).

Today government support for museum work is shrinking, causing museums to divest or, at best, neglect their collections. Staff archaeologists are living from grant to grant. It would be better for the world if, instead of this form of dishonest destruction, scientifically marginal artifacts were photographed/recorded and then sold to collectors and the public. This would generate money for the museums and their programs, make room for scientifically significant artifacts and allow the public, which supports the institutions via fees, gifts and taxes, to participate more closely in archaeology, thus ensuring a continued level of support for these important but troubled institutions.

Warren’s Shaft

A Secret Climb of Warren’s Shaft

In “I Climbed Warren’s Shaft,” BAR 25:06, Hershel Shanks describes his adventurous climb down and back up this 50-foot vertical shaft, thus reenacting “a feat performed by only a handful of people, including the 19th-century explorer Charles Warren, if not Joab.” While reading this article, my mind wandered back to my own adventures in 1981 while studying archaeology and historical geography at the Institute of Holyland Studies (now Jerusalem University College on Mt. Zion, Jerusalem). At that time, Dr. Yigal Shiloh was excavating the City of David, and access to the top of Warren’s Shaft was barred by a locked iron door. Through this heavy hinged doorway, one could enter the series of horizontal and vertical tunnels that led directly to Warren’s Shaft itself. It was the only way in and out!

Late one night under cover of darkness, a few fellow students and I began our adventure—to enter Warren’s Shaft. Taking about 45 minutes to “respectfully” open the iron door, we made our way through the gabled entrance into this newly cleared tunnel. Our sole purpose, as curious archaeology students, was to see if Warren’s Shaft (David’s tsinnor?) could be climbed without assistance. We knew it was possible because the prior year my own college rock-climbing instructor, Ken Evans, was asked by Shiloh to attempt the climb.

Sifting through the dirt and dust of the tunnel, we finally crawled our way to the top of the shaft amidst the rubble and debris. Because of the pitch darkness of this musty ancient tunnel, we placed candles in strategic places around the opening of the shaft. Then, with candles in our mouths to illuminate our downward plunge, we carefully made our way over the ledge at the top of the shaft, belaying our way to the bottom with the help of a rope secured at the top. Once at the bottom, the real test began. Who would be the first to attempt to climb up? At about the stroke of midnight, the four of us were about to secretly do something that very few had ever attempted. Were we about to follow the way that Joab took in conquering the City of Jebus?

With only a top rope for protection, I was the first to make the attempt. Without climbing shoes, it was difficult to get good footholds. Technically, it was not a 012hard climb. What made it difficult was the moisture on the rock ledges. Nevertheless, slowly but surely I made it to the top. With the exception of one friend who slipped off the wet rocks and fell to the bottom from about 10 feet up, (we had to pull this injured friend up by rope—a task that took about an hour), the night ended with much exhilaration and accomplishment. This secret voyage that only a few knew about (until now) was one of the highlights of my year of study in Jerusalem.

An Easy Feat for Spokane Mountaineers

As a veteran mountaineer, I was amused by the editor’s pronouncement that Warren’s Shaft is unclimbable without artificial aid. A man with no perceptible climbing experience, whose age and conditioning (by his own admission) scarcely outfit him for such a venture, is a questionable authority on what a person of Joab’s prowess could have done. A year ago I stood at the bottom of Warren’s Shaft and eyed it from a climber’s perspective. Leave your ladders at home. Given the opportunity, half the Spokane Mountaineers could free climb the shaft—and so could Joab.

The question addressed was not whether it could be climbed. I agree that it could. The question explored was whether it was ever used to draw water and was thus part of an ancient water system.—Ed.

Drawing Water Through Warren’s Shaft

Your two articles on the City of David in the November/December 1999 BAR (“Everything You Ever Knew About Jerusalem Is Wrong,” BAR 25:06, and “I Climbed Warren’s Shaft,” BAR 25:06) would require an article of rebuttal. However, I shall be content at present to point out the following in connection with your conclusion that the shaft was never used to draw water:

(1) The shaft can be used to lower and raise a bucket if it is handled from the center of a platform mounted at the top of the shaft. Describing a 19th-century attempt to draw water from the shaft, Father Louis-Hugues Vincent wrote: “After a few trials the right place was found to give the buckets a direct fall … This proved, at any rate, that it was quite possible to draw water from the top of the shaft.”

(2) The water level at the base of the shaft was no problem, since Hezekiah’s Tunnel did not exist until later and there are two damming walls hidden under the stairs leading down to the spring. One of the walls served to raise the water level inside the shaft.

(3) There was no need to enlarge the cave at the bottom of the shaft or lower its floor. With the water level raised, there was enough water to dip a bucket.

(4) Water markings in the cave observed by you may be no older than three or four years. Before that time, drainage of the Siloam Pool was blocked so that the water level rose in the tunnel and overflowed into the bottom of Warren’s Shaft via the hole through which you crawled.

(5) One would not expect to find grooves made by rubbing of ropes at the top if the Warren’s Shaft System was used only in time of siege. Besides, the rope would never have rubbed the edge of the shaft, as it did in your experiment.

070

Jerusalem Siege

Ethiopia or Meroe or Cush?

Every issue of BAR continues to bring fascinating articles that enlarge my Biblical knowledge. I especially enjoyed “Jerusalem Under Siege,” BAR 25:06, by William Shea, but there is a mistake in the chart entitled “A Long, Long Time Ago … ” Under the date 690 B.C., it states that “Tirhakah becomes pharaoh of Ethiopia and Egypt.”

In 690 B.C. there was no such country as Ethiopia. Tirhakah became ruler of Meroe (or Cush) in Nubia at that time.

William H. Shea responds:

Reader Atkins is, of course, correct. The Biblical name is Cush, and it refers to the country that we today call the Sudan (Nubia in ancient times). Tirhakah (Egyptian Taharqa) was a ruler in the XXVth, or Nubian, dynasty of Egypt, indicating that Egypt was ruled by foreigners from the south at that time.

Potpourri

For Ten Bucks, You Too Can Own One

Yizhar Hirschfeld is apparently not very familiar with the Byzantine coinage of the 10th and 11th centuries C.E. if he thinks these “coins are very rare … as images of Jesus were not ordinarily featured on coins” (“Coin of the Realm,” Strata, BAR 25:06). You also quote Gila Hurvitz of Hebrew University as commenting that the coin hoard is “a treasure—there’s nothing like it in the whole world.”

On the contrary, most of the Byzantine coins of this period (and these coins are very Byzantine in design and workmanship) do depict Jesus. These so-called anonymous folles were very common from the reign of John I to Nicephoros III (969–1081 C.E.). They are known as 071anonymous folles because these large bronze coins depict Christ but do not bear the name or likeness of the emperor. Anonymous folles can be purchased for about ten dollars, so they aren’t exactly rare treasures.

During this period, the Byzantine Empire encompassed the Levant. It is likely that there was trade between Tiberias and areas across the border in what was now Lebanon, which would explain the presence of Byzantine coins near the Sea of Galilee.

Gila Hurvitz responds:

I was quoted out of context. I was not commenting about the uniqueness of the coin hoard, but rather about the entire hoard of a thousand bronze artifacts found in the Tiberias excavation, which included, among other things, candlesticks, oil lamps, funnels, bowls and jars.

Byzantine Coins in Islamic Palestine

I am afraid that your readers might be misled by your reporting of the discovery of the “Jesus” coins during the excavations of Tiberias. These coins are not rare and, rather than possessing any overt propaganda purpose, were in fact the ordinary issues of the Byzantine Empire from 976 to 1092 A.D. We tend to forget that, although the Arabs overran Palestine in the seventh century, the imperial border bastion of Antioch, barely 300 kilometers north of Tiberias, lasted until captured by the Seljuks in 1084. We know that, properly countermarked, these coins were used to pay Muslim taxes (the Mardin hoard). The Tiberias hoard, based on the described types, seems to consist only of Anonymous Folles Classes C through F, ending in 1065. Rather than the First Crusade, the Seljuk conquest of north Palestine and Jerusalem (1071 A.D.) would seem a more likely cause for concealment, if one is required.

Honored Americans

Your readers may be interested to know that contrary to what you say, William F. Albright and Frank Moore Cross were not the only non-Israelis honored by having a volume of the Eretz-Israel series named after them (“Cross Honored with Eretz-Israel Volume,” Strata, BAR 25:06). Harry M. Orlinksy, a student of Albright’s, had volume 16 of Eretz-Israel dedicated to him.

And volume 12 was dedicated to Nelson Glueck, of Hebrew Union College, in Cincinnati, Ohio.—Ed.

Should We Review the Biblical Minimalists?

In recent issues you published reviews of a book by Thomas Thompson (William G. Dever and Norman K. Gottwald reviewed The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel, ReViews, BAR 25:05) and a book by Niels Peter Lemche (Ronald Hendel reviewed The Israelites in History and Tradition, ReViews, BAR 25:06), both of which deal with the history of early Israel and deny that it ever existed. Rather, they claim that the Hebrew Bible is an invention of Hellenistic writers; it is simply a collection of fictitious literary creations that only rarely are based on an occasional shred of evidence.

Such a nihilistic approach rests, of course, on disregard—or plain ignorance of—established facts, such as epigraphic extra-Biblical evidence of pre-Exilic personal names, historical development in the description of religious rituals and Biblical language, etc. It also rests on the incorrect methodological assumption that absence of evidence is in itself evidence of absence: Before the discovery of David’s name recently at Tel Dan, no extra-Biblical source mentioning him was known.

Scholarly disagreement is natural and productive. For over a century, a secular approach to historical material in the Hebrew Bible has produced a multitude of interpretations and conclusions. However, those who claim that the Biblical texts in their entirety are fictitious literary products should submit their work to forums that deal with literary aspects of the Hebrew Bible.

Is there really a need to discuss this faction’s work in publications devoted to Biblical archaeology or history?

010

Correction and Apology

Due to an editorial error, in our January/February 2000 issue we printed an early, incomplete and insufficiently nuanced and therefore misleading draft of an article by the editor, entitled, “Abraham’s Ur—Is the Pope Going to the Wrong Place?” BAR 26:01. Even though the Pope is no longer going to Iraq, the discussion of the location of Biblical Ur remains important. We are therefore reprinting the correct text of the article in this issue (“Abraham’s Ur—Is the Pope Going to the Wrong Place?”). We apologize to our readers and to Professor Peter Machinist.

071

Correction

We inadvertently failed to print a response by David Jacobson to letters from Lawrence Ellzey and Nathaniel Grossman (Queries & Comments, BAR 25:06). They were commenting on a caption to a plan in the July/August 1999 issue that said, “The angle at lower right equals 60 degrees, a geometric measurement prominent in classical architecture. Even more startling was Jacobson’s discovery that the ratio of the length of the south wall to the length of the west wall is 1:1.732.” Ellzey countered that the second point “is a necessary consequence of the previous fact,” while Grossman noted that “Jacobson’s discovery that the ratio of the lengths of the west and south walls is 1.73:1 is not at all startling. In every 30–60-90 degree triangle, the ratio of the longer leg to the shorter leg is always exactly the square root of three (1.7320508).” Jacobson wished to point out that he did not write the caption in question and that, of course, he recognizes that the tangent of 60 degrees is 1.732! Like all our captions, this one was prepared by our editors. Jacobson was faxed copies of the proofs, but, in his haste to meet the publication deadline, he overlooked the offending sentences.—Ed.

002

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.

Praise at Last

I have to admire the way you handle hostile audiences. You face the archaeologist who is determined to disprove the Bible and the fundamentalist who refuses to admit any error in it.