Queries & Comments

008

Cheers!

A letter to the editor suggests that Hershel Shanks’s mistaken identification of Jeroboam as the son of Solomon resulted from the editor’s having guzzled a jeroboam of champagne to celebrate the millennium (Queries & Comments, BAR 26:03). Your readers may be interested to know that a jeroboam (4.5 liters of Bordeaux or 3 liters of Burgundy or champagne) is not the only Biblical measure of bottle size. Here are others:

Rehoboam = 4.5 liters of Burgundy or champagne

Methuselah = 6 liters of Burgundy or champagne

Salmanazar [Shalmaneser] = 9 liters of Burgundy or champagne

Balthazar = 12 liters of Burgundy or champagne

Nebuchadnezzar = 15 liters of Burgundy or champagne

Only the jeroboam is ambiguous; one must know the type of wine in the bottle to know how much wine it contains.

Wouldn’t Miss Them for the World

My sincere thank you for BAR and Bible Review. I devour their contents and find them endlessly fascinating, instructive and thought-provoking. My mind has never been more stimulated.

While I normally rather dislike arguments, I get a kick out of some of the letters expressing high indignation about articles or viewpoints. It sounds rather like: “Throw them to the dogs!” I wouldn’t miss those letters for the world.

Satisfies His Yearning

It’s super that you have put together a Web site [www.biblicalarchaeology.org—Ed.]. I enjoy reading BAR every second month and also enjoy Archaeology Odyssey. I am guilty of reading both magazines from cover to cover each time they arrive.

For those of us who will never see a dig or travel to other parts of the world, these two magazines partly satisfy a yearning that many have.

Leave the letters right where they are. Everyone has their own way of interpreting information, and if there is an occasional goof, at least BAR is big enough to admit it or add an informational comment where necessary.

To the staff, all I can say is “Thank you,” and I hope that the magazines will continue to grow in circulation and, hopefully, in size.

It’s Hard to Give Up a Pet Theory

“No History in the Bible?” brought memories to my mind, and a sadness (“First Person: No History in the Bible?” BAR 26:03). I suppose people are the same in all disciplines of science. In witness thereof, I offer the following quote:

“I have never encountered [a scientist] of any importance whatever who would welcome with joy and satisfaction the publication of a new theory, explanation, or conceptual scheme that would completely 010replace and render superfluous his own creation … The scientist actually tries often in vain to fit each new discovery or set of discoveries into the traditional theories [as he] clings to conceptions or preconceptions as long as it is humanly possible.” Hence, “Any suggestion that scientists so dearly love truth that they have not the slightest hesitation in jettisoning their beliefs is a mean perversion of the facts. It is a form of scientific idolatry, supposing that scientists are entirely free from the passions that direct men’s actions, and we should have little patience with it” (I. Cohen, “Orthodoxy and Scientific Progress,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 96 [1952], pp. 505–506. Quoted by H. Nibley, The World and the Prophets [1987], pp. 270–271).

‘Ain Dara Temple

Tall Order

Both John Monson and Lawrence Stager, in separate articles in the May/June 2000 issue (“The New ‘Ain Dara Temple: Closest Solomonic Parallel,” BAR 26:03, by John Monson, and “Jerusalem as Eden,” BAR 26:03, by Lawrence Stager), make what seems to be an untenable extrapolation from two data points. Based on the 30-foot distance between the single left and single right footprints in the limestone slabs in the temple at ‘Ain Dara, they conclude that the builders visualized a deity 65 feet tall. They assume the two footprints represent a single stride. However, with a foot length of only 3 feet, this implies a deity having the proportions of Michael Jordan with feet only 4 inches long.

These distorted proportions are not reflected in the temple reliefs depicting deities. I think a more reasonable extrapolation is possible. If we start with the feet and apply ordinary proportions, we can visualize a deity 18 to 20 feet tall. Such a figure would have a stride of about 9 to 10 feet.

The 30-foot distance could be easily covered by three 10-foot steps, which would also preserve the handedness shown by the prints. Judging by the photo on page 26, the floor between the slabs with the footprints is very incomplete. There may have been additional footprints that have not survived. Alternatively, the builders may well have only placed prints on the thresholds of the rooms.

John Monson responds:

Mr. Bodor makes a good point. In either case, the footprints were meant to indicate a deity of superhuman size.

Too Broad a Claim

John Monson states: “Nothing of Solomon’s Temple remains today; the Babylonians destroyed it utterly in 586 B.C.E.” There is no backup for this wide-sweeping statement. Perhaps he could elaborate.

John Monson responds:

There may, indeed, be several traces of Solomon’s Temple in existence today. These finds are surrounded by controversy, however. In recent issues of BAR, Asher Kaufman and Leen Ritmeyer describe traces of masonry and even carvings on es-Sahkra (the rock enclosed by the 012Dome of the Rock) that may be attributed to the Temple. The alignment of certain walls, for example, can be harmonized quite well with measurements of the Temple platform provided by First and Second Temple period sources. At the same time, pre-Exilic masonry is not always a precise chronological tool. While I appreciate the fine work of Kaufman and others, I cautiously follow the consensus view that there is nothing on the Temple Mount that we can attribute with certainty to Solomon’s Temple.

That’s Why We’re Here

Thank you for publishing the article about the ‘Ain Dara Temple, by John Monson (“The New ‘Ain Dara Temple: Closest Solomonic Parallel,” BAR 26:03). Though I’ve taught archaeology for 30 years, I had never heard of it.

Potpourri

Haran Unrelated to H|aran

In his erudite letter, Shubert Spero of Bar-Ilan University perpetuates an old blunder (Queries & Comments, BAR 26:03). With reference to Abraham’s home city of Haran (or Harran), he writes “There another son [of Terah], Haran (so named out of nostalgia for home), is born.” But Abraham’s brother’s name is ÷rh (Haran, with initial letter he), while Abraham and Terah’s home city’s name is ÷rj (H|aran/H|arran, with the initial letter heth); the two words are totally unrelated.

Shubert Spero Responds:

Juan Jorge Schäffer is, of course, correct that in the Bible the Hebrew word Haran, the name of the third son of Terah, is spelled differently than the word H|aran, the name of the city. However, the sound is so similar as to make my suggestion at least plausible. W.W. Hallo, in pointing out how the personal names of the Terahides reflect the geographical names in the H|aran area, states: “Serug, the grandfather of Terah, may be compared with the town of Sarugi … some 35 miles west of Haran, and Nahor, his father (and second son) with the town of Nahur … due east of Haran. Terah’s own name has been identified with Til(-sha)-Turahi … south of Haran and his third son, Haran, recalls the name of the town, although the two names are spelled differently in Hebrew” (“Haran,” in Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 7, cols. 1328–1329).

Show Me Your Bethsaida

Jürgen Zangenberg (Queries & Comments, BAR 26:03) has challenged our identification of et-Tell as New Testament Bethsaida 014(“Bethsaida Rediscovered,” BAR 26:01). He has not, however, suggested a better contender. The location of Bethsaida has long been debated; we had hoped to end the uncertainty with probe excavations of all the contending sites. Indeed, Zangenberg’s letter is the first challenge to our identification of et-Tell as Bethsaida since we published the results of our excavations in 1991. (H.W. Kuhn and Rami Arav, “The Bethsaida Excavations: Historical and Archaeological Approaches,” in Birger A. Pearson, The Future of Early Christianity: Essays in Honor of Helmut Koester [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991], pp. 77–106). Since then, we have discovered more evidence that bolsters the identification. Zangenberg raises questions that have often been asked of us in our 14 years of excavation, so I would like to discuss some important issues that should be reassessed in light of our dig.

Let me first discuss urbanization. Zangenberg claims that “the lack of urban features on et-Tell disassociates the late Hellenistic and early Roman habitation from the principal passage in Josephus.” Zangenberg deduces from Josephus that Philip the son of Herod the Great elevated the village of Bethsaida to the status of a Greek city (polis) by “adding residents and strengthening the fortifications. He named it after Julia, the emperor’s daughter” (Antiquities of the Jews 18.28). This is not necessarily the correct translation of this passage. It is not clear from the text that there was a large population at the site before Philip’s action, and the text does not imply that fortifications were built. But this is not the main problem. The concept of urbanization as carried out by the sons of Herod the Great is a much more cardinal question. Prior to the excavations at Bethsaida, I shared Zangenberg’s concept of urbanization. Then I realized that urbanization under the sons of Herod was thoroughly different from other sorts of Hellenistic-early Roman urbanization.

In this region there were three types of urban centers. I will describe them briefly, from the most to the least Hellenized. The most Hellenized cities were those that belonged to the Decapolis. The name refers to a group of ten cities founded by Greek mercenaries and veterans very familiar with the notion of Greek poleis (plural of polis). Although we do not know much about these cities during the early Roman period, we assume that they had features of Greek cities such as Hellenistic architecture, featuring capitals and columns in Greek styles. Their streets were laid out in a grid, which created blocks known as insulae. They also had Greek theaters and temples, Greek-style marketplaces (agora) and other features that can be seen in the well-preserved late Roman period cities of Gerasa and Beth-Shean.

Next in level of Hellenization were towns with populations drawn from the region: Jews, Syrians, Phoenicians and others. Although our information about these towns during this period is meager, we assume that their architecture developed out of long-standing local traditions combined with the adaptation of Hellenistic architecture. Among these cities were the Phoenician coastal cities such as Dor, Acco-Ptolemais and Tyre and such inland cities as Sepphoris, Gamla and Marisa. There was also Caesarea Maritima, founded by Herod the Great; but due to his taste, it was thoroughly Hellenized.

In the next generation, however, the sons of Herod founded numerous cities as an act of homage to the Roman imperial cult. These were the least Hellenized. All these cities—including Tiberias, Caesarea Philippi, Livias and Julias (Bethsaida)—bear the names of the Roman imperial 072family. How these cities looked in the first century C.E. is an enigma. Some of them have been excavated, and they yielded surprisingly few remains from the first century C.E. Tiberias, for example, was excavated for several years, but almost nothing was found from the first century. The gate to the city, which I excavated as an area supervisor in 1972, was among the earliest structures we found, dating to the time of Hadrian (early second century C.E.). Even the palace of Berenice, which was supposed to be on the mountain above the city, was never found. Caesarea Philippi has been excavated for more than ten years, and still little has been dated to the time of its founding by Philip. So where are all these first-century C.E. cities? What did they look like? No one knows. If these cities had been Hellenized, we would expect some public architecture to have survived. Zangenberg is quite correct when he states that Bethsaida has provided us with one of the largest collections of first-century finds from Galilee.

Zangenberg complains that Bethsaida does not have insulae such as those at Capernaum. However, Capernaum’s insulae cannot be compared to anything at Bethsaida simply because they do not date from the same period. Capernaum (Kfar Nahum in Hebrew), as its name implies (kfar means village), was never a city. First-century C.E. Capernaum was surprisingly small. Years of excavations in both the Franciscan and the Greek Orthodox areas yielded astonishingly few remains. Evidently the first-century settlement was confined to a small area discovered under the octagonal church. The insulae and the synagogue are Byzantine, dating from the fifth to the seventh centuries C.E. So Capernaum is not a good parallel.

Zangenberg does not agree with me that the death of Philip, the patron of the city, four years after the founding of Bethsaida/Julias, had a traumatic effect on the growth of the city. Archaeology tells us that it survived into the next century and retained its rural features. Is this not what history tells us as well? Coins, for example, tell us that Bethsaida never prospered as a Greek polis. It never minted coins, something quite rare for a place that had been granted that right. Only one other city (out of 32) failed to do so. That certainly reflects the economy of a rural area, not that of a city. In the early fourth century, the church father Eusebius did not provide a single fact about Bethsaida that he did not take from the Gospels. Why? Because there was simply no city in his time to report on. Is this not exactly what the finds at et-Tell are telling us?

Zangenberg notes that there is a decline in the habitation of the city towards the middle of the first century C.E. This is true and can be explained as a result of the First Jewish Revolt against Rome (66–70 C.E.). The inhabitants of Bethsaida fled (presumably to Gamla), taking everything they could with them. This is why Gamla was loaded with finds. Over 4,000 coins were discovered there, compared to a few hundred in Bethsaida. Unlike Gamla, Bethsaida was reoccupied after the war and was deserted only in the middle of the third century C.E.

What about the other contender for the ancient site of Bethsaida? Some suggest that the shallow mound named el-Araj was Bethsaida. However, we probed this site and it yielded only a single level of occupation—from the Byzantine period. Bethsaida must be identified with et-Tell—there is no other choice.

Zangenberg also questions our 074identification of the temple. Indeed, this is not an easy issue. It took me ten years to conclude that the poor remains of a structure on the highest spot of the mound are the remains of a modest temple erected by Philip. Zangenberg suggests that it was a wing of another building. We reject this theory because the building does not connect to any other structure.

We base our conclusion on the following:

(1) Two figurines were found in the area of the temple that may be identified with Livia/Julia. We are studying these further.

(2) Only around the temple were there dressed stones and decorated stones used, which would indicate a public structure.

(3) Coins issued by Philip to mark the founding of Bethsaida-Julias were found only in this building.

(4) Two bronze incense shovels, which could have been used in temple rituals, were found in a pit near the temple.

(5) The most amazing discovery, however, was made long ago and in another place. The synagogue of Chorazim has a pediment that the excavators could not fit anywhere in the synagogue. In the center of the pediment is an eagle—an obvious Roman imperial symbol. The eagle is carved in three dimensions in typical Roman style and not in the Byzantine style of the synagogue. The pediment is about 20 feet wide, exactly the width of the temple at Bethsaida. Coincidence? We don’t think so. Robbery in antiquity is well attested; the Romans called it spolia.

The identification of et-Tell with Bethsaida was not made because of a bias toward et-Tell. It was made after a careful scrutiny of all the contenders. Now we should ask ourselves what this identification means. Our conception of urbanization and Hellenization in Galilee in the first century C.E. should be updated. The implications for research into the historical Jesus are even more interesting. Bethsaida is among the few places where Jesus formed and developed his ministry. Scholars will have to get used to the fact that Jesus’ ministry developed in a rural place with simple country houses and no prominent Hellenistic features.

Texts Are a Poor Substitute for Excavation

It is fascinating to see David Jacobson, Leen Ritmeyer and Asher Kaufman battling it out over the details of the Herodian Temple in your recent issues 075(“Sacred Geometry: Unlocking the Secret of the Temple Mount, Part I,” BAR 25:04, and “Sacred Geometry: Unlocking the Secret of the Temple Mount, Part II,” BAR 25:05, and “Where Was the Temple?” BAR 26:02). They have all made valuable contributions, and they have all unearthed convincing evidence and locations. But they are all straining after architectural authenticity where none exists. For apart from the sections of stone, wall and bedrock that they have been able to indicate, they are all relying on literary descriptions, in particular those of Flavius Josephus and the Mishnah, tractate Middoth.

Josephus was a cohen (priest) with knowledge of the Temple, while the author of Middoth relied on recognized tradition, but their descriptions are literary, and as every architect knows, a specification cannot, without drawings, make a building.

Furthermore, inconsistencies abound within Josephus and Middoth, just as the Biblical descriptions of the Solomonic Temple, in 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles, fail to agree with each other. Middoth has led the medieval commentator Maimonides (and, I see, Ritmeyer) to postulate an extraordinary two-story inner Temple, and in spite of the critical edition of Middoth that Kaufman has produced, the impracticalities of these texts only multiply. When it comes to buildings, literary descriptions on their own are inadequate and often confusing.

Middoth has given rise to a basic Temple plan, copied in hundreds of editions of the Talmud, that describes a completely impractical forecourt around a large external altar. This is clearly illustrated in the plan (by Jacobson) and the axonometric view (by Ritmeyer) shown on pages 58 and 59 of the March/April 2000 issue. This forecourt had to accommodate 076hundreds of animals, their slaughtering, gutting, deblooding and sacrifice, with all the priests performing these tasks and all the Israelite donors watching as well. It would have been like Trafalgar (or Times) Square in a sardine tin. So the arguments about the exact placement of the altar—on the centerline (Jacobson) or south of it (Ritmeyer and Kaufman)—pale into insignificance. The fact is that Middoth gives some literary dimensions that could never have fitted the facts. Similarly, imposing some form of ideal geometry on the Mount, however pretty the patterns, will not necessarily determine the Temple’s location.

We do not yet have a convincing reconstruction of the Herodian Temple or its location, and I believe we cannot have one until we are able to substitute excavation for obsession with literary texts, however worthy.

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The Temple Debate Continues … On the Web

Following David Jacobson’s two-part article on the location of the Temple on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount (“Sacred Geometry: Unlocking the Secret of the Temple Mount, Part I,” BAR 25:04, and “Sacred Geometry: Unlocking the Secret of the Temple Mount, Part II,” BAR 25:05), we published responses by two other scholars whose views figure prominently in this discussion, Leen Ritmeyer and Asher Kaufman (“Where Was the Temple?” BAR 26:02). Dr. Jacobson has written a detailed response to Ritmeyer and Kaufman in which he addresses their latest arguments; Ritmeyer and Kaufman have also prepared comments on each other’s views. Many of our readers are fascinated with the details of this enriching debate and are following it closely. Others are ready to turn to other topics. Because of the limited space in the magazine, we will satisfy both camps by placing these most recent papers on our Web site: www.biblicalarchaeology.org. If you do not have access to the Web, we can send you a printout if you write to us at Temple Debate, 4710 41st St., NW, Washington, DC 20016.

076

Correction

The credits for the two photos of Akhetaten in “Jerusalem as Eden,” BAR 26:03, were reversed. We apologize for the error.

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.

Cheers!