Queries & Comments

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In his First Person column in the July/August 2001 issue (First Person, BAR 27:04), Hershel Shanks noted that in a survey of 14,000 churches, including 41 denominations or faith communities, 82 percent of respondents cited sacred scripture as the source of religious authority; more than 90 percent of the congregations offered scripture study to their members. Given those numbers, Shanks asked, why doesn’t BAR have an even more healthy circulation than it does? More broadly, he asked, “Does history matter? Is what really happened important to America’s faith communities? Or is the Biblical text enough?” We received many responses to his question, of which the following are a sample.

Faith Need Not Fear

I am a Protestant Fundamentalist who believes that “If the Bible says it, it must be true!” Yet I love your magazine. I frequently take it to Sunday school to show the current state of archaeological study. I love having a magazine with very beautiful photography, a secular viewpoint that did not come off my denomination’s presses and peer review.

Why? Because if my faith is genuine, it has nothing to fear from science. It will stand the test. I am quite able to stand hearing minimalist viewpoints. I am quite able to sift through the other viewpoints to see just how the Scriptures (which do not change) are stacking up against archaeological findings and views (which constantly change). You may be surprised to know that, from this Fundamentalist’s viewpoint, 90 percent of the time the archaeology supports the Bible. The other 10 percent of the time we just need to wait and see what new findings bring.

Keeping an Eye on the Other Side

Indeed, history does matter. Yes, BAR is missing a large segment of the Bible-believing Christian market because BAR is not relevant to them. They are attending Bible studies because they believe the Bible is the perfect history book. They know in their hearts that real archaeology has proved and will continue to prove the entire Bible correct. Why would they want to read a magazine that sets out to discount the truths of the Bible? As a Bible student, I have been receiving BAR for many years. Frankly, the only reason I still do is to keep a pulse on the foolish speculations of men who hold their own authority to be greater than God’s.

Belief Is Better Than Guesswork

History does indeed matter, but archaeology is not history. It is a mixture of history and guesswork. It is foolish to throw away my beliefs in the Bible based on the constantly changing guesswork that some call history.

From History to Story

Your column touches on a fundamental issue. For secular and humanistic Jews, the real history of ancient Judaism, as reconstructed from archaeological and textual evidence, is fundamental to their self-understanding as Jews. Who wrote the Torah, and why? How did our ancestors live, love and think? These questions are most accurately answered by sources like BAR, and we are grateful they exist.

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Commitment to the truth behind Biblical stories does not mean that they are not important stories. But the painful transformation of myths from “history” to “story” is one the Greeks underwent, and it is one Jews and Christians must prepare to experience. Some of us already have, and the dignity of knowing the difference is our reward. Thank you to you and your staff for your assistance in this endeavor, and we encourage others to join us in the search for real roots.

Strong Faith Needed to Resist BAR

You wonder why you do not have more subscribers. I can give at least one reason. Since you do not hold to the verbal inspiration of the Bible, some people have their faith undermined by your magazine. I subscribe to it, since I preach a lot and like to have a historical perspective, as well as to know what is happening in the world of Biblical archaeology. But I would not recommend BAR to a lot of people, since I believe a person needs to be a mature Christian in order not to have his faith undermined by it.

God’s Palette

For me, a longtime BAR subscriber, the historical veracity of scripture is very important. This is not to say that everything in the Bible is history, but it is to say that the Bible is preeminently a historical account. The Bible reveals God as a being who creates, sustains and interacts with the universe. History is one of the palettes God uses to disclose himself.

Boon to Homeschoolers

BAR has been an invaluable tool to my homeschooling family. It aids in bringing context to scripture and sheds light on historical events. Often, after reading articles in BAR, passages of scripture take on a deeper meaning from knowing about the setting or circumstances in which they occurred.

Thank you for an affordable periodical that provides a wealth of information and just enough controversy to add a welcome flavor to 012the study of history, social studies and scripture for this family. You have provoked and intrigued us enough to set a goal for a visit soon to Israel for the ultimate homeschool field trip!

Not the Education He Wanted

I have been a student of the Bible since I first learned to read and have recently been in search of good-quality reference material to help me better understand the world in which the people of the Bible lived. I purchased BAR in July and settled back for a little education.

What I received instead was a huge education. I was deeply disappointed by your statement that few Bible students subscribe to BAR until you yourself explained to me why that is the case.

Your statement, “Few of us accept the story of Adam and Eve, for example, as literally true,” spoke volumes. This was followed quickly by the statement, “What if, as some scholars now contend, there was no David or Solomon?” I think that I am not an uncommon Bible student and that I am willing to accept neutral ideas about the Bible. However, blatant statements that go against everything the Bible teaches are totally unacceptable to me and to a large number of other Bible students.

BAR Enlivens Sunday School

We are what you would call Fundamentalist Christians and are active in our local church. We were given a subscription as a present by someone who knew we were interested in Biblical history. If we would have known about your magazine before, we probably would have subscribed ourselves. We value it because we can use its information in telling others about the Bible and Bible times. Some people seem to need more evidence, so the hard facts written about in your reports help us when speaking to these nonbelievers; they also help make Sunday Bible school lessons more interesting.

Thanks for a good magazine, and keep up the digging.

What’s the Authority for BAR?

Does history matter? You bet! Ultimately, Biblical history is the key to the future—eternity.

Though it has been, and is, a blessing, archaeology is not needed to prove that the Bible is true. Archaeology has illustrated, and will continue to illustrate, the truth we already know from the Bible. The Bible gives accurate substantiation to archaeology—I’ll trust the God of the Bible before a man (even with an archaeological conclusion) any day of the week.

Could the real reason BAR isn’t essential for the 82 percent who say Scripture is the source of their religious authority be that the 82 percent aren’t convinced that the Bible is the essential authority for BAR?

Financing the Colosseum

Population Figures Don’t Figure

“Financing the Colosseum,” BAR 27:04, was most interesting and thought-provoking. I had always wondered what 014became of all the fabulous wealth from the Temple in Jerusalem, and Louis H. Feldman’s article certainly provides an unusual answer. One item concerned me, however. Feldman mentions that at the time of the sacking of the Temple by the Romans, there were between 4 and 8 million Jews in the region. I find this figure rather excessive, taking into account that Jews were not the only ones living there and that the present population of Israel is about 6 million.

Thanks for a wonderful magazine.

Louis Feldman responds:

I did not state that there were between 4 and 8 million Jews “in the region.” Since Jews throughout the world at that time contributed to the Temple, the figure of 4 and 8 million is the number of Jews throughout the world. Josephus writes that there were 204 cities and villages in Galilee (Life 235); in War 3.43, he states that the towns and villages there were so densely populated that the smallest of them contained more than 15,000 inhabitants. This would make a total for Galilee alone of more than 3 million. Josephus, himself a priest and a native of Jerusalem and present in Jerusalem at the time, also reports that Cestius Gallus, the Roman governor of Syria at the beginning of the Jewish revolt against the Romans in 66 C.E., “instructed the chief priests, if by any means possible, to take a census of the population. Accordingly, on the occasion of the feast called Passover, at which they sacrifice from the ninth to the eleventh hour, and a little fraternity as it were, gathers around each sacrifice, of not fewer than ten persons (feasting alone not being permitted), while the companies often include as many as 20, the victims [the sacrificial animals] were counted and amounted to 255,600; allowing an average of ten diners to each victim, we obtain a total of 2,700,000 [actually 2,556,000], all pure and holy” (War 6.423–24). These included Jews from throughout the world who had come to Jerusalem for the holiday, but did not include those who were ritually defiled and thus could not participate. My figure of 4 to 8 million is based largely on the estimates suggested by Salo W. Baron (Social and Religious History of the Jews, 2nd ed., vol. 1 [New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1952], pp. 370–372), the premier 20th-century historian of the Jews, whose particular expertise was in estimating Jewish populations through the ages.

Decipherment Is Inconsistent

Louis H. Feldman describes Géza Alföldy’s decipherment of a number of holes in a block of stone in the Roman Colosseum. The block bears an inscription that notes that the Colosseum was refurbished in the fifth century C.E. Alföldy claims that the holes held metal pegs on which were affixed metal letters that formed a much earlier inscription. Alföldy then “deciphers” this “shadow inscription.” But the “decipherment” lacks even the most basic internal consistency, and there is no reason to accept it, even though Feldman assures us that two experts in shadow inscriptions find Alföldy’s work “truly convincing” and “spectacular.”

One would assume that a given Latin letter in the decipherment should be borne by the same number of pegs each time it occurred. In Alföldy’s decipherment this is almost never the case! I list each letter allegedly borne by pegs and the number of pegs used. When a number of pegs is listed twice it means that the same number of pegs is used in a significantly different geometrical configuration: A (3, 1, 1, 2, 3); B (1); C (3); E (1, 3, 1); H (3, 3); I (2[twice], 2[twice]); M (2, 4); N (3); P (3, 1); R (3); S (2, 1, 2, 2); T (2, 2); V (2, 1, 3). Why would the Romans, on one of their greatest masterpieces, use three pegs to 016hold an A, then one peg and then two pegs? Why should a V be supported by one, two or three pegs? Furthermore, there are examples in which quite similar peg arrangements are interpreted by Alföldy as bearing different letters.

The proposed decipherment should not be accepted.

Géza Alföldy responds:

Eric Altschuler writes that my reconstruction of the Colosseum inscription “lacks even the most basic internal consistency.” His argument: “One would assume that a given Latin letter in the decipherment would be borne by the same number of pegs each time it occurred. In Alföldy’s decipherment this is almost never the case!” This objection seems to show, first and foremost, that Altschuler is not familiar with the techniques used for the fabrication of inscriptions of this kind, or with the relevant scholarly literature, beginning in the 18th century, when F. Séguier restored the “shadow inscription” of the Maison Carrée at Nîmes from the dowel holes in which the bronze letters had been fixed.

The Romans used, in fact, different techniques for the fixation of these letters. In certain cases, massive bronze letters, founded together with massive pegs in casting molds, were placed in letter-beds cut into the stone. In such cases, the distribution of the pegs for the same letter was necessarily the same; this is demonstrated, for example, by the inscription on the arch of Septimius Severus in Rome. In other cases, however, thin bronze letters were collocated directly on the surface of the stone. These letters were punctured, and then attached to the stone with metal pegs. The pegs functioned like nails, and fit into holes drilled into the stone. There was absolutely no need, or prescription, always to distribute these pegs on a given letter in the same manner, nor was this done. Among other monuments, the Obelisk in the Piazza di S. Pietro at Rome (erected originally in Alexandria), the Maison Carrée, the temple at Vienne, the arch at Orange in France, the aqueduct of Segovia, the theater of Mérida, the arch of Medinaceli in Spain—all of these masterpieces of Roman architecture, like the Colosseum, had inscriptions prepared precisely in this manner. The configuration of their dowel-holes shows a remarkable inconsistency in the distribution of the pegs for the same letter. In the brief inscription of the Vatican Obelisk, for example, restored by F. Magi, there are at least seven variants for the fixation of the letter C, with one, two or three dowels, and there are six variants for the F and R, with two, three or four pegs, and these pegs are often collocated in different places. The inscription of the arch of Orange, also not a long text, “deciphered” by French scholars, shows, for the fixation of the letter O seven different possibilities. At the same time, given these conditions, it can also occur that the same configuration of pegs was used for different letters, as in the Vatican inscription, where two pegs collocated in the same manner can point equally to an I, L or P. In cases like this, it is often possible to identify individual letters absolutely on the basis of the dowel holes, but frequently even more by their combination, which allows us to restore words and phrases that fit the historical and archaeological context and that correspond to the well-known formulae of “normal” Roman inscriptions cut into the stone.

The Colosseum inscription corresponds clearly to the last examples. Altschuler, should he study the works of R. Army, J. Formigé, A. Piganiol, etc., perhaps also my publication of the Colosseum text and my book Die Bauinschriften des Aquäduktes von Segovia und des Amphitheaters von Tarraco (Berlin, 1997), where the techniques of inscriptions of this kind are treated in detail, would better understand this difficult topic. I do not see any reason to question my “decipherment” 017only on the basis of a hasty and erroneous prejudice. Nor does Altschuler address the archaeological and historical setting, or the internal consistency of my conclusions concerning the destination of the booty of the Jewish War, which I set out in 1995 and which have thus far not been contradicted by experts, and which have been recently picked up and enlarged upon by Professor Louis Feldman. We can maintain the idea expressed in my publication of 1995 that the Colosseum can be considered a monument not only of Rome’s power but also of the victims who had to pay the price for the greatness of Rome.

This does not mean, of course, that the restoration of inscriptions of this kind cannot profit from informed and serious criticism; however, having considered many possibilities for the restoration of the Colosseum inscription, I could ultimately arrive only at the conclusion published by me. At the very least, the text I suggested accounts well for the physical remains, the entire archaeological context and for the historical situation. In the end, I share the opinion of Sir Ronald Syme, the greatest historian of Rome in the 20th century, who once wrote: “In matters of literary and historical appraisement, one cannot operate with the methods of a laboratory or furnish the proof to be demanded in a court of law. The best is only the probable. Any who raise complaint have an easy remedy: to offer something better, something coherent and constructive.”

The Value of the Temple’s Gold

Three cheers for another great issue and the wonderful and amazing “Financing the Colosseum.” But several decimal points seem to have slipped in computing the value of the gold taken from the Temple: If a talent is 33 pounds, and 8,000 talents of gold were in the sanctuary alone, and the outside walls had so much gold that the building could hardly be looked at in the sun, then let’s guess that half the above amount was applied to the rest of the building, making the total quantity perhaps 12,000 talents.

Today’s price for gold is in the neighborhood of $265 per troy ounce, 12 of which make a pound (not 16).

In today’s dollars the gold in the Temple was worth 33 × 12 × 265 × 12,000, or about 1.26 billion dollars (not the tens of millions of dollars that Feldman estimates). This figure does not include silver, precious gems, royal fabrics and the like, which added to the Temple’s “net worth.”

Louis Feldman responds:

I spent a great deal of time trying to estimate how many talents there might have been and how much in present-day dollars these would be worth, but comparisons between prices and wages in ancient Rome and in modern American society are not likely to be valid because the two societies differ so radically, especially in buying power, and particularly because of inflation. We have no figures, so far as I know, for the cost of any public building built by the ancient Romans. Tenney Frank, who specialized in economic history, in his Economic Survey of Ancient Rome, vol. 1, p. 422, estimated the value of a talent at $1,600. Therefore, 8,000 talents would be worth $12.8 million and 12,000 talents would be worth $19.2 million. But these are the equivalents for 1933, when his volume was published. They are very rough estimates, and these sums would be a great deal larger today. But we must consider not the present value of a talent but how much in terms of purchasing power a talent in the first century would have brought. I ended up by suggesting a very conservative estimate of tens of millions of dollars.

Two Little Slips

Louis Feldman presents a literal translation of the Latin words “vir clarissimus et illustris,” as if they were prosaic descriptors of 060Rufius Caecina as a praefectus urbi, whereas in fact they are honorific titles that go with his rank, much as the word “honorable” does among us today. This same translation gives the impression that doubling the last letter in an abbreviation indicates that the word “two” is to be understood, but it merely indicates the plural form.

The idea that ancient Romans would feel any need to specify that there were two augusti is a little absurd. Feldman also writes of the “province” of Asia Minor, but there was no such province, and indeed no such toponym in antiquity: What we moderns call Asia Minor (to contrast it with the continent of Asia, a concept the ancients hardly possessed) was Anatolia to the Romans, and comprised a varying bundle of a dozen or more provinces. Surprising slips in a fascinating article.

The inscription described in “Financing the Colosseum” is no longer in an entryway, as stated in the article, but has been moved to a small museum on the second floor of the building. Readers should have no trouble identifying it.—Ed.

Hezekiah’s Seal

Decoding Judahite Symbolism

Congratulations on the two articles on Hezekiah’s seal by F. M. Cross (“King Hezekiah’s Seal Bears Phoenician Imagery,” BAR 25:02) and Meir Lubetski (“King Hezekiah’s Seal Revisited,” BAR 27:04). They were beautifully illustrated and drew on hard-won information. But they also illustrate the problems that we have with interpreting cross-cultural symbols at a remote distance and even with the grammatical reading of a four-word, legible inscription.

Cross reads the seal from bottom to top: “[Belonging] to Hezekiah [son of] ’Ahaz, king of/Judah,” implying that mlk at the end of the bottom line runs together with the isolated word “Judah” at the top in a construct form, “king of.” Lubetski reads the inscribed words top down and with a different grammar altogether: “Judah/Belonging to Hezekiah, son of Ahaz, King!” with “king” in apposition to “Hezekiah” and giving the sense that it is Judah that belongs to Hezekiah. This seems problematic. Seals are pressed onto clay bullae that are attached to objects. So it is the seal that belongs to the person; by extension, the object that is sealed belongs to or derives from the named person. Lubetski’s reading is a little problematic since it breaks the pattern of seals and asserts that it is Judah that belongs to the king.

There is a third possibility for reading the inscription: that “Judah” is separate from “belonging to Hezekiah, (son of) Ahaz, the king.” The iconography suggests this. Judah sits in the key centered position at the top of the seal between the wing tips of the scarab beetle. The beetle and “Judah” are closely associated. Together they may symbolize the royal kingdom. The problem then is how we decode the scarab. There are three lines of approach: It is a) a decorative imitation of Egyptian royal design without much further significance, b) a symbolic icon 062bringing its Egyptian royal and sun ideology with it or c) a symbol adapted to a Judean Yahwist’s worldview.

At first glance it is surprising that Hebrew seals incorporate so much alien symbolism, but they do—winged cobras and scarab beetles, in particular.¹ Years ago, Alan Millard suggested that “perhaps no more should be read into the four-winged scarab than an adaptation of the Egyptian symbol of renewal of life, hence ‘good luck,’ related, maybe, to the hopes of the Davidic dynasty.”² Others have leapt toward the catch phrase “solarized Yahwism,” which means different things to different scholars. Lubetski fastens onto the two wings of the scarab as deliberately symbolizing a claim by Hezekiah to a southern and northern reunified kingdom, but this may be an overinterpretation of one feature, as may “the rejuvenation of the kingdom.”

If we stay with the third option above and try to intuit the nuance of a symbolic dung beetle, then the protection or blessing of “Judah,” because of its position between the wingtips, seems the simplest nuance. If we move beyond that to include sun associations of cosmic order and stability—and regularity of sunrise is indeed an observable feature of life in Judah as much as in Egypt—then Hezekiah might have hoped for the endurance of Judah because of the promises of Yahweh to David of an eternal dynasty: “I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever” (2 Samuel 7:13, 16). The lament of Psalm 89 includes the same thought: “I will establish his line forever and his throne as the days of the heavens” (Psalms 89:29). Indeed, as a visual icon for “the days of the heavens,” and set in the context of royal rule supported by dynastic promises, the dung beetle with solar ball transfers rather well into the world of Psalm 89 and the hopes of King Hezekiah of Judah.

Wrong on Several Counts

I regret having to puncture Meir Lubetski’s balloon, but virtually all the facts upon which he bases his thesis are erroneous.

Lubetski’s premise is that the iconography on King Hezekiah’s seal, as well as that on the other seals illustrated in his article, have no Phoenician counterparts and therefore must be derived directly from Egyptian symbols. Let us address each of these in turn:

1. According to Lubetski, Egyptian artisans produced only two-winged beetles while Phoenician ones depicted only the four-winged variety. This is not true. There are numerous Phoenician scarabs depicting two-winged beetles similar to the Hezekiah seal.

2. Another seal cited by Lubetski as non-Phoenician in inspiration depicts a winged sphinx wearing a kilt and the Egyptian double crown, confronting an ankh. This sphinx is one of the most common Phoenician symbols, appearing frequently on the Nimrud ivories (originating in Phoenicia) as well as on many Phoenician scarabs. The ankh sign is an extremely common Phoenician symbol as well.

3. The winged sun-disk with drooping wings cited by Lubetski as strictly Egyptian appears at the top of many Phoenician stelae and scarabs.

4. Finally, Lubetski identifies another scarab as strictly Egyptian because it allegedly depicts the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet. The scarab he cites does not, in fact, depict Sekhmet but the god Bes, easily identified by his distinctive headdress (never depicted on Sekhmet). Bes was a god of good luck and appears on sculptures and scarabs throughout the Phoenician world. It is easy to mistake the head of Bes for Sekhmet because Bes also had leonine features.

Lubetski may or may not be correct in his reinterpretation of the inscription on the Hezekiah scarab. However, to the extent that he bases his findings on the iconographic evidence, he is most certainly in error.

Hezekiah’s Agenda

Meir Lubetski suggests that King Hezekiah named his son Manasseh to reflect his political and cultural ties to Egypt. Manasseh was 12 years old when Hezekiah died in 698 B.C.E., so he was born in 710 B.C.E. Sargon was still ruling Assyria in 710 and it is unlikely that Hezekiah would have made such a strong pro-Egyptian statement at that time. I believe that naming his son Manasseh, a 063strong Northern Kingdom name, had little to do with showing an affinity toward Egypt. Instead, it was heavily motivated by Hezekiah’s agenda, the reunification of the remnants of the Northern Kingdom with his Southern Kingdom, thus re-establishing the Davidic dynasty and United Monarchy.

Best Foot Backward

Congratulations to Meir Lubetski for his article revisiting Hezekiah’s seal. One minor point: beetles do not push the dung ball with the forelegs, rather with their hind legs, walking backward. Beetles use their forelegs only in forming the dung ball, digging into the feces and creating the ball. Ancient observers of the beetle at its task would also have noticed this, as did I many times while in the Negev and Sinai.

Potpourri

Wrestling with Pagan Yahwism

Your May/June 2001 issue is a goldmine of misinformation. I refer to two articles, one by my friend of long standing, Ephraim Stern (“Pagan Yahwism,” BAR 27:03), and the other by David Jacobson (“When Palestine Meant Israel,” BAR 27:03). In the latter, Jacobson defends his proposal that the Greek term Palaistinê and the Latin Palaestina are derived from the Greek word palaistês, “wrestler.” Cute theories based on superficial resemblances have no place in modern scholarship. In a recent controversy on a similar topic, I took occasion to compare Danuna, Danites and the donut (modern spelling). Jacobson’s Palaistinê=palaistê is on the same level. I have already had an opportunity to dismiss his suggestion in a scholarly journal,³ but many readers of BAR may not see it. Jacobson’s first deduction regarding Herodotus is wrong. When that Greek savant visited the eastern Mediterranean sea coast, Dor and Joppa were under the control of Sidon, so Phoenicia included Joppa and its agricultural hinterland (“mighty grain lands in the field of Sharon”). Thus Philistia began somewhere south of Joppa. Jacobson is wrong in assuming that Herodotus includes all of Israel/Judah in Philistia. The other Greek sources follow Herodotus’s lead; they generally do not even know about the Samaritans and the Judeans.

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The idea that the Greeks had learned about “Jacob the wrestler” and thus called the land of Israel Palaistinê is so far-fetched it would be a joke if it were not so pitiful! The name Palaistinê is simply a Greek reflex of the term first met in the 20th Egyptian dynasty inscriptions as plsût and in Assyrian as Palastu. This is the true evidence that we must wrestle with.

Now for Ephraim Stern. The general thesis of his article—that the ancient Israelites (including the Judeans) had many religious practices and beliefs that do not square with our “orthodox” (Jewish and Christian) view of what Biblical religion should be—is attested to by the Bible itself and confirmed by various archaeological finds. Overall, it is a charming and well-illustrated article.

What I take exception to is three supposed cultic sites and also the typically Israeli definition of the theophoric components in personal names as –yahu, –yah, and –YO. Yo! How many times must I rant and rave! The people who are supposed to know are aware that the northern Israelite theophoric suffix (written –YW) was pronounced –yaw! The final W was not used for long “o” until the post-Exilic period. The northern Israelite orthography yw was actually pronounced very much like the Judean orthography: Judean –yahu and northern yau. But Israeli archaeologists have eschewed any study of language or linguistics as being out of their specialty.

Now for the alleged cultic sites. Stern refers to a “high place” at Beer-sheba and cites an article by Yigael Yadin.⁴ Ephraim told me he had not read my article in the Phil King Festschrift,⁵ where I demonstrated that Yadin had falsified the measurements of the altar we found at Beer-sheba to make it fit into the courtyard of what really was a private dwelling. I happened to have excavated that courtyard with my own hands, including the oven in the corner, which would have prevented anyone from getting past such a huge altar in such a small space.

The second alleged site is Kuntillet ‘Ajrud. Stern, like most archaeologists, has ignored the brilliant article by Judy Hadley in which she demonstrates beyond all doubt that the inscriptions from that desert site are graffiti, scribblings by someone practicing exercises he had learned in school.⁶ The main texts, the blessings “to Yahweh and his Asherah” are in fact the standard format for the opening of a business letter. This has been confirmed by comparison with known epistles, one from Horvat ‘Uzza and one from Sakkara in Egypt. None of the inscriptions, on the jars, on the rim of a crude stone bowl or on the plaster in the entry chamber, are typical of a cultic shrine. Without the texts, any archaeologists would look at the plan of the small fort and say, “It’s a small casemate fort.”

The third site is Avi Eitan’s fort at Vered Jericho. Just because it had some steps and there were a few religious objects in one chamber, Avi made it a shrine and Hershel Shanks sought to sanctify it.⁷ I responded with evidence of staircases in many private houses at Tel Beer-sheba.⁸ I could have mentioned that we found cult figurines and other similar objects in private dwellings at Tel Beer-sheba. None of those places were shrines. Ordinary people, including soldiers, were religious and owned cultic artifacts.

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The tendency to find a cult site under every rock should be resisted. Scholars need to familiarize themselves with the written evidence for such shrines and then compare it with the actual finds. None of the three places discussed above bears any resemblance to the real worship center at Arad, so well-illustrated in Stern’s article.

David Jacobson responds:

Rainey does not so much as deign to consider arguments that I have put forward—in particular, the use of punning by the ancient Greeks and the importance they attached to eponymous hero figures. Rainey stridently remarks that my “first deduction regarding Herodotus is wrong.” By this somewhat opaque remark, I assume he refers to my view that Herodotus uses the term Palaistinê to encompass all of the Land of Israel. Strangely, Rainey cites external evidence (the political divisions in Herodotus’ day) rather than internal evidence from Herodotus’ text to suggest what the latter actually meant. In particular, Rainey is silent about Herodotus’ report that the Phoenicians and the Syrians of Palestine practiced circumcision [Herodotus ii 104, 3]. This surely indicates that our ancient Greek writer is not only using the geographical term Palaistinê for the restricted area of the Philistian coast, because the Philistines did not practice circumcision.

Gauging from some of Rainey’s comments, it is clear that he has not bothered to read my article thoroughly. He mistakenly believes that I have claimed that the Greek name Palaistinê relies entirely on its equation with Jacob/Israel. Had he been more scrupulous, he would have comprehended that I uphold the traditional connection between Palestine and the Land of the Philistines, remarked on by Josephus, but bring into consideration another possible association.

Rainey misleads your readers by stating that he had already dismissed my proposal in a scholarly journal. A cursory comment in the article alluded to, that my proposed association between Palaistinê and Jacob/Israel “requires unwarranted credulity” (Anson Rainey, “Herodotus’ Description of the East Mediterranean Coast,” BASOR 321 [2001], p. 61), hardly represents a rigorous refutation! Such a blanket statement befits a tabloid journalist rather than a serious scholar.

Our Byzantine Ways

Today I picked up the July/August 2001 issue and the first thing my eye lit upon was the handsome gold hairnet from Karpenisi, Greece (WorldWide, BAR 27:04). Imagine my consternation, however, when I read in the accompanying text, “The remote region, deep in the Pindus mountains, was one of the few areas not conquered in either the Byzantine (third century A.D.) or Turkish occupations (19th century) of Greece … ” First, why is the Turkish occupation of Greece, which began in the 15th century and ended, step by step, in the 19th, restricted to its last century? Even more mysterious is the alleged Byzantine occupation of the third century. “Byzantine” refers to the eastern, Greek-speaking, part of the Roman Empire, which long survived the empire of the west. Nobody, however, would place the beginning of the Byzantine Empire before Constantine’s designation of Byzantium as co-capital of the Roman Empire in the early fourth century. You would thus be talking about an occupation of Greece by Greeks a century before the Byzantine Empire came into existence! Please take more care in the future not to get your history so garbled. It detracts from a generally reliable and informative magazine.

Belly Up to the BAR

I about threw up when I saw the belly dancers praying before the idol (“Shall We Dance?” Strata, BAR 27:03). Was it really necessary to publish that? I decided to withdraw my subscription, but, on second thought, where else do I find information I need other than in BAR?

Correction

We neglected to credit the photos of Banias in Expeditions, BAR 27:04. They were taken by Professor John F. Wilson of Pepperdine University.

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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.