Queries & Comments

008

International Concern Over the Temple Mount

I am writing to you as the deputy chairman for the Danish Society of Biblical Archaeology. We are concerned about the ongoing destruction of uninvestigated archaeological remains from the Haram esh-Sherif/Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

The whole world raised a sharp protest against the recent Taliban destruction of unique Buddha figures in the Bamiyan Valley in Afghanistan. And yet those figures were well known, scientifically described and thoroughly analyzed. But in the case of the Haram esh-Sherif/Temple Mount, archaeological remains that never have been investigated are just thrown away or given over to the black market.

The Danish Society of Biblical Archaeology is only a tiny organization, but we hope to draw attention to this important subject.

Ein Gedi vs. Qumran

Ein Gedi Used by Harvesters

Re: “Searching for Essenes at Ein Gedi, Not Qumran,” BAR 28:04. I was fortunate to participate in two seasons of excavation at Ein Gedi under the direction of Yizhar Hirschfeld, once as the field supervisor of “Upper Ein Gedi” and once as the director of a study dig program focusing on “Lower Ein Gedi.” As fascinating as the digs and finds in both “Upper” and “Lower” Ein Gedi are, I too oppose the suggestion that Essenes dwelt at Upper Ein Gedi rather than at Qumran. To David Amit’s and Jodi Magness’s thorough criticism, I’d like to add a few comments.

The ramp of the upper pool at “Upper Ein Gedi” is slippery and dangerous for anyone trying to get into the pool (as I know from personal experience), and even more so if you are barefoot and the ramp is wet. It would have been easy to carve steps into the ramp, but this was not done. Labeling it a mikveh (ritual bath) seems wrong to me.

In my view, “Upper Ein Gedi” was a set of huts used by Ein Gedi farmers during the high season of harvesting balsam. According to the ancient philosopher and botanist Theophrastus, the balsam harvest took place in the midst of the summer, “when there is scorching heat” (Historia Plantarum IX, 6, 2). To save time getting to the fields, the farmers slept during the harvest season at “Upper Ein Gedi” and also stored some of the precious product there.

Year round the site had another function, mainly at cells 27 and 28. From this combined cell one can see to quite a distance into Nahal Arugot, the main access to Ein Gedi in antiquity. This cell, which is also bigger and better preserved than most of the cells at “Upper Ein Gedi,” was really a watch tower for the residents of Ein Gedi.

The problem remains with Qumran. Was it a manor house or a center for ascetics? There are indications for both, and the argument can go on forever. The answer lies in the stratigraphy. A site can have more than one identity, at different periods. Jerusalem, for example, was a small village in the 13th century B.C.E. and a capital and a religious center in the days of David and Solomon. Qumran excavator Roland de Vaux neglected to record carefully the stratigraphy when excavating in Qumran, but I think it is 010possible to discern two distinct levels of occupation. The site was first a manor house, perhaps of the Hasmoneans, and later a site for an ascetic group highly resembling the Essenes (perhaps their center?). A detailed argument in support of this hypothesis is given by J.B. Humbert in Revue Biblique vol. 101, no. 2 (1994), pp. 161–219. The idea was first proposed, as far as I can determine, by B. Kanael in Eretz-Israel 5 (1959), pp. 164–170.

The Four-Room House

Sometimes a Cigar Is Just a Cigar

Re: “Ideology in Stone: Understanding the Four-Room House,” BAR 28:04. After all the psychoanalyzing being done by scholars, it’s tempting to think that the four-room house was just that—a four-room house.

Hezekiah’s Seals

Was Hezekiah a Liberal?

Robert Deutsch explains that the Egyptian iconography on Hezekiah’s seals simply appropriated symbols of royal power and thus did not serve to introduce Egyptian religious meaning (“Lasting Impressions: New Bullae Reveal Egyptian-Style Emblems on Judah’s Royal Seals,” BAR 28:04). This seems reasonable enough, except for one thing: Don’t the images of dung beetles constitute a forbidden “likeness of what is in the heaven above or 012on the earth beneath” (Exodus 20:4)? I find it hard to believe that a king so esteemed by the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, who pushed hard for exclusive Yahwism in Judah and who personally destroyed the bronze serpent Moses had made, would have imprinted such an image on whatever document that passed from his hands. Perhaps even “good Hezekiah” was more liberal with the Mosaic commandments than later hard-line codifiers of the law.

Robert Deutsch responds:

Exodus 20:4 reads: “Thou shalt not make for thyself any carved idol, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth.” One might come to the conclusion that the adoption of the dung beetle by Hezekiah constituted a violation. Yet one has to quote the previous verse—“Thou shalt have no other gods beside Me”—and also the following verse—“Thou shalt not bow down to them, nor serve them”—to clarify the matter.

Exodus 20:4 is a ban on creating material images to which one might “bow down” or “serve” instead of serving the Lord. In the eyes of Hezekiah and of the prophets, the adoption of a symbol for its artistic value or its connotation of power is not a violation of the ban. The dung beetle has no religious value whatsoever. Long before Hezekiah’s time, the winged beetle became an ornament only.

Bravo for Deutsch

Robert Deutsch’s informative article, “Lasting Impressions: New Bullae Reveal Egyptian-Style Emblems on Judah’s Royal Seals,” BAR 28:04, will leave a lasting impression on your readers, not only for the new information it provides but for Deutsch’s honesty and integrity in presenting information. Many academics cannot admit that they ever made a mistake. Deutsch was not afraid to hide his previous mistakes in interpretation. I wish others would follow his lead.

I believe that Deutsch is on target with his explanation that Hezekiah’s bullae depict symbols of royalty rather than religious symbols.

Hezekiah’s Two Royal Icons

I was pleased to see the title “Lasting Impressions: New Bullae Reveal Egyptian-Style Emblems on Judah’s Royal Seals,” BAR 28:04. It reflects a growing acceptance of Egyptian influence on the Biblical world, a thesis expressed in my article, “King Hezekiah’s Seal Revisited,” BAR 27:04.

Yet one wonders why author Robert 014Deutsch highlights the Egyptian aspect in the title, only to negate it in his conclusions. He says “Hezekiah was simply appropriating generally accepted icons of royal power and not importing meaning from either Phoenicia or Egypt.” While neither of us knows what was in Hezekiah’s mind, I think the historical context adds weight to my view that he utilized well-known Egyptian figurative motifs and conceptions.

First, I will deal with Robert Deutsch’s gratuitous comments. He says I interpreted the seal as if Judah belonged to Hezekiah. I already explained in a response to a letter to the editor (Queries & Comments, BAR 28:01) that this is false. Further, I did not misread, as he claims, the formula written on the two-winged beetle of Hezekiah, nor did I ignore the royal bulla of his father, Ahaz. What I proposed was that Hezekiah specifically ordered his seal cutter to deviate from the standard style found on the seal of Ahaz. The artisan placed the name of the country, yhdh (Judah), as the first and central word in a redesigned formula. The rest of the phrase was inscribed in a circular fashion, clockwise, ending with the word “king.” It was thus separated from the name yhdh in placement and direction. The intention was to emphasize Hezekiah’s achievements—territorial independence and political sovereignty—in contrast to the Kingdom of Judah’s losses and failures during his father’s reign.

That this schema took root one learns from the Yehud seal impressions of the Persian era found at Ramat Rahel that read: yhwd/yhw‘zr/phw’. i.e. Judah, the province, on top, Yehoezer, the seal owner, on the next line and finally, phw’’,¹ governor, the title, on the last line. The textual style on the Hezekiah seal was not an isolated occurrence; it was a forerunner.

But, paradoxically, the Egyptian style emblem that Deutsch just published provides additional support for my thesis of a changed formula. Deutsch showed that Hezekiah had two royal seal impressions bearing two kinds of Egyptianized icons. Why would a king produce two different royal emblems? Deutsch didn’t ask this challenging question, and it is of more than passing interest. I suggest that we view the two royal emblems as an indication of different periods in the reign of Hezekiah. The inscription on the two-winged solar disk bulla followed the usual pattern of Ahaz’s aniconic bulla and iconic seals of officials of former Judahite kings.² This seal was probably engraved after Hezekiah’s ascendancy to the throne, when he was still beholden to the Assyrian king.

The second Hezekiah bulla type with a beetle and a unique textual arrangement 016signifies a departure from the norm. It sprang from the new political environment when Hezekiah freed himself and his country from the Assyrian yoke.³ That is why the word yhdh (Judah), is centrally located on the bulla and why the writing ends with the word king, an original way to emphasize the title of the seal owner. The beetle icon on the Hezekiah bulla, though decorative, included a message that originated in Egypt: youth, permanence and renewal.⁴ This motif was particularly appropriate for Hezekiah, who rejuvenated his kingdom after a turbulent period. Two large wings, presumably falcon wings, which symbolically shelter the unified Upper and Lower Egypt under the pharaoh, were borrowed to signify the aspiration for reunification of Israel and Judah and their protection under one king, Hezekiah.⁵

This king left such a strong impact on later generations that Ben Sira singled him out as one of the three foremost kings in the history of the Judahite monarchy.⁶ The Rabbis explained that the birth of the king Messiah described in Isaiah 9:5 referred to Hezekiah. Indeed, he was nearly God’s choice for the Messiah, said the Rabbis.⁷ (The beetle, as a matter of fact, was connected to the Christian messiah. In his commentary to the Gospel of Luke, Ambrose depicts the crucified Jesus as scarabeus in cruce, scarab on the cross. Uttering his last words, Jesus was characterized as the bonus scarabeus, the good beetle.⁸ If Christ on the wooden cross is portrayed as a beetle, then this symbol must have been more than just an ornament.)

It seems that it is more than just a coincidence that the scarab, a symbol of renewal in Egyptian culture, was selected to be the royal emblem on the bulla of the king. Failure to recognize that there was a marked change of formula led Deutsch to the unfounded conclusion that I distorted the formula. Lumping together the two royal icons as sheer ornaments is an oversimplification of the iconographic meaning and does not do justice to the emblems.

Robert Deutsch responds:

The emblems on Hezekiah’s seals are indeed in Egyptian style, yet the motifs were not adopted by Hezekiah directly from Egypt, and certainly did not borrow religious meanings or have political significance. These emblems were long present in Judah, as I showed in my article.

I stand by my claim that Lubetski misread the inscription. Readers can decide for themselves which reading is better.

Lubetski’s comparison of Hezekiah’s royal bullae with the seal impressions on storage jar handles from the Persian period found at Ramat Rachel (impressions on storage jar handles, not on bullae, as cited by Lubetski [note 1]), is not valid. Judah in the Persian 018period, more than 200 years after Hezekiah, was not a free kingdom but was under foreign rule, a situation completely different from that of the time of Ahaz and Hezekiah.

However, I agree with Lubetski’s hypothesis that the two royal seal types, one depicting a winged scarab and the other a winged sun disk, may have chronological significance. One is earlier than the other. But which one is the earlier one? Lubetski’s search for an earlier and a later inscription formula on the bullae is in vain, and for a simple reason: There are no changes in the formulae, only a different distribution of the words to fill the space symmetrically around the emblem.

Some of Lubetski’s phrases—“message that originated in Egypt: youth, permanence and renewal,” “appropriate for Hezekiah who rejuvenated his kingdom after a turbulent period,” “falcon wings, which symbolically shelter the unified Upper and Lower Egypt under the pharaoh, were borrowed to signify the aspiration for reunification of Israel and Judah and their protection under one king, Hezekiah”—are pure speculation without any solid grounding.

Lubetski’s much later sources, such as Ben Sira and the Babylonian Talmud, and his speculation on the possible meanings of the scarabeus in the time of Jesus, are completely irrelevant to our subject.

Potpourri

Were the Philistines Circumcised?

We would like to challenge Anson Rainey’s statement: “When Herodotus mentions that the Syrians known as Philistines practiced circumcision, he is reflecting a fact that is well known to all knowledgeable scholars—that the Philistines had long since assimilated to the local Canaanite culture” (Queries & Comments, BAR 28:02).

In the first place, Herodotus speaks not of “the Syrians known as Philistines” but of “the Syrians of Palestine” (Herodotus, ii, 104). Second and more important, the ancient literary sources make it quite clear that the Philistines did not practice circumcision. There are no less than seven explicit statements to this effect in the Bible, including the impassioned one attributed to David about Goliath: “And who is he, an uncircumcised Philistine, to defy the army of the living God?” (1 Samuel 17:26; the other references are Judges 14:3; 15:18; 1 Samuel 14:6; 31:4; 2 Samuel 1:20; 1 Chronicles 10:4). Referring to the same passage in Herodotus, Josephus is emphatic that the only inhabitants of Palestine who practiced circumcision in antiquity were the Jews: “Now it is clear that no others of the Syrians of Palestine practice circumcision beside ourselves” (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, viii, 262). He emphatically repeats this very point in his Against Apion (i, 171): “Herodotus says that the Palestinian Syrians were circumcised; but the Jews are the only inhabitants of Palestine who adopt this practice.”

Josephus supplies other supporting evidence, albeit less direct. He indicates that, prior to the Hasmonaean conquests of Idumea, Galilee and Iturea, the peoples living in the areas to the north and south of ancient Judea and Samaria were uncircumcised. After these areas were annexed during the reigns of John Hyrcanus I (135/134–104 B.C.E.) and Aristobulus I (104–103 B.C.E.), their populations were obliged to adopt Judaism and have their males circumcised (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities xiii 257 [Idumaea]; xiii, 318–319 [Ituraea/Galilee]). His sources for Aristobulus’s conversion and circumcision of the Itureans are the respected non-Jewish historians Strabo of Amaseia and Timagenes of Alexandria (first century B.C.E.–early first century C.E.), who might be expected to be objective on this matter. Clearly, if the people on either side of Judea and Samaria had not adopted the practice of circumcision prior to the expansion of the Hasmonean kingdom, then Josephus’s qualification of Herodotus’s remarks about the Syrians of Palestine are entirely credible.

As to whether by the time of Herodotus the Philistines had long since assimilated to the local Canaanite culture, the issue is not cut and dried, as Rainey would have us believe. The only significant monumental inscription attributable to the Philistines that has come to light is the dedication inscription of the temple at Tel Miqne, Philistine Ekron, which was destroyed in 604 B.C.E. It tells us that this temple, which dates from the late Iron Age, was dedicated to a non-Semitic deity, “Pat [or Pot] Gaia,” which may possibly be interpreted as “The Lady Gaia.”^a Certainly, by late antiquity, the deities worshiped in the old cities of the Philistines were fairly representative of those revered throughout the Levant, which included both Greek deities, such as Apollo and Tyche, and Semitic dieties syncretised with Greco-Roman ones. A notable example of the latter is the hybridized goddess Astarte (Canaanite)-Atargatis/Derceto (Aramaic)-Aphrodite (Greek), who was worshiped at Ashkelon as a woman with the tail of a fish.

Conspicuous in the Philistine pantheon was the fertility god, Dagon. First Maccabees informs us of a temple of Dagon at Azotus, ancient Ashdod, which was destroyed by Jonathan the Maccabee sometime between 148 and 146 B.C.E. (First Maccabees 10:83–84; 11:4). This veneration of Dagon demonstrates a degree of continuity between the Philistines of the Biblical narrative and the inhabitants of the same area in the classical period. There are several references to temples of Dagon in the Bible, located in Gaza and Ashdod (Judges 16:23 [Gaza]; 1 Samuel 5:1–7 [Ashdod]; cf. 1 Chronicles 10:10). Although the cult of Dagon is known from elsewhere in the Levant, in particular Mesopotamia and North Syria, in the Bible it is specifically associated with the Philistines.

An awareness that the origins of the inhabitants of the Philistine coast lay across the Aegean Sea, rather than locally in the Levant, seems to have survived into late antiquity. A legend that Gaza was called Minôa after Minos, the legendary king of Crete, and an identification of Marnas, the patron deity of the city, with Zeus Krêtagenês (literally “Zeus of Crete”) were recorded by the sixth century C.E. scholar, Stephanus of Byzantium. These notices certainly suggest that the descendants of the Iron Age Philistines retained their cultural distinctiveness till very late, in contradiction to Anson Rainey’s dismissive statement.

Finally, we cannot imagine why Rainey is so eager to disregard the Greek penchant for puns on place-names, particularly when as long ago as 1911, Barclay Head, the eminent Greek numismatist, had little difficulty in noticing that the coins of at least 41 ancient Greek towns displayed images that pun on their names!

Correction

We inadvertently left off the illustration credits in “Backward Glance: Divergent Visions of the Holy Land,” BAR 28:04. The credits are: Royal Institute of British Architects (portrait of Barry, Barry sketches, and bird detail); Clore Collection, Tate Gallery, London/Art Resource, New York (portrait of Turner); Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge (Turner painting, “The Pools of Solomon”); Pantzer Collection, Indianapolis Museum of Art (Turner painting, “Pyramids of Gizah”); and Israel Museum, Jerusalem/Avraham Hay (Turner painting, “Pool of Bethesda”). 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.