Queries & Comments

008

We’ve Got Trouble, Right Here in River City

Several issues back, you wondered why a certain Israeli official [Israel Antiquities Authority Director Shuka Dorfman] hated you (“Israel Antiquities Authority Declines Dirty Money,” July/August 2003). I can explain. You, Sir, are a troublemaker. Which is why we love your magazine.

H.S., Meet Ed.

The airing of personal vendettas is such a bore. Enough of rantings and ravings against the serious work done by the Israel Antiquities Authority and the American Schools of Oriental Research.

I do not know who hides behind the initials H.S., but it is time that the Editor stops him or her from going on the rampage against those serious organizations in what could be an otherwise serious publication.

I’ll have a word with H.S.—Ed.

Stop the Mudslinging

I find the repeated attacks on your magazine, and on Hershel Shanks in particular, annoying. I am not religious, but I am interested in the Israel of the Bible, the religious thought of which was by any measure a major component of Western civilization. BAR addresses that interest, which is why I keep renewing my subscription.

Ossuary Report

Don’t Insult Christians If You Want Them to Visit

I was shocked when I read André Lemaire’s, “Israel Antiquities Authority Report Deeply Flawed” (November/December 2003). I am not referring to the IAA’s conclusions about the authenticity of the James ossuary, but to its appalling failure to follow its own guidelines. Lemaire cites several examples, but for me the most shocking example was the blatant anti-Christian statements Lemaire quoted from Dr. Tal Ilan and her bad taste “joke” that suggests that perhaps the resurrected Jesus buried James in accordance with the principle, “Let the dead bury the dead.” Lemaire’s comments are reserved understatements: “This would seem to reveal a prejudice that contravenes the committee’s guidelines calling for members to base their conclusions on ‘pure research only—without taking into account any … prejudices.’”

The real shocker for me is that such clear prejudice is included as part of an official statement issued by the Israel Antiquities Authority. On page 7 of the same issue is an ad placed by the Israel 010Ministry of Tourism, which blares these headlines: “Don’t Put Your Soul On Hold, Join the Christian groups that are visiting the Holy Land.” “Follow your heart, come to Israel now.” “No one belongs here more than you.” There is clearly a disconnect within the IAA between its guidelines prohibiting “prejudices” and its editorial policy of printing Dr. Ilan’s anti-Christian prejudices and bad taste “joke” about Jesus. But there is clearly an even higher-level government disconnect between the IAA and the Israel Ministry of Tourism that needs to be addressed by the government of Israel at its highest level. If such blatant religious prejudice against the Jewish faith were published in an official U.S. government publication, there would be an immediate public outcry for heads to roll. And heads should and would roll.

Rami Levi, Ambassador of Tourism to North & South America, Israel Ministry of Tourism, responds:

The Israel Ministry of Tourism does not, in any way, condone the inappropriate remarks [by Tal Ilan] that were quoted in André Lemaire’s article. The remarks do not reflect the views of the government of Israel nor the Ministry of Tourism. We continue to encourage Christians and Jews alike to visit the birthplace of two of the world’s great religions and discover the many historical and archaeological sites that distinguish Israel as one of the world’s great tourist destinations.

The Israel Antiqities Authority has not responded to our request for a comment on this matter—Ed.

Can You Trust the Experts?

“Wow!” to André Lemaire’s critical review of the IAA’s investigation and scanty reports on the James ossuary, which seem to have been based on personal opinions.

Don’t get me wrong, I have read some highly acclaimed studies by “experts” in past issues. Must I now regard such reports as highly suspect? I jest of course. Or do I?

The Letter Forms Are Consistent

The continuing saga of the authenticity of the Jehoash inscription and the James ossuary is endlessly interesting. The critique by André Lemaire was well written and well taken. I am sure we will hear more.

However, I was surprised that some details that might be significant went unremarked. Lemaire writes of the James ossuary inscription that “we have a mixture of formal and cursive shapes … It is incorrect to say that one part is formal script and the other is cursive.” In this he opposes the characterization by Esther Eshel that “the first part is written in the formal style of a scribe and the second part is cursive.” She finds the distinction indicative of two hands; he finds the mixture normal.

Without training as an epigrapher, I nonetheless note several other facts about the lettering that might help explain Eshel and Lemaire’s differing perceptions. The two parts of the inscription are made up of eleven letters in the first and nine in the second. Lemaire finds that in the first eleven letters, seven are formal and four are cursive, while in the latter nine, only three are formal and six are cursive. This discrepancy in the balance might account for Eshel’s sense that these are different hands. But an analysis of which letters are written in cursive and which in formal script will find that all eight yods and vavs are cursive, as are the single dalet and alef. All the other letters in the inscription are written in formal script, and none of the four letters written in cursive ever appear in formal script. Might the mixture, then, have to do with the form of each letter chosen by the scribe? As to appearances, six of the letters in the first part of the inscription take on the right-angled, boxy form of square letters—the kuf, two bets, resh, samekh and final pe, whereas only the het in the latter part has that form. (Indeed, I am unclear why Lemaire categorized the shin of this inscription as formal rather than cursive, for it does not have the horizontal lower stroke that I associate with formal script.) Might the specific letters of this inscription be the sole reason for the apparent differences between the two parts?

André Lemaire responds:

I thank Rabbi Reisner for his comments. Unfortunately I cannot explain why Esther Eshel wrote that “the first part is written in the formal style of a scribe and the second part is cursive” since she did not specify which letters she considers cursive and which ones formal. I must say that, for me, it is a total enigma how the yod of Ya’akov (Jacob/James) and the yod of Yoseph (Joseph) could be classified as formal and the yod of ’ahuy 011(brother), with the same simple vertical shape, could be classified as cursive.

I can only guess that the idea that the inscription consists of two parts came from the shape of the final pe (11th letter from the left), but this final pe marks only the end of a word (Yoseph) and not the end of an inscription. It is just a misinterpretation of a well-known palaeographical feature. For an experienced palaeographer, there is no serious reason to think that “brother of Jesus” is not from the same hand as “James son of Joseph.”

As for Rabbi Reisner’s remark about the shape of the formal shin, the horizontal lower stroke is well-known in the later Jewish scribal tradition, but it is not at all part of the formal script in the first century. For the different shapes of the cursive script of the contemporaneous shin, I refer readers to Ada Yardeni, Textbook of Aramaic Hebrew and Nabataean Documentary Texts from the Judaean Desert, B, Translation, Palaeography, Concordance (Jerusalem: Ben-Zion Dinur Center for Research in Jewish History, 2000), pp. 208–209.

Not Guilty!

I look upon the debate over the James ossuary as if I were a member of a jury listening to the arguments of the prosecution and the defense in a forgery case. I know little about the fine details of archaeology or the other disciplines involved in this debate, but I think that qualifies me to make an objective, unbiased judgment from a fresh point of view. I am a Christian but am also a bit wary of any newly discovered artifact that has a direct reference to Jesus. My initial reaction to the ossuary news was, “Oh, wouldn’t that be cool (discovering such an artifact), but it would also be a great moneymaker for a professional forger.” In short, I am a blank canvas ready to be painted, so may the best argument win.

Having said all that, my conclusion upon reading André Lemaire’s “Flawed Report” article is that if this were a court of law, the prosecution (the IAA committee) has failed abysmally to prove forgery. Their arguments are based on unfounded declarations that the defense shot holes in at every turn. Their conclusions were based on highly subjective, preformulated opinions. They failed to make their analysis within the stated boundaries set out in the beginning of the commission by the IAA. They are, in my humble opinion, either very poor scientists or they have an agenda to discredit this artifact.

Megiddo

Giving Solomon His Due

Congratulations to you and to Timothy P. Harrison for “The Battleground: Who Destroyed Megiddo?”(November/December 2003). But Mr. Harrison is too modest. If, as he maintains and convincingly demonstrates, Stratum VI at Megiddo, a mixed Canaanite-Philistine-Israelite town, was destroyed by King David in about 1000 B.C.E., as the University of Chicago excavators thought in the 1930s when they laid part of it bare, then Mr. Harrison has resolved a major battle among historians of ancient Israel. For then the trivial next level, Stratum VB, dates to David’s reign, and the following level, Stratum VA/IVB, the grandest and overwhelmingly most important at Megiddo, dates to Solomon’s reign. That is the level of what your article calls, “impressive monumental architecture.” Harrison might have specified that the phrase indicates the extensive and famous “Stables of Solomon’s Chariot City” (perhaps warehouses) and the formidable six-chambered gate, almost identical to the six-chambered gates of what the Bible calls Solomon’s other two chariot cities, Hazor and Gezer. These are the most splendid surviving constructions by Solomon, confirming his Biblical reputation as a mighty builder.

But the skeptic Israel Finkelstein maintains that Stratum VI was destroyed by the Egyptian Pharaoh Shishak in about 925 B.C.E. In that case the later stables and gate and other allegedly Solomonic remains at Megiddo, Hazor and Gezer could not have been built by Solomon (970–930 B.C.E.), but rather by Omri and Ahab, kings of the northern state of Israel in the ninth century B.C.E. and of evil reputation in the Bible. This is part of the case by Finkelstein and other skeptics and “Biblical minimalists” made to argue that the Books of Samuel are historical hogwash, that David, if he existed at all, was a local bandit chief, and that Solomon, if he existed at all, was a petty kinglet who can’t be shown 012in the archaeological record to have put even one stone on another anywhere—while Ahab (and his Jezebel), whom the Bible and Hollywood alike love to hate, was the first real king of Israel, who built the remains that impress us, and probably the Temple in Jerusalem as well.

If Harrison is correct, then Finkelstein and the Biblical minimalists are wrong, Wrong! Wrong!! Obviously the controversy will continue, but as of now, Timothy Harrison has smitten the nay-sayers hip and thigh and has restored Solomon to all his glory. He and you might as well say so, and enjoy the applause!

Israelites in Exile

Jews in Media

K. Lawson Younger, Jr., in “Israelites in Exile” (November/December 2003), identifies a deportation of northern Israelites by Sargon II to the land of Media in 716–715 B.C.E. but writes that “No extrabiblical evidence confirms the settlement of Israelites in the cities of the Medes …” However, New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham, in his essay, “Anna of the Tribe of Asher,” in his book Gospel Women (Eerdmans, 2002), recounts several later rabbinic traditions pertaining to the Northern Tribes of the Median diaspora in the Second Temple period, including circular letters sent to the Jews of Media and the presence of Rabbi Nahum the Mede in Jerusalem in the last years of the Second Temple. Also, as Bauckham notes, the first century C.E. Jewish historian Josephus mentions the Israelite exiles of Media several times, and Nisibis, in northern Mesopotamia, which served as a collection point for the Temple tax from Diaspora Jews, is on the main route from Media to Jerusalem. Bauckham also believes that the Book of Tobit was written for a Median diaspora audience. Thus, there seems not only to have been an Israelite community in Media but also one that had distinct ties with the Jews of Jerusalem.

K. Lawson Younger, Jr. responds:

It is true that there are some rabbinic and New Testament traditions about Jews of the Median Diaspora. But the sources for these traditions date some 600 to 1000 years later than the Assyrian deportations of the Israelites (734–716 B.C.E.). Thus, when I said that “No extrabiblical evidence confirms the settlement of Israelites in the cities of the Medes,” I was referring to evidence that is more or less contemporary with the historical event it documents—such as the evidence from the cuneiform records that I cite from sites in Assyria. Evidence from many centuries later, however, does have value. So the fact that there was, in the late Second Temple period, a Jewish community in Nisibis is interesting and valuable evidence of a continued presence of the deportees in the region and is evidence that Richard Bauckham can use to argue his thesis concerning Anna. But it does not fall under the definition of “extrabiblical” as ancient Near Eastern and Hebrew Bible/Old Testament scholars would use the term.