Queries & Comments
006
I’m Lovin’ It
I have been a subscriber to your magazine for years. I love it. I love it for the articles. I love it for the pictures. I love it for the criticisms. The spouting of venomous barbs aimed at all different people. The way you use the magazine to further your own causes and views. The way super-religious readers argue over fine points in the letters column. The way other scholars write in to add details or lesser-known facts. The way the article authors challenge or “correct” some of these writers.
I have always had a great interest in history. I am not religious myself, but the Bible is so important to history that watching it come alive in your magazine is as entertaining as it is educational.
BAR is a breath of fresh air for someone like me. I am always interested in learning. I also eagerly anticipate the silly letters from angry readers and your latest crusade.
Jeff Goldsmith
West Babylon, New York
Sunk Too Low
The childishness and bickering among supposedly educated and presumably sophisticated people does the discipline of Biblical archaeology no good. There is more than enough room for scholarly disagreement, but it should never descend to the levels it seems to have descended.
Charles Smith
Bedford, Massachusetts
Needs It Monthly
BAR keeps getting better. One problem: You have got to become a monthly magazine. I get anxious waiting every other month. Yes, I would be willing to pay more for that kind of service. I know that it would be a little more work for the writers, but my appreciation would be tremendous.
Scott Morris
Roanoke, Virginia
Learning from the Masters
Each session with your magazine makes me feel like I am sitting at the feet of the great: such knowledge, such scholarship, such erudition, such attention to detail about whether an ancient Hebrew letter is formal or cursive.
John Graham
Gainesville, Florida
Annual Meeting
Empty the British Museum?
Your March/April 2004 issue was as good as any. However, I take exception to statements attributed to Lord Renfrew in “A Tale of Two Meetings.”
The British Museum, which he serves as trustee, is one of the prime repositories of 008stolen artifacts in all of history. It has built its reputation on stolen artifacts. Egypt, India, China, Mesoamerica and a host of other places have fed the museum appetite with artifacts. I doubt Lord Renfrew is suggesting that the British Museum return all artifacts that do not originate from the British Isles.
Jacob Ashbury
Arab, Alabama
Seminal Problems
I was struck by your comments in the discussion of the Annual Meeting on the frequent use by scholars of the word “problematic”—and not surprised to find “problematic” in the review of Imperialism and Jewish Society on page 57.
Have you considered the overuse of the word “seminal”? It is a fine, valid word. But in the last few years in any article on any subject from history, theology and literature to evolution and archaeology, the author has to declare solemnly the seminal nature of some idea, concept or result. How do these fashions get started? Protest seems useless, so one is forced to wait it out until another word strikes the academic fancy.
Louise Landis
Florence, Oregon
Seventh Sample
Give Us Data, Not Emotions
I’m as convinced as anyone that the authenticity of the James ossuary warrants further investigation and as skeptical as anyone of the objectivity of the Israel Antiquities Authority. Its report casts it more in a political light than in a scientific one.
Nevertheless, as I read your otherwise excellent and illuminating critique of that report (“The Seventh Sample,” March/April 2004), I felt let down by the repeated use of such terms as “mostly” and “a great deal” in place of numeric figures and ranges.
Especially in academic circles, an article purporting a lack of substantiation on someone else’s part should set a better example. Though the article stands well as a thought-provoking cross-examination of a dubious report, please dispense with emotional appeals and fight numbers with numbers.
David Sieving
Pasadena, California
Out to Get Golan
I’ve been watching the James ossuary debate in BAR with deep interest over the last few months. As I look at things, this debacle has not done the reputation of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) any good at all. Its primary interest seems to lie in the pursuit of a personal vendetta. I’m no archaeologist, just an interested layman, but it looks to me like Oded Golan has upset someone powerful, and the IAA is out to get him by any means.
Ian McRae
Monikie
Angus, Scotland
Jehoash Inscription
The Talmud Has a Word for It
Though David Noel Freedman (“Don’t Rush to Judgment,” March/April 2004) suggests, “We must conclude with a Scottish verdict: not proven,” he might well have finished with the Talmudic term Teyku.
There are no fewer than 319 passages in the Babylonian Talmud where a debate on a disputed point of law is ended with the term teyku, which is an acrostic term—Tishbi Yetarets Kushyot V’ibayot—meaning “Tishbi will answer [such] questions and difficult cases.” Tishbi refers to Elijah, the Tishbite, the forerunner of the Messiah. Thus, we might translate teyku idiomatically to mean “the question remains open.”
Yehuda Berger
New York, New York
The Jehoash Address?
Some claim that anachronistic words and phrases in the Jehoash inscription are 062reasons to suspect a forgery, done by incompetent forgers at that.
I have before me a quotation reputed to come from the mid-19th century, but containing the archaic phrase, “Four score and seven years ago,” which was in common use much earlier.
If this purported government document is a forgery, it would lose its value. What do you suggest I do with it?
Richard Peterson
True, West Virginia
Pottery Talks
It’s About Power, Baby
I was interested to read in Avraham Faust’s article (“Pottery Talks,” March/April 2004) that he believes that in ancient Israel only men used decorated pottery because men in that society were identified with “culture” and women with unvarnished “nature.”
A simpler hypothesis is that men were simply more powerful than women and demanded exclusive use of the fancy, more labor-intensive pots as a way of reinforcing their position and prestige.
Henriette Klein
Berkeley, California
Avraham Faust responds:
The question of who used the pottery requires clarification. In my article I did not suggest that only men “used decorated pottery.” I am quite sure that, in each household, burnished pottery was used by all family members, including women and children. But because food consumption, in its most elaborated form, was regarded as “male business,” the pottery that was associated with this activity was also associated with men. It symbolized the male activity that was conducted in the public parts of a dwelling and was also associated with culutre. Though this association played a role in the structuring of society, it did not prevent women from using these pots.
Potpourri
The Jews of Ancient Albania
Your article about the synagogue recently excavated in Albania (Strata, March/April 2004) did not mention that the existence of a Jewish community there in antiquity was already known. An epitaph from Venosa, in southern Italy, written in Latin and Hebrew and dated to 521 C.E., reads: “Here rests Augusta, wife of Bonus the vir laudabilis, daughter of Isa the father from Anciasmon [Saranda, Albania], granddaughter of Symonas the father of the people of Lypiae [Lecce] …”
The inscription is in my book, Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1993), no.107. “Father” indicates a prominent figure in the Jewish community. The epitaph shows that the leading Jewish families of Saranda and southern Italy intermarried.
David Noy
Department of Classics
University of Wales
Lampeter, United Kingdom
A Clarification on Marisa
I have just received the issue containing my article “Marissa Tomb Paintings” (March/April 2004). The illustrations have come out superbly and should serve as a benchmark to the publisher of my forthcoming book. I have no doubt that readers will be enthralled by these masterpieces of ancient Greco-Sidonian art.
It is necessary, though, to correct one misconception, implied in the notices and headlines of the article, namely that I rediscovered the photographs. Kindly note that this is not the case, and you will not find this claim in my text. Our Palestine Exploration Fund curator, Felicity Cobbing, and the keeper of the Photographic collection have been aware of their presence all along. I happened to recognize their full importance and produced a study of the paintings based on the original photographs.
David Jacobson
Middlesex, England
Cut the Cards
Your practice of including cardboard ads in BAR has gone too far. I just removed nine—count them: NINE—cardboard inserts, and four of those were full-page sized! And I’m a subscriber, so there is no rationale for the five “Subscribe to BAR” inserts in any issue I am sent. It is too difficult to flip through BAR or to read it in a comfortable setting with all that cardboard in it, so I have to remove it, and it takes a full minute to find it all and get it out, without tearing the magazine itself. This is simply too annoying. If the practice continues, I am resolved not to renew my subscription.
Richard C. Carrier
Columbia University, New York
I’m Lovin’ It
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