Queries & Comments

008

Put Up or Shut Up

I will not renew my subscription because there is too much fiction in what is supposed to be a scientific journal. You have referred in your promotional material to:

“A burial box that once held the bones of the high priest Caiaphas, who presided at the trial of Jesus.”

“A prototype of the golden calf the Israelites fashioned at the foot of Mt. Sinai at the very moment Moses was receiving the Tablets of the Law.”

“Abram, as he was then known (before his name was changed to Abraham), [who] started in Ur.”

These statements are made as though the events actually happened. Prove it! The word “alleged” should precede each of them.

Wiesel and Cross Interview

Better Than Petty

I loved the interview with Elie Wiesel and Frank Moore Cross (“Contrasting Insights of Biblical Giants,” July/August 2004). How about more interviews like that, rather than the petty stuff that BAR has gotten to love.

Onward and Upward

Thank you for the wonderful interview and discussion with Elie Wiesel and Frank Cross. Two great men commenting on the greatest book ever written. BAR just keeps getting better with every issue.

His Money’s Worth

This one interview, for me, made the entire year’s subscription worthwhile.

You Could Almost Hear Them

Thank you for publishing the interview with Elie Wiesel and Frank Moore Cross. I have been a subscriber to BAR since 1982, and I believe I have read this article more times than any other article you have published. I felt I could actually hear the voices speaking. What a privilege to read and hear the meaning of Bible study from these “Biblical Giants.” You helped me understand my own efforts and interests in Bible study and teaching.

Horrid Cover

I am always anxious to receive my issue of BAR. When I saw those two old men 009on the cover, I was disappointed and disgusted. You chose them; and to think of all the marvelous ancient artifacts or scenes that could have been used! Please never do this again.

More Light than Heat

Since some of the scholarly disputes aired in BAR produce as much heat as light, it was welcome and refreshing to read the interview with Frank Cross and Elie Wiesel. Even though the men admit to having differences of opinion, their discussion was gentlemanly and respectful. Thank you for allowing your readers to share what must have been a delightful experience.

Who Tested Whom?

I was pleased to read in your interview with Elie Wiesel and Frank Moore Cross that Mr. Wiesel views the akedah as a double test in which God and Abraham test each other: Will Abraham show a willingness to sacrifice Isaac to Me, to prove his obedience, and Will God show an unwillingness that I sacrifice Isaac to Him, to prove his justice? Both pass their test. Abraham proceeds as commanded, with faith that he will not have to kill Isaac, and God justifies Abraham’s faith in Divine justice. Thereafter, neither has occasion or reason to test the other again. We now know what each stands for.

I previously advanced this view in Bible Review (“God Tests Abraham—Abraham Tests God,” October 1993), and I have since learned that Mr. Wiesel advanced the same idea even earlier in his book Messengers of God (1976).

I am most thankful that our endeavors have helped bring to light what I hope will gradually be accepted as the original meaning and intent of Genesis 22, before the rabbinic gloss changed them to mean that God really wanted Abraham to be unreservedly willing to kill Isaac and that Abraham was, in fact, fully ready to do so. That interpretation, I believe, came about to help Jews understand their persecution by the Roman Empire and by the rising, powerful Christian Church during the first thousand years after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. and Israel’s ensuing exile.

They Lack Wisdom

I have come away from reading your interview with Mr. Wiesel and Mr. Cross convinced that although both of these gentlemen know about God, they do not actually know Him. To them, the Bible is a mere book, a form of ancient literature, something to be dissected, analyzed to death and, eventually, doubted or ignored. They are both well-educated, intelligent men, but they lack wisdom.

The Bible is not just a piece of literature, gentlemen. As Christians, our belief in the authenticity of the Bible does not depend on scientific research but on its claim to be God’s Word, as stated in 2 Timothy 3:16: “All scripture is inspired by God.” These two fine gentlemen would do well to stop trying to intellectualize the Bible and to start reading it while doing what King Solomon did in 1 Kings 3: Ask God to give them wisdom and an understanding heart.

The Question Not Asked

Rather than asking Wiesel and Cross how they relate to the Bible, it would have made more sense to ask them how they believe God relates to the Bible, if at all. Then their answers regarding the historical accuracy of the Exodus and the patriarchal stories would have a foundation for further discussion. Why talk about the veracity of Biblical texts if you don’t first establish whether you believe the writers were ordinary fiction writers or reliable reporters chosen and used by an active, concerned God?

Less than a Mustard Seed

In the recent interview with Elie Wiesel and Frank Moore Cross, I was struck by the frankness of Mr. Shanks’s questions and the admission of his own search for answers. What is amazing and bewildering to me is that for all their knowledge and all their education and all their lifetime of labor, the three of them combined have not the faith of the smallest mustard seed.

How fitting and ironic that the Lord’s gift of eternal life is determined not by how much education or knowledge we have so as to exclude the simplest among us, but on whether we believe His testimony as revealed in the Old and New Testaments.

Real or Fake?

Late Addition?

The dispute over the James ossuary [inscribed “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus”—Ed.] is fascinating. As is usually the case in epigraphic controversies, conclusion by authority is as likely as conclusion from evidence, and gossip plays an important role. There is one point that I haven’t seen mentioned.

Wouldn’t it be expected that “brother of Jesus” is a late addition? Hadn’t James been long dead by the time Jesus became famous?

James was martyred in 62 A.D. Jesus was crucified in about 30 A.D. How famous Jesus was in 62 A.D. is debatable, but there was certainly a robust Christian (or Jesus) community by that time even though those in Jerusalem may also have still considered themselves Jews.—Ed.

Fire Away

You need to fire your fact checker. There are two major errors regarding three different people in the unsigned article entitled “A Crack in the Facade?” (Update, July/August 2004).

First, Morag Kersel is not “a professor at Cambridge University;” she is a student of Lord Colin Renfrew at Cambridge University, where she is currently studying for her M.Phil. While she is indeed the author of We Sell History: Issues in the Illicit Trade of Antiquities, that was the title and topic of her M.A. thesis, written at the University of Georgia. As far as I know, it remains unpublished.

Second, Ellen Herscher and Patty Gerstenblith have not “recently … assumed leadership positions in ASOR …” While they are very valued members of ASOR and have held leadership positions within the organization in the past, neither is currently on any ASOR committees nor do they currently hold any positions in ASOR whatsoever, apart from the fact that they and Morag Kersel are in charge of organizing the session at the annual ASOR meetings entitled “The Ethics of Collecting and Communicating the Near Eastern Past.”

It does not help create confidence in your larger argument when you get such smaller facts wrong.

010

While we regret any error, however minor, we are consoled by the fact that Professor Cline does not dispute the major point of the article—that two of the most vocal opponents of scholars’ publishing unprovenanced finds now concede that the profession is “deeply divided” on this important question. Many leading scholars feel—contra Herscher and Gerstenblith—that scholars (and the public) need to know about significant artifacts and inscriptions even though we may not be sure where they come from.

On second thought, all the errors Professor Cline accuses us of may not be errors at all. The facts Professor Cline himself lists regarding Herscher and Gerstenblith seem to us to indicate they are ASOR leaders. You don’t have to hold an office or be a member of a formal committee to hold a leadership position.

Moreover, we never said that Ms. Kersel’s M.A. thesis was published as a book. We put this item in quotations; we did not use italics, as is our style when referring to a book.

We do apologize to Ms. Kersel, however, for elevating her to a professorship. May she soon prove our description accurate.—Ed.

Forgery for Dummies

I have been a subscriber for at least five years. My purpose was to learn about the past. Instead, for the past year I have been fed a steady diet of forgery vs. authentic. All I have learned in the James ossuary and Jehoash tablet controversy is how to become a first-rate forger. Please go back to your mission to inform and get yourself out of the ridiculous fake vs. real debate.

Déjà Vu All Over Again

I am a second-time subscriber to BAR. The first time I dropped my subscription, it was for a very specific reason: The proportion of “dirt archaeology” to “dirty politics” reporting was nearing one to one. This was when the Dead Sea Scrolls were limited to a very small number of scholars. While I appreciated BAR’s advocacy, I did not intend to subscribe to a Biblical archaeology insider’s scandal sheet. I thus lost interest in BAR and spent my time and money on other publications.

We seem to be on the same trajectory once again. The focus this time is the forgery debate, to which a whole section of BAR is now devoted. I appreciate updates and advocacy, but this issue is crowding other items off your pages.

Healing Waters

The Bible’s Healing Snake

In case anyone missed the overlooked reference in Estee Dvorjetski’s article “Healing Waters” (July/August 2004), there is absolutely no reason to seek an exclusively Hellenistic explanation for the Aramaic inscription (illustrated on p.20) featuring an incantation for health, an amulet illuminated with a snake. This pairing occurs in Hebrew Scripture: “And the Lord said to Moses: Make a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole, and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looks at it, will live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived” (Numbers 21:8–9).

A long association, probably going 011back to the early Neolithic period, mingles the notion of preservation or restoration of health with the snake as the protective emblem of well-being. Jews, Greeks and Hellenized Hebrews would have recognized this symbol and its health-giving associations.

The statue on page 21, though obviously of Askelpios, could just as easily serve as a Hellenistic illustration of the Biblical passage above. An emblem such as the caduceus-as-staff refers, not to a specifically and uniquely Greek myth, but to a worldview that is so ancient as to predate the transcription of both the Bible and Greek myths. What, after all, is the caduceus but a “serpent … put … upon a pole”?

It was probably the snake-as-safeguard and defender (of a people) that has Moses demonstrate its appearance as the very first of his pharaonic confrontations: “Moses and Aaron went in to Pharaoh, and they did as the Lord had commanded: and Aaron cast down his rod before Pharaoh, and before his servants, and it became a serpent” (Exodus 7:10). In this passage, as well as in the later incident in Numbers, the snake and the rod are united in a precursor of the sign that became the caduceus, an emblem that to this day adorns places we go to be cured.

Warren’s Shaft

That’s No Well

Regarding Avraham Faust’s “Yes, It Really Was Used to Draw Water” (September/October 2003) and Aryeh Shimron’s “No, It Really Was Not Used to Draw Water” (July/August 2004): Even if a bucket can be lowered straight down Warren’s Shaft, anyone familiar with a well could tell you that Warren’s Shaft was not used as one. Before the first day was out, the menfolk of the City of David would have lowered a boy in a pail to chip away at those protruding walls and make room for a dozen drawropes.

Correction

Several photos of Hammat-Gader in our July/August 2004 issue were credited to the excavator but were taken by the excavation photographer, Zev Radovan. They appeared on pages 22–23, 24 and 27.

Put Up or Shut Up

I will not renew my subscription because there is too much fiction in what is supposed to be a scientific journal. You have referred in your promotional material to: