Queries & Comments

008

For the Trash Heap

Although I side with Eric Meyers regarding his call for your magazine to stop publishing articles on unprovenanced artifacts (First Person, March/April 2005), I won’t argue whether he is right or wrong. I just want to let you know that your response was absolutely unprofessional, spiteful and disturbing. I have never read such an unbridled, vicious outburst in my life, especially from a source that is supposed to maintain a reputation for credibility and objectivity. It read like a temperamental child angry over something his classmate said.

I am a graduate student and purchased my first BAR this morning with the intention of reading through it to consider adding it to my list of subscriptions. If this is the sort of crap that you’re publishing, however, it will be my privilege to toss this asinine garbage in the trash and forget that I ever heard of you.

As Important As Our DSS Victory

It’s way past time that I thank you for BAR! Today I’m thanking you in particular for your campaign for improved handling of unprovenanced materials. It’s at least as important as your great Dead Sea Scrolls victory.

Divination

Cars and Cuneiform

I recently took my car to a local body shop for repairs. While in the waiting area, I read my latest issue of BAR.

I had the issue open to the very interesting article on “Divination in Ancient Babylonia” (March/April 2005). What caught the eye of one of the employees, however, were the pictures from Mesopotamia and the cuneiform tablets. “That’s my country! What do you know about my country?” he exclaimed. He excitedly reviewed the photographs and was pleased to know that from your magazine I “knew” so much about his heritage (he is Assyrian).

Five of his family soon appeared (they own the body shop). I was given the grand tour of their offices, where they proudly display replicas of tablets and stela on their walls. They are part of an Assyrian enclave of immigrants in our San Jose area.

Our exchange resulted in some great repair for my “chariot”—and my promise to provide them a subscription to BAR.

Annual Meetings

In Defense of Evangelical Scholars

I would like to express my appreciation to Hershel Shanks on the stand he has taken numerous times [most recently in 010“Roundup of Annual Meetings,” March/April 2005—Ed.] on the abilities and academic credibility of evangelical scholars. Mr. Shanks is one of the few people I have heard to acknowledge that bias is not limited to evangelicals but rather affects (not infects) scholars from every religious and philosophical background. I have studied in both seminary and religious studies contexts and have found no difference in the level of scholarship. As an evangelical minister and a would-be academic, I would hate to think that my ideas would be discounted simply because I belong to the wrong group. I hope that the academic world begins to hear people like Mr. Shanks who are exposing the unfair prejudice against people with religious beliefs.

Fluoride Proves Nothing

Uzi Dahari claims that some artifacts are fake because they contain fluoride (“Roundup of Annual Meetings,” March/April 2005, p. 47). Wouldn’t a simple explanation be that whoever discovered or later displayed this bullae would have washed the dirt off of it using tap water? Evidence of fluoride cannot so easily dismiss the authenticity of an article.

In fact, I would suspect that given the presence of fluoride in the water systems of Israel over recent years, fluoride has now filtered into the ground water and that even “in situ” finds in certain areas of the land will show similar evidence in the coming years. We well know of this problem—the pervasiveness of chemicals used in the cleaning and manufacturing of computer chips some 30 years ago—in our area of Silicon Valley as these chemicals are now found in the ground water affecting hundreds of acres.

Controversies

Can’t Get Enough

I love your magazine! You can’t print too much on the James ossuary for me.

Not Interested in the Bickering

I do not subscribe to BAR in order to follow your feud with Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). I understand that you have a point and that the IAA continues in its firm tradition as self-important bureaucrats. I understand that you and the American Schools of Oriental Research have differences over unprovenanced artifacts. The “James ossuary” was good for a major article and perhaps a page or two follow-up on the debate. But enough is enough.

Keep Up the Coverage

Oded Golan and company indicted by the Israel Antiquities Authority is important subject matter deserving coverage. 012Opposition to your coverage of the James ossuary inscription be hanged. The forgery indictment is devilishly, confoundedly interesting. Some mystery—forgery or not? That’s why half of the world’s readers consume crime stories like candy.

We Want the Truth

I have just read through the March/April 2005 issue. Interesting, fantastic and entertaining to boot. Thank you for all your work and for your search for the truth regarding artifacts from the antiquities market. I think you will ultimately win the war for the study of unprovenanced artifacts. Don’t give up. I do not understand people who cancel subscriptions because they think this is all gossip or wasted space or non-meat or garbage. We want to know what the truth of the matter is: We want to know if they are forgeries or if they are real.

Potpourri

Blocked From Publishing

Avigdor Hurowitz of Ben-Gurion University [quoted by Hershel Shanks in First Person, January/February 2005—Ed.] makes the odd argument that no one prevents any researcher from investigating and, presumably, publishing on the Jehoash inscription. Is he serious? No doubt he will succeed in fooling some readers, especially those who have nothing to do with scholarly research.

Aside from the fact that North-West Semitic epigraphy is not his specialty—he being in Akkadian studies—Hurowitz’s argument is false. For what is the point of spending months of work on a research project, only to be told by a scholarly journal that, since the inscription has been officially pronounced a forgery, there is no point in even considering the research for publication?

That is exactly what happened in my case. After completing my research, I offered to submit it to a well-known scholarly journal. The editor, having first consulted with his co-editors, gave the above-mentioned excuse for declining even to read the research.

Of course I had other good options 060open to me for publication and my study of the Jehoash inscription has finally appeared in Ugarit Forschungen No. 35.

I do not dabble in Assyriology. Why should Hurowitz and others presume to pass an official verdict on an important matter outside their areas of expertise? [Prof. Hurowitz served on the Israel Antiquities Authority committee that declared the Jehoash Tablet and James ossuary inscriptions to be modern-day forgeries.—Ed.] Can there be anything more fake than that?

A Great Guide

I am a longtime reader of BAR and have enjoyed the many fine articles over the years. What a delight to open the May/June 2005 issue and read about the upcoming Israel and Jordan Great Archaeological Sites tour and to see that it will be lead by Amnon Wallenstein, indeed “one of Israel’s most informed and seasoned tour guides and teachers.”

It was my privilege to work with Amnon on several tours to Israel over past years and to have become acquainted with him and his vast Biblical and archaeological knowledge. I know that those fortunate enough to be able to join him on this tour will be greatly rewarded for their time and effort to make the trip.

We thank Rev. Rohrer for his kind comments. Anyone interested in the tour to Israel and Jordan (October 17 to November 3) should call 1–800-221–4644, ext 208.

Are Christians Exempt from the Sabbath?

Evangelical Christians defend the display of the Ten Commandments in a courthouse.

I wonder by what reasoning Christians are nevertheless relieved of obeying the Fourth Commandment, to “remember” and “observe” the Sabbath?

I also wonder if this same reasoning would release us from the prohibition against adultery?

Samuele Bacchiochhi responds:

The common historical answer given by Catholics and most Protestants is that the Sabbath commandment enjoins rest and worship one day of seven but not necessarily on the seventh day. Consequently by resting and worshiping on Sunday, Christians are fulfilling the intent of the Fourth Commandment. This argument was developed during the Middle Ages, especially by Thomas Aquinas, to justify the change from Saturday to Sunday.

I have investigated this change in my doctoral dissertation. My research indicates that the change from Saturday to Sunday began in the early part of the second century, when Emperor Hadrian in 135 A.D. promulgated very repressive anti-Jewish legislation. The emperor outlawed the practice of the Jewish religion in general and Sabbath-keeping in particular. To avoid this Hadrianic legislation, some Gentile Christians followed the lead of the Bishop of Rome by adopting the Day of the Sun, instead of the Sabbath, in order to show separation from the Jews and identification with Roman society.

The principle that the Fourth Commandment consists of observing one day in seven, rather than the seventh day, was used to create an arbitrary distinction between a moral and a ceremonial aspect within the Fourth Commandment. The actual specification of the seventh day is supposed to be ceremonial, that is, given by Moses to the Jews to teach them about the spiritual rest to be manifested in Christ. But the principle of one day in seven is supposed to be moral, that is, given by God to mankind at creation. Christ allegedly annulled the ceremonial aspect of the Sabbath commandment, that is the specification of the seventh day, while He reaffirmed the moral aspect of it, that is the principle of one day in seven.

In scripture the notion of one day in seven is absent. Both at creation and in the Sabbath commandment God specifies “the seventh day” (Genesis 2:2–3; Exodus 20:8–11) and not one day in seven. The reason given is that God has specifically chosen the seventh day to memorialize his creative (Exodus 20:11) and redemptive activities (Deuteronomy 5:15).

Samuele Bacchiochhi, professor emeritus of theology and church history at Andrews University, is the author of From Sabbath to Sunday: A Historical Investigation of the Rise of Sunday Observance in Early Christianity (Rome: Pontificia Universitas Gregoriana, 1971).

For the Trash Heap