Queries & Comments

006

A BAR Romance

I started subscribing to BAR in 1991 or 1992. Then in 1998 I met a woman, Dr. Sheila Tanenbaum. On our first tentative date, we happened to discuss Biblical Archaeology Review. BAR proved to be a powerful bond. In October of that year, I canceled my subscription—because Sheila and I started sharing the magazine as husband and wife.

It’s been eight happy years. Our only minor conflict is when BAR arrives: Who gets to read it first?

Enough Is Enough!

I’m so tired of Hershel Shanks. Period. Please cancel my subscription to BAR immediately.

Diversity, Thy Name Is BAR

A Great Magazine

I have just finished reading your July/August issue. From cover to cover, fantastic! The diversity of articles and reviews, the depth of research and the differences of scholarly opinion truly make your magazine one of the “greats”!

BAR Strengthens Her Faith

I just have to tell you that I treasure every copy of BAR. I have been getting it for over six years now and have never been disappointed. I welcome different theories on the Bible. They cause me to open my Bible and let God show me the truth, which, in turn, strengthens my faith. Thanks, BAR.

Know Thine Enemy

As a Christian so conservative I’m off the scale, I nevertheless want to know firsthand what the liberals, atheists and minimalists are saying, and I want to know it from the “horse’s mouth,” not some sensationalized media version. Liberal BAR articles give me mental exercise, forcing me to recheck and prove again—instead of letting me just lazily rehearse—personal paradigms by reading conservative writers. I hope the same can be said of my opposite number, the liberal reader. And guess what? Once in a while I am delighted to find some very useful insight by liberal writers, even if I don’t agree with the entire article.

What Should Hanan Eshel Have Done?

It would be instructive to know the guidelines for purchasing antiquities from those who find them. What should Professor Hanan Eshel, who purchased scroll fragments from Bedouin and is being pursued criminally (“Update” 32:02), have done, according to Israeli law? Inform the authorities first? Purchase it and immediately submit it to whoever is authorized for authentication (the Israel Antiquities Authority?) prior to writing his report? Was paying for the fragments and writing the report (unwittingly authenticating the findings in the process) against the law?

There seems to be no question that rescuing antiquities is, as Jews say, a mitzvah [a good deed], and sooner or later Professor Eshel will be vindicated.

One has to believe that the IAA cares about preserving these antiquities and about disclosing their importance to the world. Or don’t they?

What is, in fact, the law? Hypothetically, were any of us confronted with a situation similar to the one discussed here, what is the legal course of action?

Circumcision

Not So “Clear”

Philip King states that the fragmentary terracotta phallus from Gezer is “clearly circumcised” (“Circumcision—Who Did It, Who Didn’t and Why,” 32:04). We need to tread rather carefully here. The phallus in the ancient world had multiple symbolic uses and interpretations—from fertility to protection against evil to a bringer of happiness and 008prosperity—but in all of these instances it was depicted in its erect state.

In such a state, then as now, the glans on most uncircumcised men is completely bare.

Just because the glans is bare on a phallus—as it is on the Gezer specimen—does not necessarily make it “clearly circumcised.” One could only make such a statement if the penis in question was in its flaccid state. But this would carry no symbolic value, which was paramount in ancient depictions of it.

Another Phallus

Your interesting article on circumcision reminded me of a clay phallus I found last summer while digging in Tell Tzafit (Tell es-Safi/Gath) under the direction of Professor Aren M. Maeir. This I found in Area E of the Late Bronze Age II level in the lower city. It was about 6 inches long and over an inch in diameter, with bare glans, corona and urethra.

This find indicates that the Canaanites of that period, under the hegemony of Egypt, practiced circumcision “the Jewish Way” and not partially “the Egyptian Way” (as suggested by Jack Sasson cited in your article).

It is clear from the Shechem son of Hamor episode (Genesis 34) that the Hivites did not practice circumcision. According to the list of nations in Genesis 10, the Hivites descended from Canaan, the brother of Egypt. If we accept your theory that circumcision was practiced by Egyptians, did the Hivites deviate from the social/ethnic practices of their “fathers”? Or alternatively, as peoples free from Egyptian dominance, did they revert to their old custom in Canaan?

Not a Review

Rami Arav’s “review” (ReViews, 32:03) takes Yizhar Hirschfield’s book [Qumran in Context] as an excuse for presenting Arav’s thoughts on what may be a very interesting topic, but we learn very little about the book he is supposed to be reviewing.

Only a little over a quarter of the “review” refers to Hirschfield’s ideas. There is no treatment of whether this book is readable, interesting, well illustrated or anything else that we would expect. It is, instead, an attack on Hirschfield’s ideas, suitable for an essay somewhere else in your magazine, but not here.

Editor, do your duty and edit; that’s what we rely on you for.

Islam on the temple mount

Unanswered Questions

I enjoyed Moshe Sharon’s article, “Islam on the Temple Mount” in the July/August issue. I had always wanted to 010“see” inside the mosque and learn more of its history.

I still have some questions about the rock itself, though. If this was the location of the Temple, what part did the rock play in its architecture?

Great question. Unfortunately there are no clear answers.—Ed.

Beautiful Pictures, But …

The photography in “Islam on the Temple Mount” was absolutely gorgeous, but how is it possible that an 11-page article on the Dome of the Rock by a professor of Islamic history does not mention the significance of the Dome to Muslims as the site of Muhammad’s traditional nighttime ascension to God, or even the near-sacrifice of Isaac (or Ismail)? Is being successor to Solomon’s temple the real significance of the Dome for Muslims?

Muslim History Ignored

The article on the Temple Mount presents a number of reasons why the Temple Mount was built on the former site of Solomon’s Temple. Though interesting, the author ignores the main reason: According to the Qur’an, Muhammad had dreamed that he ascended to heaven from that very spot.

The author claims that ‘Umar is revered by all Muslims. This is also false, particularly when you consider the attitudes of the Shi’ites. For Shi’ites, particularly Iranians, ‘Umar is not revered. He is somewhat despised because he not only stole the caliphate from its rightful heir, Ali, the Prophet Muhammad’s nephew, but he looted and burned Persepolis and the great library of Persia, which had works written by the Jews and early Christians as well as by Greek philosophers, Alexander the Great and Persian kings.

Even though it was nice to read about the Temple Mount, it would have been more effective had the author presented a more accurate picture.

086

Moshe Sharon responds:

The tradition that Muhammad ascended from the Rock is a tradition that developed after the Dome of the Rock was built in 692. The lengthy Arabic inscription (nearly 800 feet long) in the structure makes no mention of Muhammad’s ascension from the spot.

Indeed, the Qur’an makes no explicit mention of Jerusalem. Sura 17:1 was later interpreted as referring to Jerusalem, but this is by no means clear. The text reads:

Glory be to him, who carried his servant by night from the holy mosque to the furthest mosque the precincts of which we have blessed, that we might show him some of our signs.

(Trans. Arberry)

This verse was interpreted in many ways. Later exegetes interpreted the “furthest mosque” as Jerusalem. The earliest interpreters of the Qur’an, however, were not at all sure about it. Some took it as referring to a mosque or sanctuary in the Hijaz. Others said the Prophet experienced a vision or a dream.

Mitra Raheb claims that ‘Umar is revered only by Sunni Muslims. Unfortunately, the word “Sunni” was dropped from my article in the editorial process. The text should have read “Sunni Islam.” The Shi’ites hate ‘Umar. In many ways, ‘Umar is the anti-Christ of the Sh¬’a. No Shi’i would dream of naming his son ‘Umar.

Evangelicals As Archaeologists

Professor Ronald Hendel (“Is There a Biblical Archaeology?” 32:04) opines “that Biblical archaeology has been mostly abandoned” because “archaeology did not illumine the times and events of Abraham, Moses and Joshua. Rather, it helped to show that these times and events are largely unhistorical.” Hendel claims that the only ones engaged in “Biblical Archaeology in the Albrightian style are fundamentalist and evangelical Biblical scholars.”

Professionally I am an Egyptologist who also teaches Hebrew exegesis and Biblical archaeology. Confessionally I am an evangelical.

I believe Professor Hendel is wrong.

To his critics, Albright’s transgression was to assume that the Biblical period from Abraham through Solomon was historically verifiable by archaeology. Apparently this is Hendel’s idea of Albrightian Biblical archaeology. In other words, Albright presumed the Bible to be innocent (historical) until proven guilty (unhistorical).

Critics like Hendel are themselves doing Albrightian Biblical archaeology but with a twist: They treat the Bible as guilty until proven innocent, that is, unhistorical unless confirmed by archaeology. Scholars in the Copenhagen-Sheffield-Tel Aviv (and now Berkeley?) minimalist axis have been using Biblical archaeology to dismantle the Bible’s historicity. William Dever has called this “anti-Biblical archaeology.”¹ He rightly criticizes these ideologues for using “archaeological data selectively and cavalierly.”²

Ironically, two items in the same issue of BAR as Hendel’s column demonstrate that Biblical archaeology is not just the purview of conservative Biblical scholars like myself.

Michael Coogan (no evangelical he) provides a critical review of Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman’s new book David and Solomon (“Assessing David and Solomon,” 32:04), which is a good example of “anti-Biblical archaeology.” Coogan, like Dever, summarizes their treatment of archaeological data as “highly selective and tendentious.” Coogan demonstrates that “Finkelstein and Silberman consider the Biblical data reliable when they support their reconstruction, but when the Biblical accounts are in conflict with their reconstruction, they judge them as unreliable or simply ignore them.”

The brilliant contribution in the same issue of Thomas Levy and Mohammad Najjar (“Edom and Copper”)—names that will hardly be mistaken for fundamentalist Christians—reflects a balanced approach to Biblical archaeology. Their excavations and Carbon-14 dating demonstrate that Edom was indeed a complex society (or state) in Iron Age I (1200–1000 B.C.) and that copper production was the catalyst for the formation of that society. This conclusion is contrary to the prevailing theory—incidentally, held by Finkelstein and Silberman—that Edom did not become a state until the Iron Age IIB (eighth century B.C.). The late-developing-state theorists, of course, used this erroneous conclusion against the Bible. Since Edom was only a pastoral society in David and Solomon’s time, so they argue, Israel too could only be the same. Consequently the Biblical portrayal of David invading Edom and subjecting it is unhistorical (2 Samuel 8:13–14). The results of the new data from Jordan lead Levy and Najjar to deduce that “the Biblical references to the Edomites, especially their conflicts with David and subsequent kings, garner a new plausibility.”

In the 25 years since William Dever ignited the fruitful debate about Biblical archaeology, we old school Albrightians have moved on, adopted a professional and interdisciplinary approach to field work and have become more cautious in our conclusions and self-critical about our assumptions. Dever concurs with this assessment, declaring “We (Americans) have survived the generation-long crisis over ‘Biblical archaeology,’ and we have now moved beyond it to our own style of professionalism, in the process placing our own new generation of outstanding younger archaeologists (many of them, I’m proud to say, my students)” (“The Western Cultural Tradition Is at Risk,” 32:02). Some of the more outstanding ones I know to be evangelical!

I believe Levy and Najjar’s work in Jordan reflects the state of the art and the direction the discipline is going. I am following this paradigm in my work in Egypt. I don’t know anyone currently engaged in fieldwork in the Near East who is doing the kind of Biblical archaeology that fits the mold into which Hendel wants to squeeze us.

Letters on the Web

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