Queries & Comments

011

Superman Draws Heavy Reader Response—from “Garbage” To “Path-Breaking Contribution”

To the Editor:

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read through this May/June issue of BAR—right after Avinoam Danin’s excellent “Plants As Biblical Metaphors,” I saw the transparent spoof of Biblical archaeology by James K. Brower. I confess to being intellectually outraged! Superman, indeed! I know professionally what color printing costs in dollars, and the close-up of the galgal plant is worth infinitely more to me than a campy superimposition of a cartoon Superman with the Dome of the Rock beneath him!

Maybe Biblical archaeology should not take itself so seriously all the time—maybe the fact that my 47th birthday is near has changed my taste for youthful irreverence—but I insist that the sublime does not need to be printed back-to-back with the ridiculous in a magazine which I try to use as a scholarly resource book! Let Brower play his satirical games in the comic books!

The silver dome below Superman is the mosque of El-Aksa.—Ed.

To the Editor:

I do not like James K. Brower’s “The Hebrew Origins of Superman,” BAR 05:03. It is not funny. It is not clever. It is not satirical. It is an utter waste of paper and ink.

I never expected you to publish anything worse than Woody Allen’s “The Red Sea Scrolls.” But you may have succeeded.

To the Editor:

If James K. Brower wishes to write “Pop” or “High Camp” archaeology articles then let him write for the Village Voice. If this style and unprofessional approach to Biblical archaeology continues in your magazine I’ll discontinue my subscription.

To the Editor:

I protest a “spoof” in a serious magazine. As every computer programmer knows: “Garbage in—garbage out.”

Stick to your subject and try to improve the magazine for the sake of your subscribers. Leave the comics to the humor magazines and college press.

To the Editor:

I’m still chuckling at Superman.

To the Editor:

Thank you for the cunning and charming article by James Brower on Superman. Mr. Brower is to be commended on his painstaking deduction and analysis. However, like most archaeologists, he has had to sift diligently through the sands to discover what he might have realized earlier had he studied the textual evidence. Is not Superman’s family from the well known family of El, the early West Semitic god? And is not Superman himself Kal-El, “All-god” (possibly = all the gods). Can there be any doubt about his true origin?

To the Editor:

I cannot refrain from expressing my surprise and disgust that a scholarly publication found it appropriate to accept for publication a piece called “The Hebrew Origins of Superman,” BAR 05:03. If it is meant to be a serious “scholarly” contribution, I will be glad to be among those who call it silly, nonsensical, unworthy of being printed in BAR—unless the editor 012finds it necessary to inject a bit of a comic section to a publication that, I believe, serves scholars or laymen interested in our past.

To the Editor:

J. K. Brower’s article, “The Hebrew Origins of Superman,” BAR 05:03, really presents nothing new. When I was young, in the years when radio was called wireless, we were convinced that it existed in Biblical times since archaeologists had been unable to find any wire dating from that period. Now we are informed that there were then also phone booths in which Clark Kent could become Superman.

May I add that not only were there phone booths but there were also telephones, behaving exactly as they do today. See, Song of Songs 5:6: karat; v ’en oneh (“Sorry. There’s no answer.”).

To the Editor:

James K. Brower’s article is the most delightful spoof of archaeology I have seen since Robert Nathan’s little 1960 book, The Weans.

Mr. Nathan described the discovery of a civilization, lost for 5,000 years, of people who called their land the WE or US (the term “Weans” coming from the southern part of the continent). At one of their annual celebrations, bombs were exploded and vast quantities of dogs were consumed, but the celebration appears to have died down by mid-twentieth century. The Weans, he said, “left no pyramids, like the Egyptians; no laws, like the Romans; no temples, like the Greeks; no God, like the Jews.”

In a time when archaeological discoveries continually reveal more than we had ever hoped to learn about the past, let us not lose sight of our own fallibility. Maybe those cubicles at Gezer and Megiddo were really phone booths, which would simplify the storeroom/stable dispute; that was the space for the phone relay equipment.

To the Editor:

James K. Brower’s “The Hebrew Origins of Superman,” BAR 05:03, surely represents an imaginative application of Biblical scholarship to an area which had not previously benefited from the novel insights of science. As will happen with path-breaking contributions, however, two points he raises could and should also be considered in the light of alternative hypotheses, equally consistent with the evidence.

a) A likely reason why no telephones were found in the booths at Gezer will immediately occur to anyone who has ever contracted for a telephone in Israel. A wait of the order of some two centuries for the postal authorities to actually install the apparatus seems by no means uncommon; in addition, this explains why no wiring was ever found.

b) As for the name itself, it may well be that the newspaper picture on which Brower based his contention that the letter emblazoned was a samekh, was not too clear. I respectfully suggest a shin standing for either “shefer” (good, desirable, pleasant) or, even more likely, “shofar,” the ram’s horn of alarm and warning. The latter reading is most powerfully supported by the passage in Amos 3:5–6 which may well refer to Superman directly. A consistent translation would, then, read:

“ … would the bird-man fall into a snare on the ground
were he not entrapped
would the trap have sprung up from the soil
had it not been set?”
If “Shofar” were to receive a blow^a in the city
would the people not be affrighted? …

Here you have it all: The birdman, pursued by men of evil for whose welfare the people of the town tremble. Anyone not recognizing our friendly Superman in Amos’ reference to the popular hero utterly fails to comprehend the degree to which this great man from Teqo’a mastered the common man’s imagery of his ancient day.

013

Is Hebrew Written in a Hebrew Script?

To the Editor:

In spite of popular notions about the script now used for Hebrew, it troubles me that it be called anything other than Aramaic in a scholarly journal. Dr. Jonathan Siegel’s article (“The Evolution of Two Hebrew Scripts,” BAR 05:03), by using both terms (Hebrew and Aramaic) fails to firm up the point that Hebrew is written now, as it always has been, in a borrowed script. To call the “square” script Hebrew is like a Finn calling the script in which BAR is printed the Finnish script. Moreover, the Aramaic language and script are still used by a small Christian sect in the Middle East; and the script serves other languages used by Jews Yiddish, Ladino, Judaeo-Arabic, and Judaeo-Persian. Aramaic is the mother of other scripts, including at least three used by Jews for Hebrew, Aramaic, and vernaculars: the rabbinic or “Rashi”; the cursive; and a variant of the “Rashi” script in which High German was printed by Jews even early in this century.

Similarly, Dr. Siegel uses the term “paleo-Hebrew” interchangeably with Phoenician to describe the script which for about fifteen centuries served a group of closely-related languages and dialects not only in Palestine but also in Moab, Phoenicia, and elsewhere. Given the diversity of its users, “paleo-Hebrew” seems so much less apt a term than Phoenician or Canaanitic. To call this older script “paleo-Hebrew” is as misleading as calling it “paleo-Syriac,” “paleo-Jordanian,” or “paleo-Arabic.”

This is especially true because Phoenicians (accompanied, quite likely, by seafarers and traders from the coastal tribes of Israel) diffused the script in colonies along the Mediterranean, implanting it importantly in what now is Tunisia. It was the script used in Carthage and its dependencies for the Canaanitic tongue that arrived as that of Phoenician colonists and remained throughout close to the Hebrew and Canaanitic tongues of the first half of the first millennium B.C.

Dr. Siegel mentions but does not develop the fact that this script seems not only to have enjoyed popularity and wide diffusion among linguistically-related 014though religiously-diverse people, but also was beheld as a symbol of identity by diverse users. As shown in text and illustrations of his article, some Jewish scribes continued to use the pre-Aramaic script for the tetragrammaton to emphasize its holiness, as if Aramaic script was not up to the task. When push came to shove and Jews revolted against alien rule, nativistic traditions pushed the Canaanitic script to the fore and gave it a renaissance on coins and in documents. The same phenomenon occurred in Tunisia in the “neo-Punic” period. As Roman control there receded (beginning about the time the Bar-Kokhba revolt was crushed in Palestine), the mixed population of Phoenicians, Libyans, Berbers (some of whom Judaized) and others who lived in the former Carthaginian realm revived the old script, already abandoned by the Jews of Palestine in favor of Aramaic, and used it widely on diverse monuments. The script Dr. Siegel calls “paleo-Hebrew” did not die out after 135 A.D. except for the Samaritans. It lived on in North Africa for two or three centuries.

To the Editor:

Jonathan P. Siegel states that at a certain point the paleo-Hebrew script was banned by religious law in favor of the Aramaic script.

I would like to see an article going into this enforced changeover in greater depth.

Jonathan Siegel replies:

Mr. Hirsch has—properly I think—drawn attention to the variety of terms employed for the two alphabets in which the Hebrew alphabet has been written during its long history. Contemporary usage among scholars and speakers of Hebrews as well as ancient and medieval sources, show a similar diversity.

The question Mr. Hirsch should ask is: Given the specific text(s) and time(s) mentioned in any paragraph of my article, was the usage correct in that context? I think so.

As to the fate of the paleo-Hebrew script after 135 A.D. Mr. Hirsch is quite correct. The sentence in question should have read “The older paleo-Hebrew script died out entirely (except for the Samaritans) in Palestine.” (I trust that this usage is accurate; if not popular).

Mr. Rabin’s communication misconstrues my argument. There was no “enforced changeover” in script. There was a changeover, and only then could the religious law be enforced.

Carl Sagan on Painful Birth in Humans and Animals

“In Pain Shalt Thou Bring Forth Children,” BAR 05:01, reported on the relationship between painful childbirth and the evolution of a distinctly human brain, a relationship recapitulated in the Genesis story, according to Carl Sagan, author of the Pulitzer-Prize-winning book Dragons of 062Eden—Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence.

Sagan claims that birthing is generally painful in only one of the millions of animal species on earth: human beings. Several readers questioned this statement and we asked Sagan for a response. Unfortunately his response did not arrive in time to print with the readers’ letters which appeared in the May/June issue (Queries & Comments, BAR 05:03).

Professor Sagan’s response is printed below together with another reader’s letter raising the issue.—Ed.

To the Editor:

“In Pain Shalt Thou Bring Forth Children,” BAR 05:01. Some authors need to spend some time on the farm. Surely Carl Sagan has never watched a cow give birth, or a bitch whelp. The sounds of distress emitted by a cow while calving are obviously caused by pain. When our bitch gnawed the side out of her box while whelping I just happened to believe she was in pain. The degree of pain suffered by women may be greater than that experienced by females of other species, but what I assume is pain has been present to some degree in all births I have witnessed.

Besides Sagan’s inaccuracy in referring to all forms of bringing forth young as “childbearing” there are some rather questionable conclusions in the article drawn from the Biblical text. To suggest that there is some connection between Eve’s pain in childbearing because she ate fruit from the tree of knowledge and the pain involved in human births due to the larger skull necessitated by the evolution of human intelligence is so imaginative that it strains credibility. Won’t you also have to say that everything else in the story that resulted from eating the forbidden fruit is related to the increase of man’s knowledge, and by implication also corresponds to the evolution of human intelligence? If the ancient writer was actually saying that all of these ills required from Adam and Eve having their eyes opened then he tended to be a subjective idealist long before Berkeley.

The only result that came from eating of the forbidden fruit that directly affected Adam and Eve’s knowledge was that they knew that they were naked. One way of interpreting this passage is to recognize a bit of satire in it: “One does not become wise by eating fruit” (Samuel Sandmel, The Enjoyment of Scripture, p. 74). Later, the quality of their wisdom was again embarrassingly exposed when they thought they could hide from God. Too bad that we have no evolutionary evidence of smaller heads corresponding to the Genesis commentary on man’s acquisition of wisdom and intelligence.

Carl Sagan replies:

I had not seen the Biblical Archaeology Review before and was very pleased with it; I greatly admired your editorial on the suppression of the Ebla tablets. I would very much appreciate it if you could enter a subscription for me. Now, in answer to your readers’ letters:

In species such as cows, horses, cats, and dogs which have been domesticated and subjected to long periods of artificial selection, very substantial differences in stature may result. The pain at birth in domestic animals seems largely attributable to such differences in parental stature.

There are, of course, some differences in stature in human beings, but until very modern times parental statures tended to he very similar. The parallelism in the paleontological record between the growth of the human braincase and the growth of the human pelvis make it very likely that the former caused the latter, as described in The Dragons of Eden. That the pain of human childbirth is in a sense connected with our intelligence seems therefore to be a plausible hypothesis. I was not using science to validate Scripture or the other way around. But if a concordance exists between the two I believe it is worth pointing out; there are so many cases which point in the opposite direction.

Incidentally, the unpleasantness between Cain and Abel surely came after, not before, the expulsion from Eden.

063

Mount Tabor and the Transfiguration

To the Editor:

Greatly appreciated “Saving the Mt. Sinai Mosaics,” BAR 04:04. However there is one question that I would appreciate your answering.

I am under the impression that recent diggings, early 1970’s, have now cast some doubts on the belief that Mount Tabor was the Mount of the Transfiguration. I read that as a result of these explorations, it has been determined that there was a village or villages on Tabor at the time, and that it is now believed that Mount Hermon was the place of the Transfiguration. Please comment.

Thank you for an exciting publication.

Vassilios Tzaferis of the Israel Department of Antiquities replies:

Mount Tabor as the place of the Transfiguration is not sited at all in the Gospels. Both Matthew (17:1) and Mark (9:2) only mention a “high mountain” without referring to its local name, while Luke (9:28) simply says “mountain,” again without mentioning its real name.

Only in later Christian traditions and in Patristic literature is Mount Tabor connected with the place of the Transfiguration. The earliest reference to Mount Tabor is found in 064apocryphal literature of the second century A.D., and later in the writings of Origen in the third century. The association of Mount Tabor was accepted by the early Christians, and by the fifth to sixth centuries it was regarded as a holy place and also became an Episcopate.

I am not acquainted with any excavations on Mount Tabor, except in the sector belonging to the Franciscans, where excavations revealed remains of a Byzantine church. However, literary sources reveal that during the Hellenistic period and up until the first century A.D., on Mount Tabor was situated either a city, or a fortress. The existence of any form of settlement on Mount Tabor does not contradict the writings of the Gospels, for in neither Gospel account is there any allusion to the Mount of Transfiguration as being occupied or unoccupied.

Plants as Biblical Metaphors

To the Editor:

It is my opinion that the article “Plants as Biblical Metaphors,” BAR 05:03, was the most interesting article in the May/June issue. I would like to see it become a regular feature in BAR. Would you consider it?

The reference to Psalm 83:14 should have read Psalm 83:13.

Although the King’s James Version of the Bible has the word stubble (galgal) in Psalm 83:13, the Hebrew has it in 83:14.—Ed.

The Prophets as Revolutionaries

To the Editor:

As a charter subscriber to BAR, I continue to be impressed with the consistently high quality of your magazine. But one matter bothers me about the last (May/June) issue.

Yours is an archaeological journal. Why should readers pay $16.00 a year for articles which have little or no direct bearing on archaeology as a discipline? Specifically, Martin Cohen’s fine article, “The Prophets as Revolutionaries,” BAR 05:03, really belongs in a journal of Bible or religion, not one on archaeology.

Your inclusion of Jossi Stern’s beautiful drawings of the prophets do not justify the inclusion of Cohen’s sociopolitical discussion. What specific archaeological data does Cohen interact with?

What is BAR’s editorial policy about including articles tangential to archaeology? Is “archaeology” defined by BAR in its broadest sense—the study of ancient things? If the latter, will there be more articles like Cohen’s in the future?

We do indeed define Biblical archaeology broadly—especially when we see stimulating scholarship we think our readers will find of interest.—Ed.

065

To the Editor:

Mr. Martin A. Cohen’s article on “The Prophets as Revolutionaries,” BAR 05:03, was fascinating. I was impressed with the structure of the article and the steps he took in reaching his conclusions.

066

To the Editor:

In regard to your article, “Who are BAR Readers?” BAR 05:03, I do not seem to fit in any of the categories in your survey. I am not a college graduate, but a two-year Bible School graduate. I am not well traveled and I cannot afford to spend more than $20–25 a year on books.

However, I do thoroughly enjoy your magazine. I especially enjoyed the May/June issue and two articles in it in particular—“Plants as Biblical Metaphors,” BAR 05:03, and “The Hebrew Origins of Superman,” BAR 05:03. Perhaps Mr. Brower could write a spoof on “Star Wars”?!

I have taught Sunday School classes and Bible Study classes for most of my adult life and I anticipate using some of the material in your magazine in the future.

To the Editor:

May I congratulate you on the excellent botanical article “Plants as Biblical Metaphors,” BAR 05:03, with the very fine photographs accompanying it. I hope there will be more of its kind soon.

Upon reading “Who Are BAR Readers?” BAR 05:03, I found myself taking a survey too. The statistics—to me—proved to be enlightening. Being a white, Protestant, middle class female has put me almost consistently in the majority of statistics, some good, some bad. However, according to this article, not only am I a distinct minority as a reader of your magazine, but near the bottom of the scale.

I found the compilation of the following data—based on your article—to be an amusing evaluation of myself: not unusually educated, neither went to nor graduated from college, not employed as a professional, (am a private music instructor and an amateur musical performer specializing in classical and sacred music), married and living in our present home for more than 10 years in an insignificant village of approximately 6,000—25 miles from a major city. I hold membership in a church and attend regularly, consider myself to be both fundamentalist and evangelical—a new statistic?—rarely 067travel and then not over 200 miles. Then I hit the jackpot! I really do read a lot and purchase over $50 a year on books.

Your publication is excellent and I use it in the textbook category. I understand all the words and references in spite of my lack of higher learning, and feel that the persons who find it too simplistic may be trying to save themselves the price of buying information they seek, which is printed and sold at a considerably higher cost.

I like it! The theological and intellectual differences of opinion in the letters to the Editor are interesting to read, but show definite bias and a tendency to ‘nit-pick’.

Keep them coming, I’m learning a whole new language and find it exciting. Incidentally, I’m over 50; neither too young to understand nor too old to learn. There must be quite a few of us who have IQ’s over 105 who did not have the opportunity to further our education.

011

Notice to All Dig Directors

Although most of you are probably just unpacking from this summer’s dig, BAR wants to remind you to send us information about your 1980 season no later than December 15.

In the March/April issue next spring, as in years past, BAR will feature a round-up of 1980 summer digs in the Near East. We would like this service article to be as complete as possible, especially for digs open to volunteers. So send us information describing your dig and how volunteers may apply. Please include all printed material initially sent to interested volunteers. We are also interested in pictures of recent finds and people at work on the site. Send material by December 15 to:

BAR 1737 H St., N.W. Washington, D.C. 20006

013

Esquire Says Opinion Maker Teddy White Is “Fascinated” by BAR

The cover story featured in the June 5, 1979 issue of Esquire magazine explores the question of “Where Opinion Makers Get Their Opinions.” The author interviewed some of the country’s leading opinion makers, people whose writing is “fully packed with evidence and insights that derive from the evidence.”

The thrust of the Esquire article is that there are still magazines out there which print “real information”: “There are publications that actually print stuff—hard fact, tough comment, data that extends our vision past the mirror and that makes us well-informed people.”

Among those interviewed by Esquire is Theodore H. (Teddy) White, author of The Making of the President series and the recent best-seller In Search of History (Harper & Row, 1978).

Included in the list of magazines read by opinion maker White is Biblical Archaeology Review. He is “fascinated” by BAR, according to the Esquire story. “It gives the latest news on all the excavations in the Holy Land,” says White.

064

Report from the BAR Tour Director—Last June in Israel

By Lorna T. Zimmerman

“Serendipity”—the dictionary says that’s the faculty for making desirable discoveries by accident. If that’s it, then BAR Tours seem to have serendipity in abundance.

Last June in Israel we began to expect the unexpected. It started the first day at the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem. By chance we met a young, enthusiastic anthropologist who asked us, “While you’re here, would you like to see the Dead Sea Scrolls?” Moments later we entered the vaults where 2000 year old scroll fragments, hidden from public view, lay on tables ready for study by scholars from all over the world.

A few days later, at Herodium, Herod’s cone-shaped, desert fortress, Ehud Netzer, our archaeologist-guide invited our small group to crawl through the maze of tunnels beneath Herod’s palace. Not often open to visitors, the tunnels were the hideout of Bar-Kochba’s followers who were trying to elude their Roman pursuers in the second century A.D.

The November/December issue of BAR was the key to an unplanned adventure which occurred at Saint Catherine’s monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai. That issue contained color illustrations of the remarkable mosaics in the church apse, seldom seen by tourists. We showed this issue to Archbishop Dionysios who was so delighted that he agreed to allow us to see the originals. Slowly he opened the ornate iconostasis, the screen separating the apse from the central aisle of the church, to reveal to the group the remarkably preserved Transfiguration scene, glowing in the dome of the apse. Above it were the scenes of Moses before the Burning Bush and Moses receiving the Tablets of the Law.

The success of the June tour, as for all BAR tours, was a joint responsibility of experts,—field archaeologists, lecturers, guides (Mati, Avraham and Joe)—enthusiastic participants, and myself.

The words of the participants themselves best describe the tour: “Going to the top of Masada … Seeing in our mind’s eye the buildings they lived in … Getting just a tiny inkling of what it was to live so long ago. This was not the typical “bus tour”—but the best kind of tour.” Another participant described the group as “cooperative, sensitive to each other, positive, daring and varied”—again not your usual tour!

Superman Draws Heavy Reader Response—from “Garbage” To “Path-Breaking Contribution”

To the Editor: