Queries & Comments
008
BAR Enhances Teaching
Thank you for BAR. I have been teaching a series of lessons I call “Know the Bible from a Hole in the Ground” using archaeological evidence, as well as other disciplines. Your publication has been very valuable.
Oak Grove Baptist Church
Adairsville, Georgia
A Letter About Letters
The letters in BAR are too small. Why don’t you use the margins to make the letters bigger so I don’t have to use a magnifying glass to read them? I have all the issues from the beginning [40 years], and the reading is getting harder as time goes by.
by email
That’s happening to me too. I’m 84. How old are you?—Ed.
Ancient Scribbles
Why Buy Mice?
Re: Ada Yardeni, “2,000 Ancient Aramaic Business Scribbles” (BAR 40:05).
Why in the world would anyone order 30 mice, presuming they were alive and in a cage? This has to have a story behind it. Perhaps some snake charmer or dancer ran out of food for their acting companion. Maybe a grain seller wanted to plant the mice in a rival’s granary. It could happen! With so much raw food and grain around you’d think there would be a plethora of mice. Were there mad scientists at that time too?
What a wonderful, wacky find. I look forward to my BAR, and read it from cover to cover! Thanks for this priceless article.
Sequim, Washington
Ada Yardeni responds:
The word I have translated “mice” (`kbrn [
Professional Scribes Don’t Scribble
Ada Yardeni has noted an error in the title of her article (“2,000 Ancient Aramaic Business Scribbles,” BAR 40:05) we gave to the collection of Aramaic ostraca, many of which she is editing and publishing. “They are not scribbles,” she protests. “They were written by professional scribes as part of the Persian accountancy system.”
We did not intend to malign these scribes. We regret the error.—Ed.
Jews in Christian Jerusalem
Apologies to Eudocia
As any first-year art history student knows (or should know), the image at the bottom of page 32 of the September/October 2014 issue is not Eudocia but Theodora, wife of the emperor Justinian (“After Hadrian’s Banishment: Jews in Christian Jerusalem”). It is a detail from a large dedicatory and processional choir mosaic of Theodora and her entourage opposite a parallel one of her husband and his entourage in the sixth century church of San Vitale in Ravenna. There may somewhere be a mosaic representation of Eudocia, but this isn’t it.
Woodland park, Colorado
Jean Garren is correct.—Ed.
009 010
From the Roman Viewpoint, Jews and Christians Were Pagans
It’s amusing, and a little disheartening, that you call the Romans who controlled Jerusalem (and nearly all of the known world) “overwhelmingly pagan.” I wonder what the Romans would think of that pejorative description with its connotations of error and false gods. Undoubtedly, they thought of the Jews, and later the Christians, as the real pagans.
Seattle, Washington
We Didn’t Miss the Boat
In “Jews in Christian Jerusalem” you translated the Latin inscription DOMINÉ IVIMUS, as “Lord, we have come” (p. 31). IVI is the perfect form of EO, which is translated “go.” So the sentence should read, “Lord, we have gone.” That may explain why the boat appears empty.
Coupeville, Washington
I showed this letter to an expert in church Latin and he agreed with Marilyn Bryant.
I then sought the reaction of Leah di Segni. As noted at the foot of the first page of the BAR article, it was adapted from a lengthy scholarly article in Liber Annuus by Leah di Segni and Yoram Tsafrir who had read the adaptation which was thereafter published in BAR with their permission. In my adaptation of their scholarly article in Liber Annuus, I had taken the translation they had used. Where had they gotten their translation?
Leah di Segni explained to me that they had taken their translation from the Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae Palaestinae, vol. I, part 2, no. 787. The prominent German scholar Werner Eck was responsible for this entry. By now this book has become canonical for inscriptions from Jerusalem, but this translation had been the accepted one even before Eck adopted it.
Eck explains that this inscription may have been inspired by Psalm 122:1 (“Let us GO to the house of the Lord”). Di Segni adds: The context of the quotation obviously requires the verb, in the future (ibimus), to be translated “let us GO.”
Most important, di Segni wrote me, this graffito was probably inscribed by a western pilgrim in Constantine’s time. This is fourth-century Latin, not Cicero. Has Ms. Bryant ever read, for instance, the Itinerarium of Egeria, the fourth-century pilgrim from southern France or northern Spain or other Latin texts of this period and later, not written by intellectuals like Jerome who sticks to classical Latin? Has she ever studied Latin inscriptions of this period inscribed by common people? In my work I constantly meet this kind of Latin (and the parallel kind of Greek). One needs to put aside Cicero and Thucidides and apply some plebeian good sense if one wants to understand them.—Ed.
JPFs
Figurines Protect Food and Family
Re: Robert Deutsch, “JPFs: More Questions than Answers,” BAR 40:05.
As a physician, I would describe JPFs as well developed and well nourished.
Physiologically, breasts are for feeding infants. A woman cannot produce enough milk unless she is well fed. In Oriental societies, the fat person is respected, because he has the resources to eat as much as he wants. In traditional societies, men eat first; women and children get the leftovers. To have fat women and healthy children means everyone has enough to eat.
These figurines are most likely magical devices to protect food stores from vermin and rot and through sympathetic magic keep the family fed and healthy. Sounds like something for which the teraphim should be responsible.
As for the two different faces, the ones with the less realistic are likely for religious conservatives who want to avoid graven images.
Kailua, Hawaii
Love Your Neighbor
Love Only the Israelites
Author Richard Elliott Friedman (“Love Your Neighbor: Only Israelites or Everyone?” BAR 40:05) may have overlooked Deuteronomy’s 7:1–6, 20:10–18, 6:10–12 in which Yahweh explicitly promotes conquest, genocide, slavery and land grabs.
These passages strongly suggest that the neighbors to be loved are Israelites only.
Twin Falls, Idaho
Richard Elliott Friedman responds:
Not overlooked, the dispossession of the Canaanites is discussed in the article (p. 50). As noted there, it never happened. And, as I explained in the Exodus Conference video, cited there, the conquest laws and stories were composed to explain the arrival of millions from a mass exodus—which had come to be accepted when in fact only Levites had experienced the exodus. The command to destroy the 070 Canaanites in Deuteronomy 7, and its fulfillment in Joshua, are typical ancient Near Eastern claims in such accounts: The first two archaeological mentions of Israel, in the Egyptian Merneptah and Moabite Mesha inscriptions, claim that they destroyed Israel! Likewise, Israel’s claim to have destroyed a Canaanite population was a one-time, never happened account about the past. They had no commandment ever to do that again. Thus the passage in Deuteronomy 20 distinguishes between those original conquered cities and all other wars. In future wars Israel must offer the other side a chance to make peace and become tributary first—no genocide, no slavery, no land grab. Even the captured females from a city that declines to make peace can’t be treated as slaves (v. 14). These passages don’t contradict the commandment to love neighbors and aliens as oneself.
Who Is Your New Testament Neighbor?
Re: Richard Elliott Friedman’s article “Love Your Neighbor.”
Leviticus 19:18 (“Love your neighbor as yourself”) is also an important verse for Christians. Jesus quotes it in Mark 12:31 with the parallels in Matthew 22:39 and Luke 10:27. Paul uses it twice, in Galatians and Romans, and it is found in the Epistle of James as well. Jesus’ pairing Leviticus with the injunction to love God creates the Summary of the Law which is very well known to Anglican/Episcopalian Christians from its prominent place in the Book of Common Prayer.
It was refreshing to see that the preponderance of citations state that everyone is included in the word “neighbor.” However I am aware that it is not a unanimous decision, as Friedman points out, for example in the Yahwist (J) sources [in the Documentary Hypothesis]. Clearly it was an issue, given that the first-century lawyer asked Jesus the question (and Maimonides commented on it in the 12th century C.E.).
Christ Church (Episcopal)
Riverton, New Jersey
071 072
To See or Not To See
Ancient Mummified Bodies Aren’t Sacrosanct
Your story in Strata titled “To See or Not to See” (BAR 40:05) raises the question of whether mummified bodies should be exposed photographically in museum exhibits.
The dead are gone. They don’t know or care. The people who laid these mummies to rest are no longer with us either. There is no one left to insult.
In short, these mummified bodies are about as “sacrosanct” as the moths on your windshield.
I certainly hope that someone finds my remains fascinating 3,000 years from now.
Salome, Arizona
Displaying Human Remains Constitutes a Freak Show
In the 1970s my father took me to the British Museum. I can remember nothing of the experience except being enthralled by the desiccated corpse of an ancient Egyptian who died in the desert. Thirty years later I revisited the museum and wondered if this poor man was still on exhibit. Walking into an otherwise empty Egyptian hall, I saw a cluster of schoolboys round a glass case and instantly knew that he was. How old does a body have to be before it ceases to be a person and becomes an artifact? I think human remains should be given a respectful burial—not put on display in a freak show.
Birmingham, England
Herod’s Death/Jesus’ Birth
There’s More Evidence from Josephus
In the letter to the editor in BAR September/October 2014, Jeffrey Chadwick gives the argument for the death of Herod in 4 B.C. [used for determining the date of Jesus’ birth]. For over a century, this has been part of the standard reasoning for the 4 B.C. of Jesus’ birth. However, it does not come to grips with all of the data from Josephus. Elsewhere I have written about this. [An excerpt by Professor Steinmann can be found on our website at www.biblicalarchaeology.org/deathofherod.—Ed.]
One cannot simply and positively assert that a few short statements by Josephus about the lengths of reigns of his sons can be used to prove that Herod died in 4 B.C. Instead, one needs critically to sift through all of the evidence embedded in Josephus’s discussion as well as evidence external to Josephus to make a case for the year of Herod’s death.
Distinguished Professor of Theology and Hebrew
University Marshal
Concordia University Chicago
Chicago, Illinois
The OS BACULUM
Was Eve Created from Adam’s Rib or Something Else of Adam’s?
In your May/June 2014 issue, Mary Joan Winn Leith writes in her review of Ziony Zevit, What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden?1
Many of Zevit’s word choices and interpretive suggestions would be familiar to Biblical scholars, but this book includes one new idea that many, including this reviewer, have found persuasive. He points out that “rib” is actually only a guess for the meaning of the unusual Hebrew word, ṣela‘. In a tour de force of zoology, physiology and linguistics, Zevit plausibly contends that Hawwa [Eve] was constructed from Adam’s penis bone (part of his argument is that the story explains why human males differ from many mammals in not having one).
Zevit’s argument may be persuasive, but it is not new at all. Thirty years before him, the late Alan Dundes (1934–2005), who was a professor of folklore and anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, published an article.2 He associates the myth of the 073 “creation of the first woman from man’s rib” with the couvade ritual in which the father experiences some of the conditions of the mother’s pregnancy, sometimes referred to as “sympathetic pregnancy.” After a comprehensive discussion he concludes that:
There is some evidence to demonstrate conclusively that Eve is created from Adam’s penis, and I am not referring to arguing from analogy with a Greek myth in which Aphrodite is created from the severed phallus of Uranus. For one thing, the human phallus, unlike the phalluses of his primate relatives, does not have a bone! Man is missing the os baculum. This feature of human anatomy could easily have been noticed by early man and certainly by societies that slaughtered game or domestic animals. Rodents, insectivores and carnivores do not have the os baculum. Dogs, for example, have it. Consequently, it would be a simple enough empirical observation for men to notice that the human male lacked a bone in this important area of the body.
Thirty years is a long period to be “hidden knowledge” in our modern times. I guess modesty has its consequences.
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
Committee on Folklore
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Did Cain Get Away With Murder?
Convict Cain of First-Degree Murder
Attorney Deborah Srour’s defense of Cain (Queries and Comments, “Attorney for the Defense,” BAR 40:05) falls short. Consider:
Cain lured Abel away from his parents, to a solitary place. That is premeditation.
Cain was angry and jealous enough to kill. That is motive.
Cain and Abel were in a field full of weapons—rocks. That is opportunity.
Cain hid the body and then denied the action before God (under oath); therefore Cain was aware of the consequences of his actions.
There can be only one just verdict: first-degree murder!
Los Angeles, California
In What Sense Was Abel Vain?
In her incisive legal analysis of the Cain-Abel encounter, Deborah Srour writes that since the name “Abel” means “Vanity,” Abel was vain and may have said or done something to antagonize Cain. I have always understood “vanity” in this context not in our familiar sense of conceit, egotism or narcissism, but in the archaic sense 074 of “emptiness, something evanescent or transitory,” which would be an apt characterization of Abel’s life.
Stevens Point, Wisconsin
Former Associate Chair of the Dept. of Religion
Claremont Graduate School, California
Correction
In “In History” (Strata, BAR 40:05), we indicate that the aviary at Tel Rehov was found in September 2007. This is incorrect. It was found in July. Moreover, credit for the find should have been given to the Tel Rehov Expedition, The Hebrew University (Amihai Mazar).—Ed.
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