Queries & Comments
006
BAR Presses Still Roll
I have been a subscriber for more than 20 years and just want to say thanks to all the staff for keeping the presses rolling when so many others have thrown in the towel.
Olathe, Kansas
We’re trying! Thanks for your support.—Editorial Staff
More Menorahs
Zany Zebra
Re: Your comment on the zebra with the menorah on the side (Strata: “Meanwhile in Africa …” BAR 38:03): I’m glad to see that BAR has a sense of humor!
Phoenix, Arizona
A Smoking Menorah
Thank you for the lovely photo of the “seven-branched menorah on the zebra’s side.” But unless I’m miscounting, it’s a nine-branched menorah. It’s beautiful, nevertheless, with the trails of smoke floating away from the extinguished lamps. I hope the picture hasn’t been photo-shopped.
Spring Valley, California
Holy Zebra!
Whoever wrote the text for the photo of the zebra with the beautiful menorah stripes needs to adjust his glasses and recount the number of candlesticks in the zebra menorah. There are nine candlesticks, not seven, so I guess this zebra celebrates Hanukkah year-round!
Cumming, Georgia
The menorah celebrating the eight-day Jewish festival of Hanukkah has eight stems, plus one for the candle used to light the others.—Ed.
A Zebrew?
I loved the image of the “Jewbra” or “Zebrew” on page 18 of the May/June issue. Sadly, it was too good to be true. It bears an improbable likeness to the photo in “Zebra in Grassland,” without a menorah at http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-4472396-zebra-in-grassland.php
Maybe it should have been in the April edition!
Comfort, Texas
Yes, it has apparently been digitally manipulated. A number of people have written us who are more computer-literate than we are.—Ed.
What’s the Oldest Hebrew Inscription?
Script and Language
Coming from a long-time reader: “What’s the Oldest Hebrew Inscription?” (BAR 38:03) was one of your best articles ever. I really appreciated how author Christopher Rollston presented the case for and against each candidate inscription. Being a computer programmer and not a linguist, it had never before occurred to me that there are really two issues with inscriptions: script and language. His example of a French phrase using our “English” letters brilliantly demonstrated the two distinct issues.
Springfield, Illinois
Actually, Latin letters.—Ed.
Letters Reversed
Re: “What’s the Oldest Hebrew Inscription?”: In our English alphabet there are instances of letter reversals, such as AV, bq, dp, fj and MW. I have mixed up the upper and lower case letters, but has anyone proven that the oldest writers using their alphabets did not do the same in their inscriptions?
Grand Junction, Colorado
Christopher Rollston responds:
Thank you for your query. The “letter reversals” that you mention are normally associated with people in the initial stages of learning a writing system (especially one’s first writing system) as well as those who have writing difficulties such as dyslexia. Educational psychologists focus heavily on such things, and it is important to keep them in mind in the study of ancient writing.
Within the corpus of ancient Northwest Semitic inscriptions 007 008 and manuscripts, various problems occur on a fairly regular basis. In the Ahiram Sarcophagus Inscription, for example, the word skn, “governor,” is spelled skn (i.e., correctly) one time and sn another time (i.e., with the letter kap accidently omitted). That is, there are indeed spelling errors. Moreover, there are definitely cases of graphemic confusion between similar letters, something similar to the phenomenon you describe. For example, the Masoretic text of Isaiah 23:10 has “cross over [‘br] to your land,” but a Dead Sea Scroll manuscript has “work [‘bd] your land” (i.e., the Qumran manuscript has a dalet where the Masoretic text has a resh). Striking (and important) is the fact that rabbinic literature refers to these sorts of problems (e.g., in Sifre Deuteronomy 36.1 on Deuteronomy 6:9) and states that manuscripts with errors of this sort are to be “stored away,” that is, not used.
With the Early Linear Alphabetic inscriptions, the stance was not yet standardized, and in some cases the meaning (i.e., the best understanding and translation) of some of the early alphabetic inscriptions is quite opaque. This means that recognizing the sort of problem you mention is often quite difficult to discern within Early Linear Alphabetic inscriptions, and I am not aware of a definitive case of this in the (slim) corpus of Early Linear Alphabetic.
MLK Is King
“What’s the Oldest Hebrew Inscription?” refers to the root mlk (king). Quite a coincidence that these are the initials of the great civil rights leader named “King.”
Greensboro, North Carolina
Birth of Israelite Monarchy
Re: “Ancient Inscription Refers to Birth of Israelite Monarchy” (BAR 38:03): Author Gerard Leval states, “The name Shaarayim means ‘gates.’ ” The Hebrew word for “gates” is “Shaareem,” the plural of “Shaar,” not the dual form of gate “Shaarayim.” Shaarayim means “Two Gates.” The correct reading of the name adds further credibility for the ruins of Qeiyafa being Biblical Shaarayim since, as Leval states, it is the only excavated site in the vicinity which has “Shaarayim,” two gates.
Senior Lecturer in Arabic & Middle East Studies (Emeritus)
Baylor University
Waco, Texas
Castle of the Slave
It was a real delight to read Stephen Rosenberg’s article “Castle of the Slave—Mystery Solved” (BAR 38:03). His survey of various suggestions as to the function of the magnificent remains at ‘Iraq el-Emir in Jordan’s Wadi as-Sir strike a familiar chord: I take our students there twice a year. I ask them to first take some time to explore the remains on their own. They have already visited dozens of sites in Israel, the Palestinian territories and Jordan so they are able to bring an 009 informed judgment to their observations. Then I ask them to give ideas as to what the site may have been. They typically suggest a fortress, temple or palace—then give sound reasons why none of these ideas is convincing. We end by reading Josephus and discussing the intrigues of the Tobiah family. Dr. Rosenberg’s suggestion that the site was a Tobiad mausoleum containing crypts for the dead and banqueting halls for funerary feasts deserves thought. I thank him for giving us another possibility to explore in the field!
Jerusalem University College
Institute of Holy Land Studies
Mt. Zion, Jerusalem
Israel
When Job Sued God
On page 56 of “When Job Sued God” (BAR 38:03), author Edward L. Greenstein mentions an ancient gesture of a “push on the hairline” (Job 9:17). I could not find this gesture mentioned in either my English or my Hebrew reference Bibles. A concordance search in English of the entire Bible brought up no mentions of “hairline.” My question is: Where did the author get this reference and how does it apply to the Book of Job?
Also I’d like to take this opportunity to express how much I have enjoyed your magazine over the years. Your articles have enriched my understanding of many of the accounts from the Bible. I believe that your journal is the right place to air controversial ideas and have appreciated the different views expressed although I may sometimes disagree with them.
Lebanon, Oregon
Edward L. Greenstein responds:
Translating the Book of Job is a very challenging task. Many traditional renderings are really no more than guesses. James Wheeler does well to wonder about my interpretation. In the expression that I translated “push on the hairline,” we have a verb that can mean “strike” or “trample” and a noun that, in its spelling in Job, means “hair” (and not “tempest,” which is spelled in Job with samekh and not sin). In the context, Job is suggesting that God would refuse to listen to his legal appeal. In second millennium Alalakh (north Syria), where there are many legal customs similar to those found in the Bible, a king rejects a petitioner with a smack on the forehead. I follow Donald Wiseman, who first published most of the Alalakh texts, in seeing a connection between the gesture of dismissal in Alalakh and the expression in Job 9. For more, please follow the endnotes in my article.
Not His Words
I am quoted in the May/June BAR (“In Their Own Words,” p. 20) of having said “To ordinary archaeologists, Biblical archaeologists are lowlife.” Actually, I was describing the view of another scholar, Terje Oestigaard, and his colleagues in 065 Nordic archaeology, perhaps paraphrased too informally. But the truth is my own views are not too far from his, as are many European scholars. Here is how Oestigaard describes it in his Political Archaeology and Holy Nationalism1:
The general attitude towards Biblical archaeologists and Israel’s past within the archaeological circles in Northern Europe is that the past is politically misused in the Middle East and that Biblical archaeological research and Israeli nationalist archaeology are biased. When I started working with Biblical archaeology, very few of my colleagues understood why I bothered. Biblical archaeological approaches to the past are not ‘scientific’ and its scholars are not part of the theoretical discourse.Niels Peter Lemche
Professor, Faculty of Theology
Department of Biblical Exegesis
University of Copenhagen
Copenhagen
DenmarkWhat Jews Should Know About the New Testament
Amy-Jill Levine is surely on target when she urges Jews to study the New Testament (“What Jews [and Christians too] Should Know About the New Testament,” BAR 38:02). Her essay provides us with wonderful information and perspectives about its history and how we Jews might view it. Surely, most of us have avoided it knowing that frequently Jews appear in it as the spawn of the devil. Levine makes the worthwhile point, however, that much of the New Testament is a recapitulation of Jewish ideas and, with open minds, we can appreciate much that is there.
There are two sticking points at which Jews gasp and usually recoil. One is the ubiquitous trashing of Jews. The other is the claim of Jesus’ divinity. In dealing with both, Levine wants us to understand that such claims were part of perfectly reasonable understandings, well within the context of its original environment and that thusly, we should not take them too seriously.
On the face of it, that seems reasonable. After all, we believed in slavery at one time and do not now. We ignored and violated Native American treaties for well over a hundred years, and we found arguments not to elect Catholic presidents. Understanding the history of such ideas provides us a sense of accomplishment; and, as we Jews understand the ideas of the New Testament, the distress will dissipate. But, there is that damned fly in the ointment.
Fundamentalists claim that the Bible is inerrant. Levine assures us that “modern” churches no longer accept hostility toward Jews as valid. But there is still that tension in the written word. If nothing else, it is very unpleasant knowing that on Sundays we are put down, but are now reassured they did not really mean it. Do religious leaders tell their congregations not to take the offending words seriously?
Levine’s article is interesting and valuable, but I wish she had not worked so hard to make it palatable to Jews.
Bertram Rothschild, Ph.D.
Aurora, ColoradoAmy-Jill Levine responds:
Thank you for your kind words. For your critiques, I also thank you, because they offer opportunity for clarification.
First, the New Testament does not have a “ubiquitous trashing of Jews” (no more than the Tanakh [the Hebrew Bible] has a “ubiquitous trashing of gentiles”). The problems of New Testament polemic are deep enough without exaggerating them.
Second, I was not working hard, or working at all, to make the text “palatable”; I have no interest in justifying polemic. Rather, I want to make readers aware of the polemic, show the harm its interpretations have caused, and provide information on how it might be addressed.
Third, I stated, “most modern churches, recognizing the tragic effects of how this language has been interpreted, reject anti-Jewish teaching.” Most, not all. Nevertheless, the efforts numerous Christians have made in addressing the tragic history of anti-Jewish exegesis should be acknowledged; more, it should be celebrated. Ironically, the most anti-Jewish sermons come 066 not from Fundamentalists, but from liberal Christians—but that is another article.
Finally, I did not say that those who issued the polemic, whether in antiquity or today, “did not really mean it”; nor did I say that the issues should be dismissed. What is conventional—Ezekiel’s prophetic rhetoric; Josephus’s political carping; John’s theological invective—is also serious, sometimes deadly so. Therefore we do the history to understand the texts in their own context and to show how they have been interpreted over time. Here the Jewish Annotated New Testament contributes to this discussion.
How Much Does Lead Weigh?
You may know your Biblical archaeology, but you don’t know your lead.
“What Is It?” in the May/June 2012 issue states that the weight of the decorated lead weight is “nearly two pounds.”
A cubic inch of poured lead weighs 0.39 pounds. The volume of the weight is given as 3.5 by 2.6 by 0.3 inches or 2.73 cubic inches. Simple multiplication of 2.73 cubic inches by 0.39 cubic inches/pound gives a value of 1.06 pounds or just slightly over 17 ounces, not “nearly two pounds.
Will Ebersman
Los Angeles, CaliforniaAmos Kloner confirms that the lead weight weighs 804 grams (1.77 pounds), not too far from the “nearly 2 pounds” that we stated. The measurements we gave are approximate because the two sides of the weight differ in their dimensions. The thickness of the tablet also varies. For exact dimensions, see Amos Kloner’s report cited in the BAR discussion.
We did make an error regarding the finders of the weight. It was discovered by Amos Kloner and Yair Tzoran.—Ed.
Cartoon Debate
Godly Humor
Re: Cartoons in BAR. Even God has a sense of humor. Look at some of the dumb things he lets humans do!
Cathryn Strombo
Superior, MontanaCleverer than He
The only problem I have with the cartoon feature is the fact that most of your 067 068 readers seem to be much smarter than I am when it comes to thinking of captions.
Patrick Cronan
Rocheport, MissouriFaith Is More than Historical Details
I have been wanting to write to you for many years—and finally managed to do so. I have been getting BAR for more than 30 years. I have both enjoyed it and have learned a lot from it. Also I have greatly appreciated the stands you have taken for the integrity in the archaeological community. You have a strong sense of justice and are always willing to pursue it.
When I graduated from college in 1971 I planned to become an archaeologist in the field of U.S. colonial history. But then events in my life led me to church work and I became a Lutheran pastor in 1976.
On the whole I believe that the findings of Biblical archaeology mostly back up the Biblical record in both testaments. My faith in Jesus is not primarily dependent on the accuracy of historical details in the Bible, but it is certainly nice to know that the Bible is at least a reasonably reliable reflection of events from the times in which it was written.
Charles M. Horn
Kenton, Ohio
BAR Presses Still Roll
I have been a subscriber for more than 20 years and just want to say thanks to all the staff for keeping the presses rolling when so many others have thrown in the towel.
You have already read your free article for this month. Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.