Queries & Comments

039

A Square Deal for Miss Kenyon

To the Editor:

I think you’ve given Miss Kenyon a square deal no matter how high an opinion or esteem I have for her work—and I think she is really superb.

Professor Baly Re-Subscribes With Hesitancy

To the Editor:

I am renewing my subscription to the Biblical Archaeology Review, though with considerable hesitancy, for I had hoped for something better. In the September number there was an ill-informed article on “Kathleen Kenyon’s Anti-Zionist Politics,” BAR 01:03, side by side with an adulatory article on Yigael Yadin (“Yadin’s Popular Book on Hazor Now Available,” BAR 01:03). Both are outstanding archaeologists, as well as admirable writers for the popular audience, but to suggest that one is open to criticism and the other is not is, to say the least, unfortunate. Kathleen Kenyon was criticized even for her use of the name Haram ash-Sharif, though that has been the name of the area and of the magnificent buildings it contains for thirteen hundred years. She was criticized also for saying that modern taste might not have appreciated Herod’s Temple. What has all this to do with serious archaeology? De gustibus non est disputandum, and there can be little certainty that we would in fact have liked the magnificence of Herodian Jerusalem. Who today, for instance, would have liked a colored Parthenon and a chryselephantine statue of Athene?

I was glad to see Ron Hines’ letter in the subsequent number, but the same number contained Woody Allen’s merely silly article on “The Red Sea Scrolls,” BAR 01:04. Woody Allen is certainly “one of America’s great comics,” but his place is not in a magazine to which one subscribes in order to get archaeological information. I may be alone in this, but I found the article’s humor cheap and vulgar.

I can still hope that you will produce a journal which is serious, informative, and without apparent bias, either for or against Zionism, The Arabs, or anything else. On the evidence so far I am far from convinced that this is really your intention.

Please note the article in our December issue by Yohanan Aharoni (“Hazor and The Battle of Deborah—Is Judges 4 Wrong?” BAR 01:04); it was highly critical of Yadin.—Ed.

BAR Consulting Editor’s Book Omitted

To the Editor:

I want to express my appreciation for your informative and provocative publication. I cannot honestly say that I agree with everything that you have published thus far (e.g., the approach which you took in the recent article on Kathleen Kenyon); however I can affirm that I anticipate the arrival of your publication and read it avidly upon receiving it. Your journal is certainly one that is written with the reader in mind, and it fills a previous gap in information and evaluation in archaeology.

One further comment: I would suggest that Jerry Landay’s Silent Cities, Sacred Stones be added to Dr. West’s list of recommended volumes. I have found Landay’s book both accurate and readable, and I consider it a “must” for college, church, and synagogue libraries. In fact, it would make a fine college text (especially in a paperback form). However, as you know, this volume is now in print only in Israel.

Keep challenging us, please.

040To the Editor:

How could you leave out Silent Cities, Sacred Stones by your own Consulting Editor Jerry Landay?

Unfortunately, Mr. Landay’s book is out-of-print both in Israel and in this country. We hope this situation will be remedied soon.—Ed.

Pronouncing Yigael Yadin’s First Name

To the Editor:

Incidentally, my first name is pronounced Yi-ga-el (to rhyme with Israel) and not Yig-ull (Queries & Comments, BAR 01:04). The name means in Hebrew: “He will be redeemed.” True, there exists another name, Yig-ull, which means: “He will redeem,” given by fathers more conceited than mine.

Woody Unfunny

To the Editor:

As of this writing, I have seen one movie by and with Woody Allen. This was to please my son who was then ten years old. Now it has come to pass that I have read one article by Woody Allen, and this has happened because I subscribed to a journal devoted to Biblical archaeology.

No doubt you will hear from others, so that I consider it best to desist from further recriminations and expressions of shock and chagrin. Only G-d can fathom how such an abomination came to be realized.

To the Editor:

Just a note to express my appreciation for the most enjoyable publication I have ever read and to order the BAR binder which saves me the time and trouble of having my BAR’s bound.

The last issue compels me to make a comment (I don’t believe I have ever written to any publication before). I find it hard to ascribe any import to Woody Allen’s “article”, even noting the humor of paragraph two.

Keep up the good work!

To the Editor:

I have enjoyed every issue of the BAR and have found it to be of the highest quality of scholarship. However, I feel that you made a mistake in including in your latest issue the article by Woody Allen. I find the pseudo-humor in it not only out of place in a serious magazine of this type, but demeaning to the intelligence of your readers.

I am continuing to look forward to receiving future issues and wish you continual success.

To the Editor:

Don’t try to be a comedian. I will consult other authorities on comedy.

Hoping that you will not repeat such an error of judgment and looking forward with continued joy to your otherwise high standard of achievement; I am

Sincerely Yours,

To the Editor:

I should already have written that I thoroughly enjoy your publication. But it took a sour note to motivate me to write.

Why, oh why, did you spoil a good thing with the Woody Allen tripe?

041To the Editor:

Please, no more articles like “The Red Sea Scrolls,” BAR 01:04, by Woody Allen. Your pages are too valuable for that.

Thanks for listening.

Other Judgments

To the Editor:

Just received the December 1975 issue. It’s the best issue to date.

To the Editor:

Things being what they are, it took until the fall before our library received the first three issues of the BAR. I now look forward to using them in my classes in Old Testament for the second semester of this academic year.

To the Editor:

The BAR is the most fascinating reading that I have come across in a long time. Your contribution to Biblical scholarship is of inestimable value. I am recommending it to all the teachers in our schools as well as to Bible education leaders of other faiths.

A few years ago I discussed the possibility of a magazine like this with Professor Yadin. He agreed with me that it was imperative to have one.

To the Editor:

I find the BAR extremely interesting and informative; just the thing for general readers like myself who prefer factual and critical accounts.

To the Editor:

Your advertising is blatant and a disgrace to a periodical which pretends to have some cultural values. You make the reader jump around in a way which is entirely unnecessary and shows a lack of how to make up a periodical. No threats, but unless you change I quit.

To the Editor:

Very many years have found me reading archaeological reports in little magazines, and I want you to know I find yours the most informative for a layman. I started “the habit” of necessity because I was preparing to write my second book for Bobbs-Merrill, suggesting what the early years of Abraham might have been like. The book came out in 1948 under the name of Abram Son of Terah, and I’m still reading.

042Pottery Inquiry

To the Editor:

I enjoy your magazine very much. I find it informative and interesting, and written in a clean easy-reading style.

It would be of interest to me if you would publish an article on the dating of pottery fragments found in various localities in Israel, such as Caesarea, Hazor and Acco.

Coming soon.—Ed.

Dust and Ashes

To the Editor:

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the first three BAR issues and look forward to receiving the next and the next …! I do have a question though:

In “The Archaeology of Dust and Ashes,” BAR 01:02, it is stated that “the Hebrew words [for ‘dust’ and ‘ashes’] are pronounced the same (efer) although their initial letters are different (‘dust’ begins with an ayin, ‘ashes’ with an aleph).”

Is this assertion correct?

It appears that the words are not pronounced the same in modern Hebrew: the word for “dust” being pronounced awfawr by Ashkenazim and ahfahr by S’fardim; the word for “ashes” being pronounced ayfehr (long a) by Ashkenazim and ehfehr by S’fardim.

Reader Lauer is right. The BAR goofed. The two words were not pronounced the same in ancient or modern Hebrew.—Ed.