Queries & Comments

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We’ve noticed a marked increase in the perspicacity of the letters we’ve been receiving. We attribute this to the greater time we’ve all spent in isolation as a result of the current pandemic. If there is some silver lining to this tragedy, it’s that we’re all working together not only to stay safe but also to keep each other mentally stimulated. Thank you for being such passionate, loyal readers.

Race in Antiquity?

Recent events in the United States and around the world have refocused my attention to issues of race, and how we deal (or do not deal) with them in the disciplines of archaeology and Hebrew Bible studies.

In some ways my thoughts have no place in the reimagining of antiquity and early people groups, since race is a relatively modern human concept that has no basis in biology. Once we divorce concepts of race from any basis in natural science and instead see races as social constructs with roots back to 17th–18th-century C.E. Europe that had profound influence on early American thinking and actions, then it is also impossible to read, see, or reconstruct race in the ancient world. I am not suggesting that there were no differences in outward appearances between ancient people groups—just that the way these differences are considered cannot and should not be essentialized through a modern, biological view of race.

As modern researchers living and working in a racialized society, we need to ensure that the modern concepts do not cloud our thinking, writing, or teaching about antiquity. We also have the moral and intellectual obligation to lift up scholarship by minoritized colleagues and use this work in our own research and in the classroom. This eats away at the implicit biases that white scholars bring to our publications and teaching, and it helps a younger generation understand some of the very concepts that I have already laid out.

One must also be careful of the sin of omission. We know that the powerful Kushite Empire, centered in the region of modern-day Sudan, had political hegemony over Egypt in its 25th Dynasty, c. 760–656 B.C.E. From the perch of Egypt, Kushites influenced the politics and economies of biblical kingdoms in the southern Levant and vied with Assyria for political sway over the region. Kush and Kushites, usually mistranslated as Ethiopia/Ethiopian or Nubia/Nubian, are mentioned almost 80 times in the Hebrew Bible, yet the group—the only sub-Saharan culture with ties to the Hebrew Bible—is literally left out of a recent volume on biblical peoples. This omission is an oversight that prejudices views of the past.

Curricula in Hebrew Bible studies or the archaeology of the Near East rarely consider Kush. We need to embrace the fact that ancient black lives mattered as well as modern. Embracing change in our classrooms and research is one way to reconceptualize and deracialize the past, to create a more just present and equitable future.

Dr. Brody, thank you for this letter. We believe your call to learn more about the Kushites (or, Cushites) is imperative. Please see our article on page 62by Kevin Burrell titled “Representing Cush in the Hebrew Bible.”—B.C.

Comments and Compliments

Thank you for producing a wonderful, highly informative magazine. I am one of your current subscribers with plans to extend my subscription through October 2022. I only wish your publications would come more frequently.

I especially love and appreciate the systematic, insightful, and thorough way in which your authors approach their research and writing. Please continue this outstanding work of yours.

As you know, the Cairo Grand Egyptian Museum opens soon to international acclaim. What better time is there, therefore, to reignite global interest in the narratives leading up to and including the Exodus accounts?

Please stay safe and well during this pandemic.

I’ve been a subscriber to BAR since the mid-1980s and acquired all the previous issues and also the Bible Review magazine. The articles in the Summer 2020 issue are qualitatively different in a positive way. It is the most informative issue I can recall. Congrats. Keep up the good work.

I just want to congratulate and thank you for what your magazine has done. Recently, I have been looking up your biblical references in the articles, and I now find myself actually reading the Bible for the first time in my life. It is fascinating and full of things I never heard about. So thank you for introducing me to a new book in my library.

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Don’t Care for Pagan

I am becoming more and more disgusted with the filth you people publish, namely dealing with pagan religions. The title of your magazine is BIBLICAL Archaeology Review. I don’t need to know anything about pagan religions. Either it’s from the Bible, or it’s garbage. Please amend your ways!

Apple of His Eye

About “Apple of his Eye”(Epistles: Whence-a-Word, Spring 2020), English translators who authored the King James Bible often consulted Luther’s German translation of the Scriptures for guidance. They did not mistranslate the Hebrew original; they mistranslated Luther’s German. I located the four examples given in the BAR article in a German Bible where I found (four times) the German word “Augapfel.” Apparently, the translators of the KJB wrongly rendered this German word as “apple of the eye.” “Augapfel” means “eyeball.” In all four instances Luther did not use the German equivalent of “pupil,” “die Pupille.”

As Prof. Millard pointed out in his letter last issue, the Geneva Bible also contained “apple of his eye.” However, I wondered why the Geneva translators made the jump from “eyeball” to “apple.” Your suggestion makes perfect sense. Given that Luther published his German translation of the Old Testament in 1534, and that English translators published the complete Geneva Bible in 1560 (both well before the King James Version appeared, in 1611), it appears the English translators over literalized “Augapfel,” the German word for “eyeball,” which literally means “eye apple,” and rendered the more poetic “apple of his eye.” Fascinating! And thank you. I think you solved the riddle.—B.C.

Biblical Belly Buttons

Let me contribute to the debate over Adam’s navel (“Belly Button Brain-Teaser,” Queries & Comments, Summer 2020): I may be a pagan, but even I know that according to the Bible, man was created in God’s image. So, isn’t the real question, why does God have a belly button?

I enjoyed the exchange between Edward P. Miller and Bob Cargill. But, and I hope this doesn’t spoil the fun, the issue of Adam and Eve’s belly buttons was (and for all I know might still be) a hot topic to some Christians. In the middle of the 19th century, the Plymouth Brethren split over the issue, with one group saying, as Mr. Miller and Mr. Cargill do, that belly buttons on Adam and Eve are out of the question, and the other group taking Adam and Eve as the prototypes on which all humans are based and insisting that, because all people must have belly buttons, Adam and Eve must also have had them. Families split on the issue, brothers never speaking again to one another. There is at least one wonderful book that goes into some detail on the controversary—a memoir by the son of the author of the defining book on one side of the issue: Father and Son, by Edmund Gosse. Gosse’s father, Philip, in addition to being a theologian, was also a biologist and an opponent of Darwin. It is a wonderful and very moving read about a difficult father-son relationship.

Early Manuscripts

In his article,“How Old Are the Oldest Christian Manuscripts?” (Summer 2020), Brent Nongbri states, “The radiocarbon analysis of the shroud has thus proven to the satisfaction of sober observers that it is a product of the 13th or 14th century—and not the first century.” I’m curious to know Mr. Nongbri’s views about the work of Susan Benford and Joseph Marino, supposedly confirmed by original Shroud of Turin Research Team member Ray Rodgers that the samples taken for the carbon-14 tests in 1988 did not contain just ancient linen fibers, but were also interwoven with more modern cotton fiber, thought to have been used to repair the original shroud linen in the 16th century, thus polluting the samples.

I have periodically seen reaffirmations of the 1988 C-14 results confidently stated in the media—most recently in Mr. Nongbri’s interesting BAR article—but I have yet to hear anyone state with the same degree of scholarly certainty that the Benford and Marino challenge to those dates has been disproven. Since Mr. Nongbri cites this example, I thought perhaps he might know the answer to my question. Has the Benford and Marino challenge been put to rest, or is the shroud not quite done surprising us?

BRENT NONGBRI RESPONDS:

The 1988 sample was divided and sent to testing facilities in Oxford, Zürich, and the University of Arizona. All three labs concluded that the Shroud of Turin is an artifact of the 13th or 14th century. Once published, these results were vigorously challenged by some.

Although I see no compelling reason to doubt either the soundness of the procedures or the results of the 1988 analysis, I would welcome additional testing of the Shroud with samples taken from multiple areas.

For the unabridged response, go to biblicalarchaeology.org/letters.

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I was just browsing through some recent issues of BAR when I noticed in “The Oldest Christian Letter”report (Strata, November/December 2019) that a horizontal line had been drawn above the Greek abbreviation for “in the Lord.” This being the oldest Christian letter to date, I wondered whether this may not have been the earliest recorded use of the nomen sacrum. Kurt and Barbara Aland’s book, The Text of the New Testament, notes that nomina sacra were introduced by Christian writers when they introduced the codex form, the dating of which has been questioned by others, most recently Brent Nongbri’s God’s Library: The Archaeology of the Earliest Christian Manuscripts.

BRENT NONGBRI RESPONDS:

The Basel papyrus, which can be dated to the 230s C.E., is indeed a very early example of a nomen sacrum abbreviation. Is it the earliest known? Maybe. There are a number of Christian literary manuscripts with nomina sacra that some scholars would say are as early as the second century, but none of them have a secure date. There are also good reasons to think that the famous “Gnostic” Christian inscription of Flavia Sophe, which was found in Rome and contains a nomen sacrum, was made in the second century, but again, we don’t have an exact date.

Thank you very much for the always fascinating forays into the domain of biblical scholarship. Presently living in retirement after 41 years of pastoral ministry in the Church of South India, I thoroughly enjoy all your articles, which are always fresh and elucidative.

I especially commend Brent Nongbri’s contribution in the Summer 2020 issue. The crisp presentation of the critical issues of the New Testament text transmission is well within the grasp of all readers. I look forward to more of such pieces.

Congratulations also on your new layout.

Please forgive this 95-year-old man for bothering you with this letter. A very interesting article in the summer issue—as so many in your magazine—has me puzzled. The last sentence in the sidebar on p. 42 states that the small parchment piece of the New Testament indicates “the end of Luke and the beginning of John.” There seems to be no breaking to indicate the changing of authors. I am aware that much of the writing at that time was done on either parchment or dried animal skin and then “rolled.” Was all writing continuous until the message was ended?

You will find the end of Luke and the beginning of John in the top one fourth of the manuscript page, where one short, centered paragraph says (in Greek) “the Gospel according to Luke,” and another one states “the Gospel according to John.” (In antiquity, titles of literary works could either precede or follow the text; or both.) The two Gospels are separated by a two-line gap. You are quite correct to observe that the text is written continuously, without spaces or marks between the words.—M.D.

Names or Epithets?

Mitka Golub’s analysis of personal names in the biblical and archaeological record (“What’s in a Name?” Summer 2020) is fascinating and points the way to further investigations. We know that some names are the personal name used in daily life, while others are epithets—names earned through personal characteristics and actions. Could many of these names, especially the theophoric names, be epithets instead?

MITKA GOLUB RESPONDS:

Yes, some personal names are epithets—inspired by the person’s physical traits, such as bald (Kareah; see Jeremiah 40:8); occupation, such as wine grower (Carmi; Joshua 7:1); or origin, such as the Cushite (Cushi; Jeremiah 36:14). Such names, however, refer to a person and are secular. By contrast, theophoric names refer to a deity and express gratitude, supplication, or one of the divine characteristics. Many of these names reflect family crises, such as the events connected to birth or the struggle for survival.

Epithets are generally scarce, probably because so many names are collected from artifacts associated with administrative activities, such as seals, bullae, and issuance of supplies, where people tend to use their personal names rather than epithets.

Time Travel Now?

It seems that BAR is now trying to change history via time travel! I was amused to see on page 32 in the very interesting article on Tel Hadid (“Forced Resettlement and Immigration at Tel Hadid,” Summer 2020) that the Byzantine period is listed as the fourth–seventh centuries B.C.E., rather than C.E.

CORRECTION:

The Byzantine period dates given in the article “Forced Resettlement and Immigration at Tel Hadid” (Summer 2020, p. 32) should read “fourth–seventh centuries C.E.,” not “B.C.E.”

We’ve noticed a marked increase in the perspicacity of the letters we’ve been receiving. We attribute this to the greater time we’ve all spent in isolation as a result of the current pandemic. If there is some silver lining to this tragedy, it’s that we’re all working together not only to stay safe but also to keep each other mentally stimulated. Thank you for being such passionate, loyal readers. Race in Antiquity? Recent events in the United States and around the world have refocused my attention to issues of race, and how we deal (or do not deal) with […]