Queries & Comments

006

BAR Fall 2022

Out of the Park

Your Fall 2022 issue hit it out of the park! It’s common for me to find one or two articles per issue that I’m interested in. But I found every single article in this issue deeply interesting.

Has BAR Become a Subjective Academic Exercise?

Being a BAR reader for the past 20 years, I have noticed a shift in the magazine’s focus. It now seems that “scholarly” archaeologists, with their independent interpretations of discoveries, are the sole repository of truth regardless of what the Bible states. This type of archaeology, which uses the pretext of being “biblical,” amounts to nothing more than a subjective academic exercise. Biblical archaeology isn’t meant to substantiate what the Bible relates; rather, it provides a deeper understanding of the cultures and peoples of ancient times.

BAR has always aimed to bring the latest and best scholarship in biblical archaeology to a popular audience, without any specific religious or ideological agenda. Sometimes this scholarship affirms and supports the biblical narrative, while at other times it poses challenges to the Bible’s version of events. Where we certainly agree is that biblical archaeology can be an invaluable tool for gaining a deeper, real-world understanding of the societies and cultures that produced the biblical text.—ED.

David and Goliath

I greatly enjoyed the article “Taking a Sling.” I would like to add a medical dimension. Gigantism is often the result of a pituitary tumor that secretes abnormal amounts of growth hormone. As this tumor enlarges, it presses on the optic chiasm (the crossing point of the optic nerves), which causes a loss of peripheral vision. Goliath was prepared to do battle with sword, spear, and javelin—all frontal weapons. But David used a sling to take advantage of Goliath’s lack of peripheral vision and launched his missile laterally. Goliath offered no resistance, probably because he couldn’t see. He literally did not know what hit him.

Pilgrims and Immigrants

Jodi Magness’s article “Journey to Jerusalem” was fascinating, but we noticed one error. She describes three burial caves in the Kidron Valley, stating that the Ariston Family Tomb was one of these. However, the accompanying photograph (p. 48) does not portray the Ariston Tomb, but rather the Tomb of the High Priest Annas, which we identified and described in BAR almost 30 years ago (“Potter’s Field or High Priest’s Tomb?” November/December 1994).

Thank you for the keen observation. To learn more about the Ariston Tomb and see photographs of this remarkable site, readers can refer to Gideon Avni and Zvi Greenhut’s article “Akeldama: Resting Place of the Rich and Famous,” in the November/December 1994 issue of BAR.—ED.

Yahweh’s Desert Origins

The article “Yahweh’s Desert Origins,” by Juan Manuel Tebes, may be one of the worst that BAR has ever printed. It is full of unscriptural assumptions and near blasphemy.

Tebes writes that little is known about how God “came to be worshiped by the peoples of Israel and Judah.” The Book of Genesis clearly relates how the Israelites came to worship God. God called Abraham to father a great nation. Abraham, along with his descendants (Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph), worshiped God. Within three generations, his descendants moved to Egypt for 400 years. Then God led them to Canaan in the Exodus. By then, Yahweh had been the national God of Israel for over 500 years. Doesn’t Tebes read the Bible?

Tebes’s Article begins with the story of Moses (Exodus 2-4). However, I would suggest that belief in Yahweh originated in the central hill country, not the desert. The first mention of Yahweh is in Genesis (Genesis 13:2-4; Genesis 15), with the stories about the 008interaction of Yahweh and Abraham set in the hill country of Judah. Genesis, not the later books of Exodus or Deuteronomy, should be where we look for Yahweh’s origins.

JUAN MANUEL TEBES RESPONDS:

Indeed, the name Yahweh is mentioned several times in the Bible before Moses’s time. It was Cain and Abel who first spoke the name Yahweh and made offerings to him (Genesis 4:1-4), while it was in the days of Enosh that people “began to call upon the name of Yahweh” (Genesis 4:26). We are clearly dealing with a parallel tradition about when the worship of Yahweh began. However, no epigraphic evidence of Yahweh has appeared in the Levant before the Monarchic period (c. 1000–586 BCE). The Canaanite god El was the most favored deity before that period, as attested by inscriptions from Ugarit, Canaanite place names, the prominence of El names in the patriarchal narratives, and even the name “Israel.” The Bible itself, therefore, seems to preserve memories of El worship before the beginnings of Yahwism.

The article on Yahweh is almost entirely in the realm of speculation, and the evidence Tebes presents is not compelling. For example, he claims that “during the tenth century, Yahweh was rapidly assimilated into the Israelite pantheon” (p. 40), supported with only a footnote to a book. How do we know Yahweh’s assimilation was rapid and did not occur more gradually?

JUAN MANUEL TEBES RESPONDS:

The referenced book The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002) highlights the significant role of the monarchy during the tenth century BCE in supporting the new deity. We know from the Mesha Stele that already in the mid-ninth century, King Mesha associated Yahweh with the Israelites, so the process of assimilation was already well underway by then. Also note that we are talking about the adoption of Yahwism by the monarchy; for the general population, it was another matter, as I recalled also in the article (p. 40).

Identifying Scroll Scribes

The article by Mladen Popović (“Using AI to Identify Scroll Scribes”) does more than present a clever application of artificial intelligence (AI) to the paleography of the Great Isaiah Scroll. It also provides insight into management decisions and production methods. One can imagine that perhaps there were only two scribes available for the project so, for efficiency, they divided the labor, with each scribe taking half the scroll. I can almost hear the master saying to his apprentice, “I’ll race you, Eli. Let’s see who finishes first!”

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Three Cheers for Hieroglyphs!

I was very happy to see two articles about hieroglyphs (“The Decipherment of Egyptian Hieroglyphs” and “The Rosetta Stone: Key to Egyptian Hieroglyphs”). But you do not mention the key that helped Champollion decode the ancient writing. The key was that he noticed the same hieroglyphs appearing together within the same format on the Rosetta Stone. Champollion realized that the format of royal names resembled the cartridge pouch carried by the French soldiers in Napoleon’s army in Egypt. Thus the humble name of a French soldier’s pouch—cartouche—came to denote the names of ancient Egypt’s greatest kings.

Indeed, the ancient scribal habit of encircling royal and divine names in what we call cartouches offered a priceless visual key for isolating, in hieroglyphic texts, names known through Greek (e.g., Ptolemaios, Cleopatra). Crucial in Champollion’s decoding of the Egyptian script, the function of cartouches was probably first guessed by Champollion’s English competitor, Thomas Young.—ED.

Origins of the Gospels

I appreciate Robyn Faith Walsh’s effort to position the Gospels among the noteworthy literature of the first and second centuries (“The Origins of the Gospels”). However, the arguments offered for situating the Gospels in that company deprive them of their uniqueness as the “good news.” John tells us that he wrote his gospel so that people may believe that Jesus is the Christ and so have life because of him (John 3:15; John 20:31). This declaration must count for something in determining the “gospel genre” in relation to its intended audience.

ROBYN FAITH WALSH RESPONDS:

Independent of their stated motives, all writers are shaped by their social position, education, and experience. The gospel authors write in Greek, cite Jewish scriptures, use Stoic terminology and concepts, and engage common literary tropes. That they might be part of a religious group doesn’t preclude us from noticing connections and allusions that help us better understand the world from which Christianity emerges. The Gospel of Luke, for instance, gives a formulaic preamble consistent with ancient biographies, positioning itself within a genre that ancient readers would have immediately recognized.

John 3:15 is not so much a creed but represents a didactic strategy; the author references specific passages from the Torah and Isaiah, giving Jesus greater authority while simultaneously explaining to the audience what to expect from the Son of Man. Ultimately, this “good news” may tell us more about how these writers are inserting Jesus into an established literary mold than anything about the historical person.

Out of the Park

Your Fall 2022 issue hit it out of the park! It’s common for me to find one or two articles per issue that I’m interested in. But I found every single article in this issue deeply interesting.