Queries & Comments

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Thank you for sharing your thoughts and comments about our Winter 2022 issue. We appreciate your feedback. Here are a few of the letters and responses we received. Find more online at biblicalarchaeology.org/letters.

Is BAR Losing Its Way?

Most people who care about biblical archaeology do not care about the archaeology of places not mentioned in the Bible or secondhand rehashes of archaeological work done years or decades before. We want to hear about new, spade-in-the-ground archaeology in biblical places by the people doing it. Hershel Shanks figured out how to find that stuff, and if he couldn’t get the archaeologists themselves to write, he told us about it in his “First Person” column. If you cannot recover Hershel’s focus, you will lose us.

TOM PITTMAN
GRANTS PASS, OREGON

Continuing BAR’s Quality Tradition

I heartily approve the outstanding article “Mesha’s Stele and the House of David,” by André Lemaire and Jean-Philippe Delorme, even though I am clueless about Hebrew and the technical details shown in the photographs. I treasure the full disclosure by the authors, who put their argument out there for critique. That gives me comfort, since over the decades BAR has been a place where experts can discuss and debate. Excellent work continuing the quality tradition started by Hershel Shanks.

MAC MILLER
MARTINDALE, TEXAS

In the Spring 2023 issue of BAR, Matthieu Richelle and Andrew Burlingame presented another view on this translation (“Set in Stone? Another Look at the Mesha Stele”). Follow this developing debate online at biblehistorydaily.org.—ED.

Genesis of Judaism

I was surprised, to say the least, with what I learned from Yonatan Adler’s article “The Genesis of Judaism” and his timeline for the religion’s development. In my opinion, the one defining sign of being Jewish is circumcision, which was missing from the article. Does Adler have thoughts on this subject?

JACOB ARZENN
CALABASAS, CALIFORNIA

YONATAN ADLER RESPONDS:
In the first century CE, male circumcision was one of the primary identity markers of Judeans, for whom it was much more—a fulfillment of a divine commandment enshrined in the Torah. However, Judeans were not the only group to practice circumcision, as the Egyptians, Arabs, and Ethiopians also shared the practice at the time. It appears that circumcision was an early cultural practice whose origins are lost in the mists of time and which may well predate the formation of any kind of distinctly Israelite or Judean identity.

I enjoyed the evidence presented by Yonatan Adler. However, his claim that in “all the books of the Hebrew Bible outside the Pentateuch…ancient Israelite society is never portrayed as keeping the laws of the Torah” is incorrect. There are several references to Sabbath observance in the prophetic books (e.g., Isaiah 58:13-15; possibly 2 Kings 4:23), and it is fairly obvious that the reason Daniel avoids meat and wine in Babylonia (Daniel 1:8) is because he keeps some form of the dietary laws.

BEN ZION KATZ
SKOKIE, ILLINOIS

YONATAN ADLER RESPONDS:
The only three passages outside the Pentateuch to refer explicitly to Sabbath prohibitions (Jeremiah 17:19-27; Nehemiah 10:33; Nehemiah 13:15-22) are presented against a backdrop of the general populace not observing these prohibitions, while Isaiah 58 is prescriptive (not descriptive), and 2 Kings 4:23 concerns some sort of (cultic?) festival. Daniel 1:5-16 is the closest we get to someone observing a dietary restriction, although I question whether any of the Torah’s dietary prohibitions are implied here.

An excellent article, tracing evidence of Judaism to the second century BCE. I wonder, though, why Adler does not attribute the assembly of the parts that would become Judaism to the Judean arrival of the Pharisees at that same time? I’ve always thought that Judaism was the product of the Babylonian exiles, with a preliminary report coming with Ezra, and the finished product with the Pharisees.

RABBI JOE KLEIN
ROCHESTER, MINNESOTA

YONATAN ADLER RESPONDS:
It seems to me that the initial splintering of the well-known late Second Temple period sects (the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Qumran community, etc.) came only after Judean society at large had already adopted the Torah as their binding law and began to observe its rules and regulations. The Pharisees were then most likely a product rather than the source of the emergence of Judaism.

Lack of communication technology might also have had a role in the slow proliferation of Jewish observance. Imagine Ezra’s frustration (Ezra 7:1-26; Nehemiah 8) speaking in the open air, without benefit of a Greek theater. His stirring message would only have been heard clearly by the first few rows of listeners. This dilemma, of course, was humorously depicted in the film Monty Python’s Life of Brian, in which all that was heard of Jesus’s “Beatitudes” by one listener in the periphery of the audience was, “Blessed are the cheesemakers.”

BERNARD S. MILLMAN
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

Judah’s Jars

Do archaeologists know the labor and cost involved in preparing the storage vessels used in Judah? How much of the workforce was involved in pottery making, and how much land was used to grow the kiln fuel compared to other agricultural activities? It seems possible that the cost of producing the storage jars would have rivaled the cost of their contents. Do we know if any of the vessels were reused to maximize their value?

ALLEN D. HUNTER
YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO

Although immense piles of discarded pottery at ancient sites (e.g., Mt. Testaccio in Rome) imply the throwaway mentality, there is some evidence that even transport and storage vessels were regularly reused. (This habit is obvious for tableware and household containers.) Ethnographic observations and Mishnaic texts indicate reuse of storage jars in the ancient Near East. While there are studies for specific sites and uses, there is very little we can say without some more detailed research. A great idea for a future BAR article!—ED.

As I was reading “Enduring Impressions” by Oded Lipschits, a question came to my mind: Why are the storage jars ovoid in shape, with a rounded base? Wouldn’t they tend to roll around when transported? Why not a flatter base?

KENNEDY GAMMAGE
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

ARCHAEOLOGIST TIM FRANK RESPONDS:
The jars were carried by donkeys and possibly camels. As shown in ethnographic examples, jars were most likely held in place by rope slings, for which the ovoid shape was better suited. It is also easier to pour contents from ovoid jars. Even in a domestic context, most jars in ancient Judah had an ovoid base. They may have leaned against a wall or against other jars. Some ceramic jar stands have also been excavated.

Calculating Christmas

When discussing the date of Jesus’s birth (“Calculating Christmas: Hippolytus and December 25th”), why does author T.C. Schmidt not also address the evidence from Luke 2:8-14? In those verses, the shepherds are tending their flocks in the fields—in December! Much has been said about the improbability of this activity occurring in December due to Judah’s foul winter weather.

MARK L. HABERMAN
CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS

T.C. SCHMIDT RESPONDS:
Luke 2:8 does say that shepherds “were out in the fields” watching their flocks at night. But the Greek verb agraulein does not necessarily mean they were simply lying out in the open without shelter; they could have been sheltering under tents, lean-tos, sheds, barns, or whatever else might be in a field. Present-day Bedouins can be observed outside at night with their flocks in wintertime, so we have little reason to suspect that ancient shepherds could not have been doing the same. Therefore, Luke’s statement should probably not be read as specifying the season in which Jesus was born.

Biblical Giants

Jonathan Yogev’s article “The Riddle of the Rephaim” was enlightening and intriguing. I am curious to know why the concept of the Rephaim is conspicuously absent in the New Testament. Do we know at what point the Rephaim began to disappear from ancient writing and literature?

STEVE RICHARDSON
KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE

JONATHAN YOGEV RESPONDS:
The concept of the Rephaim was already in the process of disappearing when it entered the Hebrew Bible, where they are either being destroyed or in the underworld. As descendants of god(s), they couldn’t be tolerated in most biblical traditions. When mentioned in later periods (Book of Jubilees 29:9–11), the original meaning of the concept was already lost. The lack of evidence for the Rephaim in the New Testament suggests that interest in them had disappeared. Nevertheless, the tradition of Jesus’s conception as the son of God shares similarities with the concept of the Rephaim. As in Ugaritic, Phoenician, or Greek culture and myth, a leader with a divine bloodline has greater authority.

I have always noted how much the Old Testament, like other ancient quasi-historical writings, reflects even older folklore dating back to before the invention of writing. I think it is possible the Rephaim are ancient explanations of findings of Neanderthal or Homo erectus skeletons. In days of yore, strange bones (including of dinosaurs and mammoths) were taken to temples to be displayed and then became the basis of various myths.

SUSAN WEIKEL MORRISON
FRESNO, CALIFORNIA

An intriguing possibility! To read more about biblical and early Jewish writers’ understanding of the fossil remains that they surely encountered from time to time, read Steven and Elisha Fine’s “Encounters with Fossil Giants” in the Fall 2021 issue of BAR.—ED.