Queries & Comments

PHOTO: ERICH LESSING / ART RESOURCE, NY

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and comments about our Winter 2023 issue. We appreciate your feedback. Here are a few of the letters and responses we received. Find more online at biblicalarchaeology.org/letters.

Grateful for BAR

I have long been grateful for BAR, never more so than in recent years. I appreciate the up-to-date information and the discussion of controversial issues. Even the letters to the editor explore issues that reveal important elements of biblical writing and history. Thank you for identifying and reporting on the missing elements of the biblical and ancient past.

MONTA L. POOLEY
PORT ORCHARD, WASHINGTON

I am not a subscriber but I read your magazine regularly. The issues are extremely interesting, and I can’t take my eyes off of them. Everything is exciting to read, as I learn more and more about the world of archaeology and the Bible. Everything in “The Stone Statues of Ammon” by Katharina Schmidt was amazing, but I especially liked “The Seven World Wonders” by Jennifer Tobin. It was very interesting, and the writing was astounding.

IVY BUSENITZ
NEWTON, KANSAS

Woman in the Window

Thank you for Lacy K. Crocker Papadakis’s intriguing article about the “Woman in the Window.” Proverbs 7 describes someone looking out the window onto the street below. The person looking out the window sees a young man being seduced by another man’s wife—an erotic adventure that leads to the young man’s death. But who is looking out the window?

Proverbs alternates between a masculine and feminine speaker. The masculine speaker is a father, while the feminine speaker is either a mother or Wisdom herself. We usually understand the speaker in Proverbs 7 to be a father. But what if the speaker is a woman? Would this be another instance of a woman looking out a window onto a scene that leads to death?

TOM KANE
FLORESVILLE, TEXAS

LACY K. CROCKER PAPADAKIS RESPONDS:
The male teacher who narrates the scene appears at the window in the Masoretic text, while the strange woman is at the window in the Septuagint and Peshitta. I classify Proverbs 7 as an example of a man “seeing a tryst,” where from a window a man witnesses, literally or figuratively, a sexual encounter (cf. Genesis 26:8). The other passages that depict a man at the window illustrate accessibility or passability (Genesis 8:6–7; 2 Kings 9:32–33; 13:17; Daniel 6:11; Joel 2:9).

Pompeii Pizza

The tray of delicacies painted on a frescoe at Pompeii (Strata: Pompeii Pizza?) was both astonishing and appetizing. My father, a native of the Lazio region just north of Pompeii, insisted that the proper topping for pizza consisted only of olive oil, salt, pepper, and grated cheese. Later, I was surprised to find focaccia in 1 Kings 17:13, where Elijah tells the widow of Zarephath: “but make me therefore a little cake first,” which in the official Italian translation reads: “ma, prepare prima una piccola focaccia.” Focaccia is a very simple hearth cake and the recipe is in the Bible. When the Spanish brought tomatoes to the Old World, the miracle of pizza and focaccia as we know them occurred in Naples.

AUGUSTINE H. SERAFINI
OSHKOSH, WISCONSIN

Remembering Amnon Ben-Tor

The Milestone for Amnon Ben-Tor was great, but too short for his wonderful career. One of the things you left out was his work at Masada. Yigael Yadin led the excavations at Masada and he put Amnon in charge of excavating the Western Palace. I had the great privilege of working under him on that excavation in 1964. After the excavation, Amnon and I stayed in contact and it was always a joy to read his emails about Hazor. I will miss him.

REVEREND VINCENT W. MORGAN
QUEENS, NEW YORK

An extended version of Igor Kreimerman’s tribute for Amnon, which references his early work at Masada, can be found on Bible History Daily at biblicalarchaeology.org/milestones.—ED.

Star of Bethlehem

In his article on the Star of Bethlehem, Nathan Steinmeyer says, “to know what the Magi saw that night more than 2,000 years ago, we ourselves would need to be able to experience and know the world as they did.” In fact, former Rutgers University astronomer Michael Molnar did just that. His research suggested that a moon passing in front of Jupiter (an occultation, in astronomical terms), while it was in the zodiacal territory of Aries the Ram, would signal the birth of an important king of the Jews. He calculated that such a rare occultation, with Jupiter as a morning star (“in the east,” in astrological terms), occurred on April 17, 6 BC.

It was a different but logical approach, and while scholars quibbled, it’s clear that Molnar hit on the key by focusing on a phenomenon that was invisible to most people at the time, but had meaning for those who saw symbolism in celestial objects.

GORDON GOVIER
FITCHBURG, WISCONSIN

Thank you for Steinmeyer’s excellent review of the issues involved in identifying the Star of Bethlehem. However, some details were omitted, and these are the elements in Matthew’s narrative that so many people overlook. The “star” is said to have led the wise men to Bethlehem and then stopped over the place where Jesus was found (Matthew 2:9). Something that hovers 30 feet above ground is not a celestial object. It is an angel. The ancients, including the Israelites, viewed the stars as celestial beings. In the Hebrew Bible, the angels are the “heavenly host” (Deuteronomy 4:19; Isaiah 40:26; Jeremiah 8:2), which are stars that come down to earth as messengers for God, servants for humans, or even as warriors at the final judgment. In Matthew, a “star/angel” came down from the sky to lead the wise men. Indeed, as Steinmeyer aptly states, we must read the story through their understanding, not ours, even if it disagrees with our view of things.

ROBERT GNUSE
DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR OF THE HUMANITIES
LOYOLA UNIVERSITY NEW ORLEANS

In many ancient cultures, it was common to describe the deaths and births of great men as being marked by astrological phenomena. This does not mean that those phenomena actually occurred on those dates, and it is silly to try to date historical figures using astroarchaeology. Think of it as a metaphor. The purpose was to delineate the king’s greatness, not to recount what was in the sky that night.

SUSIE HELME
LONDON, ENGLAND

The many attempts to explain the Nativity story in Matthew’s Gospel have focused on celestial phenomena and the identity of the Magi. What has been ignored is what these elements meant to first-century Jews. As for the Magi, they were important people in the realm of the adored Cyrus, practitioners of an occult science forbidden to Jews. Matthew brings them into the Nativity story as an ennobling element, with an assumption of their unique powers.

PHILLIPS STEVENS, JR.
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY EMERITUS
UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO, SUNY

Epiphany or Baptism?

The piece “Restoring Egypt’s Medieval Murals” describes the pictured mural as “the Epiphany—the adoration of newborn Jesus by the Magi and shepherds.” Is that really what the Syrian Monastery calls it? For Orthodox Christians, the Epiphany/Theophany is the baptism in the Jordan, while Western Christians use the term for the visit of the Magi. Could you clarify?

MARIANNE NAGRANT
FARMINGTON HILLS, MICHIGAN

You are quite correct to point out the cultural differences. Whereas the Western tradition celebrates the Epiphany on January 6 as a sequel to Christmas, understanding it as Jesus’s presentation to the Magi (and the world), the Eastern Orthodox churches equate the Epiphany to Jesus’s baptism, which the Gospels tell us happened at the outset of Jesus’s public ministry and involved the “epiphany” of the Holy Trinity. This dichotomy is probably to blame also for another confusion in the original publication, which interprets Jesus as Christ Emmanuel, while the painting more likely represents the Adoration (by the shepherds and Magi).—ED.

World Wonders

The column “The Seven World Wonders” describes the dimension of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus as follows: “The temple was the largest ever built by the Greeks, measuring 236 by 410 feet (the length of 2.5 football fields).” Since a football field is 100 yards, 2.5 fields would be 750 feet.

ROBERT VONFRISCH
WEATHERLY, PENNSYLVANIA

Caduceus & the Rod of Asclepius

In “Biblical Bestiary,” the author confuses the caduceus with the Rod of Asclepius. The winged, double-snake caduceus belongs to Mercury and is the symbol of commerce. The single-snake Rod of Asclepius is reminiscent of the bronze snake of healing in Numbers 21:9–10.

RABBI JOE KLEIN
ROCHESTER, MICHIGAN

Know Your Bible

In his article “Were There 12 Tribes of Israel?” Andrew Tobolowsky wrote that Paul repeatedly describes himself as a member of the tribe of Benjamin (Acts 13:21; Romans 11:1; Philippians 3:5). However, in Acts 13:21, Paul is referencing the tribal affiliation not of himself but of Saul, son of Kish, the first king of early Israel.

EDGAR WATSON
PUNTA GORDA, FLORIDA

Marta Luciani’s article “Archaeology in the Land of Midian” states that Midian was descended from Abraham through Ishmael. This is incorrect, as Midian was actually Ishmael and Isaac’s half-brother through Abraham’s third wife or concubine, Keturah (Genesis 25:2).

WESLEY BARNETT
AMHERST, OHIO