Queries & Comments

BAR Fall 2025

Thank you for your thoughts and comments about our Fall 2025 issue. We appreciate your feedback. Here are a few of the letters and responses we received. Find more online at barmag.org/letters.

Different Strokes for Different Folks

Thanks to BAR, readers hear from real experts in the field, not a summary or a version of an event that is redacted by a staff writer with little hands-on experience. I commend BAR and its editorial team for giving us a journal where you can still find trustworthy, relevant, and reliable information, conveyed by real professionals, unafraid of pushing against established dogma.

JOSE M. PAREDES
FLOSSMOOR, ILLINOIS

I really am sorry to see your magazine has gone so liberal! Truly, it appears many universities today are producing well-credentialed skeptics rather than apologists of God’s Word. If this is the decided course, may I suggest you drop “biblical” from your title and replace it with “biblical lands” or “Middle Eastern” as a more accurate reflection of your position?

PASTOR MIKE PANGBURN
BRIDGETON, NEW JERSEY

Fix Your Dates!

I don’t know where BAR stands on the truth of God’s Holy Word. However, when I see the terms BCE and CE instead of BC and AD, it makes me wonder. Even an organization that doesn’t subscribe to any particular religious viewpoint must have some idea as to the truth of the Holy Bible. Since you seek out information that is about the history behind the biblical text, you must see that Jesus Christ lived, died, and rose from the dead and that his life changed history forever. With that in mind, to use BCE and CE is an affront to the truth of God’s Holy Word and to God himself. Can you please see fit to use terms that have been in longstanding use worldwide until the last few decades?

BRYAN DAUGHERTY
YUBA CITY, CALIFORNIA

Why BCE and CE? Looks to me like you have gone secular, with no regard for the truth.

MICHAEL NOCTOR
LEHIGHTON, PENNSYLVANIA

As a new subscriber, I was disappointed to see the use of BCE and CE, considering that this is a biblical archaeology magazine. I understand that is the secular use. The contention regarding Christ’s birthday notwithstanding, the standard usage still works and people know what it means. It just seems like another example of woke “be in the world, not of the world.”

JOHNNA HILDEBRAND
LONDON, OHIO

In accordance with most standard scholarly usage today, BAR’s house style is to use BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE (Common Era). However, BAR allows authors to maintain their preferred terminology as appropriate, including BC and AD (see, e.g., Győző Vörös’s article, “Under Siege: How Rome Conquered Jerusalem,”).—ED.

John Was Not a Witness

Several letters in the Fall issue’s “Queries & Comments” draw conclusions about Jesus’s crucifixion based on the authority of the author of the Gospel of John. I know of no reputable New Testament scholar who believes that any of the four canonical gospels were written by eyewitnesses, and certainly not apostles or disciples of an apostle. Those attributions were likely assigned in the mid- to late second century to give greater authority to the gospels. All four canonical gospels are anonymous.

ARTHUR J. BELLINZONI
AURORA, NEW YORK

Grateful Dead Backstory

The title of the article “Ancient Judah’s Grateful Dead” refers imprecisely to the folkloristic motif of the “grateful dead” by focusing on the comfort, care, and celebration at the deceased’s tomb. Most commonly, the widespread grateful dead tales involve the death of a debtor, his creditors paid by a traveler or stranger, who, in turn, is saved from death or calamity by the soul/spirit of the grateful deceased.

BERNARD WITLIEB
WHITE PLAINS, NEW YORK

Mysterious Negev Tombs

The short news item “Mysterious Negev Tombs,” about the tomb complex found at a crossroads on the ancient trade routes connecting Egypt and the Levant to the Arabian Peninsula, was very interesting. Among other things, it stated that a significant number of the burials were of women, which the excavators suggest may indicate human trafficking.

I wish that statement had been expanded upon to look at other possibilities. The kingdom of Cush was known for its women warriors, the most famous being Queen Amanirenas. Might the burials have been of women warriors who were hired as guards for the caravans?

MARIAN POWELL
CHINO VALLEY, ARIZONA

You might be pleased to learn that we are preparing a feature article for an upcoming issue on these mystifying tombs, so hopefully we’ll learn more then. Also, for more on the women who ruled over Cush during the time of the first Christians, check out Mark Wilson’s article “Philip’s Encounter with the ‘Ethiopian Eunuch’,” in this issue.—ED.

Misunderstanding Moses

Ralph Hawkins seems to have missed an important point in his article “Losing Abraham’s Religion.” While I am sure that the Egyptian princess did her best to care for the infant Moses, I am equally sure that she allowed her handmaidens the opportunity to change his diapers. If the Israelites were practicing circumcision during their stay in Egypt, it would have become widely known that Moses was a Hebrew, since he was supposed to be 3 months old when placed in the Nile.

JOHN MAJKA
LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY

I believe Hawkins has mistranslated Exodus 4:24. The Lord wanted to kill Moses, not his infant son Gershom. It was Moses’s duty to circumcise his son on the eighth day. Zipporah realized what was happening and quickly circumcised her son, thus saving her husband. The Midrash attempts to fill in the blanks surrounding Zipporah’s actions.

MARTY BLUMENTHAL
HIGHLAND PARK, ILLINOIS

Stay Out of Politics

I was outraged and disappointed to see you publish the letter by Craig Hunter in the Fall issue. Hunter writes nothing about archaeology but shows his prejudice and hatred by referring to “occupied” East Jerusalem and to people who have been “displaced” by the Israeli government. He even cites the bogus, racist, International Court of Justice in his screed.

In almost 40 years, I have never known BAR to become involved in politics, especially in the Arab-Israeli conflict. You deal with archaeology and the Bible very well and have always—usually quite deftly—avoided the slightest mention of this issue. Why, then, did you publish this letter instead of tossing it into the garbage where it belongs?

WALLACE GOTTLIEB
CEDARHURST, NEW YORK

Incorrect Hieroglyphs

The news of the discovery of the cartouche of Ramesses III in Jordan contains an incorrect reading of the hieroglyphs preceding the left cartouche. It is NOT nb 3ḫw, “Lord of transfigured spirits.” To my knowledge, this phrase never occurs as a royal epithet. Instead, the Egyptian reads nb ḫ‘w, “Lord (or Possessor) of Crowns,” which is a very common royal epithet in the New Kingdom.

JAMES K. HOFFMEIER
EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY
TRINITY INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY