Queries & Comments

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Despite delays in receiving snail mail, we continue to enjoy the many emails and letters shared by our readers, always with fascinating comments and insights spurred by previous BAR articles. This issue, we share intriguing questions you raise about the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, stories from the Gospel of John, and the legend of Masada. You can find more letters online, along with a few responses, at biblicalarchaeology.org/letters.

Excellent Work

Thank you for Robert Cargill’s excellent work. It was so enjoyable to watch the development of the magazine during his time as Editor. The changes in appearance and content have been exciting to see but also reassuring, as BAR continues to provide excellent information and enjoyable reading. It seems to me that both he and Hershel really cared about the magazine and that they wanted others to care as well. Be assured that we do.

I want to express my admiration for your outstanding magazine. Frankly, when I first picked up BAR, I was extremely skeptical. I was hesitant in that it often seems that such publications try to beat people over the head with one particular religious belief to convince them of their wrongful thinking. I expected this tome would be the same and quickly wind up in the trash. How wrong I was! I have been impressed by your scholarly approach since the first issue I read. Please keep up your integrity and the unbiased approach.

Holy Sepulchre

Thank you for Justin L. Kelley’s excellent piece “The Holy Sepulchre in History, Archaeology, and Tradition” (Spring 2021). I have studied the church for many years and found Kelley’s concise narrative a great summary of the church’s fascinating history and archaeology. It was wonderful to experience a journey to this sacred site through the article.

Justin L. Kelley’s article on the Holy Sepulchre was great. But there is a missing piece of archaeology that is never explored: the rolling stone that covered the entrance to Jesus’s tomb (Luke 24:2). Such a stone isn’t found at the Holy Sepulchre, nor is there any tradition that explains where it went. Did Constantine’s mother Helena have the stone removed, the Crusaders, or perhaps earlier Christians?

JUSTIN L. KELLEY RESPONDS:

According to tradition, remains of the stone are within the Edicule of the tomb, in the antechamber known as the Chapel of the Angel. This small room contains an altar topped by a large, ornately decorated marble box that holds a rough-hewn cube of limestone—the so-called Angel’s Stone, which is believed to be the remains of the ancient blocking stone. Like the rock-cut tomb itself, the blocking stone was likely cut down to a manageable size for display within the church already in antiquity. Early literary sources indicate that it has been in the church since at least the seventh century. The Celtic bishop Arculf recalls seeing two pieces of the blocking stone during his visit to the church sometime around 680. One piece was reportedly “dressed by tools” and set up on a square altar within the Edicule, and the other was located in the church’s great rotunda (the Anastasis). In the eighth century, a pilgrim, Willibald of Eichstätt, observed that the blocking stone had been “squared” and resided in the antechamber of the Edicule.

The article on the Holy Sepulchre was interesting and informative. I was saddened, however, that it did not include even a mention of the Ethiopian church that is part of 007008the Holy Sepulchre, built on the roof of the complex. It is beautiful and an inspiring place to worship.

For Justin L. Kelley’s response, go to biblicalarchaeology.org/letters.

Watertight Vessels?

Although interesting, Yonatan Adler’s article “Watertight and Rock Solid” (Spring 2021) raised as many questions as it answered about the use of ritual vessels in Second Temple Judaism. I especially want to know how, if the vessels were made of chalk, they didn’t leak? Were they fired?

YONATAN ADLER RESPONDS:

Great question! The chalk vessels show no signs of having been fired. It seems likely that they were treated in some way—to prevent both the absorption of liquids into the walls of the vessels and the sullying of the food and drink from chalk dust. However, we have no evidence of such treatments, and I must admit that I do not know how this might have been accomplished. Perhaps BAR readers have some ideas?

Writing on the Floor

Regarding James F. McGrath’s Epistles piece “The Writing on the Floor” (Spring 2021), why dedicate so much thought to a spurious passage from the Gospel of John (John 8:2-11) that was never original to the gospels but was rather inserted centuries later? Do any manuscript scholars support its authenticity?

JAMES F. MCGRATH RESPONDS:

The question of “authenticity” focuses on only one of several relevant matters, namely whether the story was an original part of the Gospel of John. The consensus is that it was not, and I do not suggest otherwise. However, the early Christian historian and theologian Eusebius of Caesarea informs us that some form of the story was known to Papias and was also to be found in the now-lost apocryphal Gospel of the Hebrews, and so the story was circulating very early. The eventual inclusion of the story in the Gospel of John probably reflects the conviction that this story, which was widely known, belongs in the New Testament. My approach reflects all these considerations—a recognition that just as not everything in the canon is historical, not everything outside it is ahistorical.

Defendants’ Remnants

In the Spring 2021 Issue, your book review for Masada: From Jewish Revolt to Modern Myth, written by Jodi Magness, rekindled a thought I’ve had for years. Have any digs at Masada identified the remains of the Jews, whether Zealots, Sicarii, or Essenes, who died defending the site from the Romans?

Good question but, as always in archaeology, the answer is rarely 009010straightforward. Archaeologists excavating Masada in the 1960s did locate skeletal remains from the first century C.E., and these were originally identified as the bodies of those who died defending the site from the Romans in 73 C.E. With subsequent analysis of the excavations, however, archaeologists are now less confident in this identification, with some even arguing that the recovered bones are actually the remains of Romans who fell there. To learn more, be sure to read Joseph Zias’s article, “Whose Bones?” in the November/December 1998 issue of BAR.—G.J.C.

Another Kind of Archaeology

Having been to the Holy Land on several occasions, routinely visiting digs and ancient archaeological sites, I have held my fair share of pottery sherds and artifacts. Perhaps that’s what attracts me to BAR. I can be taken back there whenever I pick up the magazine.

While mining through the Spring 2021 issue, I uncovered two articles that transported me into another dimension of archaeology, one I had never considered before. Mary Joan Winn Leith’s “The Garden of Eden: Don’t Sweat It!” and Francesco Arduini’s “The Pandemic Origins of Child Baptism” did not uncover their relics of the past with a spade or brush. Their tell was a mound of books and papers, another kind of archaeology that carefully considers information from historical sources. Hats off to how they uncovered valuable facts that are now archived in the annals of BAR.

Making an Impression

Kent D. Fowler’s Column “Making an Impression: How Fingerprints Can Identify Ancient Potters” (Summer 2021) reminded me of another, earlier archaeologist’s interest in the forensic use of such impressions. William F. Badè, who excavated at the site of Tell en-Nasbeh in 1926–1935, published an excavation manual, in which he expressed the hope that analysis of fingerprints would provide a way of “determining contemporaneity of occupation layers and tombs.” That is, he hoped to match up pots with individual potters by their fingerprints. He enlisted August Vollmer, who was then a professor of police administration at the University of California at Berkeley, in the project. An example of a fingerprint was even used to embellish the front matter of the book: A Manual of Excavation in the Near East: Methods of Digging and Recording of the Tell en-Naṣbeh Expedition in Palestine (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1934), which is available for free at the Bade Museum website (psr.edu/centers/bade-museum). Sadly, Badè died two years later, and his interest in the possibilities inherent in the study of ancient potters’ fingerprints was not pursued.

Despite delays in receiving snail mail, we continue to enjoy the many emails and letters shared by our readers, always with fascinating comments and insights spurred by previous BAR articles. This issue, we share intriguing questions you raise about the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, stories from the Gospel of John, and the legend of Masada. You can find more letters online, along with a few responses, at biblicalarchaeology.org/letters. Excellent Work Thank you for Robert Cargill’s excellent work. It was so enjoyable to watch the development of the magazine during his time as Editor. The changes in appearance and […]