Queries & Comments

020

Child Sacrifice at Carthage and Abortion

To the Editor:

What a powerful emotional impact was produced by the article “Child Sacrifice at Carthage—Religious Rite or Population Control?” (BAR 10:01). The photographs of all those gravestones plus the graphic descriptions of the “rites” were horrifying.

The authors Stager and Wolff have uncovered the victims of a practice that is the disgrace of Carthage. The parents’ motivation is revealing in light of the American practice of abortion. Those who sacrificed their children in ages past and those who sacrifice them today have the same motive—personal peace and prosperity.

Thank you for publishing this most important work that gives such great insight into the ancient world.

To the Editor:

Stager and Wolff presented convincing evidence that child sacrifice at Carthage served the secondary purpose of controlling the size of the population. The Carthaginians’ imagined sense of religious obligation made it possible for this institutionalized infanticide to exist in their society.

If we are repelled by the idea of infanticide as a means of population control, before we label the Carthaginians as barbarians, perhaps we ought to think about some of the techniques used in modern abortions, which are about as unsavory as burning babies. Maybe we’re more barbaric than the Carthaginians.

To the Editor:

The article on Carthage is one of the best that your magazine has ever produced. It is complete with footnotes and excellent photography. The Biblical perspective is well balanced. I especially enjoyed the insight that these authors have presented in the last two pages of the article concerning infanticide not only in Carthage, but even into modern times and today.

Articles like this are why I have continued to subscribe over the years to Biblical Archaeology Review.

Exchanging Defective Children for Sound Ones

To the Editor:

A footnote to Stager and Wolff’s excellent article on child sacrifice at Carthage in the January/February BAR (see “Child Sacrifice at Carthage—Religious Rite or Population Control?” BAR 10:01):

J. Fevrier [“Une Sacrifice d’Enfant chez les Numides,” Annuaire de l’Institut de Philologie et d’Histoire Orientales et Slaves (Bruxelles) 13 (1953)] published several inscriptions from Carthage dated to the second century B.C. that shed a slightly different light on the business of infant sacrifice.

In the first case a mother, Bissaba‘al, thanks Ba‘al Hammon and a goddess (certainly Tanit) for giving her a baby “in exchange for a defective child.” In the second, man, Tuscus, declares that he gave Ba‘al “his mute son Bod’astart, a defective child, in exchange for a healthy one.”

The situations described in these inscriptions sound very much like the Baby Jane Doe case. What are parents to do when their child has birth defects that make survival unlikely? If you believe as Eve did (Genesis 4:1) that children come from God, then it is not surprising to find those who would return a defective child to the god “in exchange for a healthy one.”

It should also remind us that the job of archaeology is not simply to recover the material remains of earlier civilizations, but also to use those remains to gain insights about the people who produced that culture.

The Archaeologist and the Supernatural

In our March/April 1984, we printed a letter from Ken Vander Kooi asking whether archaeologists always explained events in natural rather than supernatural terms (see Queries & Comments, BAR 10:02). Don’t they believe in miracles, he asked. For example, in explaining how the ragtag Israelites were able to conquer fortified Canaanite cities, don’t archaeologists ever consider the possibility that God was helping the Israelites? We published a reply to Mr. Vander Kooi’s letter from Joseph Callaway, president of the William F. Albright School of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem. Below we publish responses from the Reverend Kevin J. O’Connell of John Carroll University, Bernhard W. Anderson of Princeton Theological Seminary, who was associated with the late G. Ernest Wright in the Drew-McCormick archaeological expedition to the Biblical city of Shechem, and the Reverend Robert I. Brown.—Ed.

To the Editor:

I grew up taking for granted that traditional assumptions about the historical significance of such Biblical narratives as the destruction of Jericho, the escape from Egypt, the plague stories, or the tales of the patriarchs were always or at least usually correct. Gradually, however, I began to see that those narratives often do not demand such traditional assumptions, while sometimes they cannot sustain them at all. Without any desire to “disprove” the Bible or to remove all elements of the supernatural from the events described in its narratives, I am now inescapably aware of 021the human tendency to expand, embroider, and even completely recast important stories and traditions handed down from the past, sometimes in order to emphasize or clarify the importance of the past event for the individual or community, sometimes just because it is pleasing to do so.

Since that is the case in other cultures, including those of the ancient Near East, I assume that it has happened in the pre-canonical transmission of Biblical narratives as well. Consequently, while I respect the present form of Biblical traditions and take it seriously as a testimony to the developed faith of Israel and/or the early Church, I also try to discover what that developing faith itself contributed to those same traditions. Often enough, my limited understanding of and partial insight into the conditions of the past raise new questions that can lead me or others to better understanding, clearer insight, and still further questions—and so on and on.

Human faith is not dependent on definitive answers to such questions. Rather, it stretches forth past the vagaries and limitations of human knowledge to the God whose love is revealed in and through historical events. While such events may serve as vehicles for recognition and response in faith, their precise historicity often cannot be recovered.

I hope that my work will aid in understanding the historical past that repeatedly took on new meaning for subsequent generations of believers. Perhaps this will enable contemporary believers, myself included, to express and live our modern faith more richly and effectively.

To the Editor:

Ken Vander Kooi’s letter about the starting point (presuppositions) of archaeologists poses a serious and inescapable question. His letter reflects presuppositions about the “supernatural” Biblical record which should be brought to the surface and examined. His question speaks especially to me as an author of a widely used textbook (Understanding the Old Testament) in which the evidence of archaeology is taken into account in the exposition of the faith of the people of God.

It should be emphasized, first of all, that archaeology attempts to be a scientific discipline. The methodology of science requires that one must eliminate any stance of faith, ideology, or opinion and deal with the evidence as it presents itself. In the past some people have claimed with excessive enthusiasm that archaeology proves the Bible to be true after all. This has been bad for archaeology, which is not in the service of any faith or ideology, and for religious faith, which should not (at least in the Christian sense) stand in need of such “proofs” (“We walk by faith, not by sight.”). Archaeology is neither “humanistic” (natural) nor theistic (“supernatural”) in its starting point. It simply brackets out all philosophical perspectives, whether humanistic or theistic, and deals with the evidence presented in the field.

Second, the evidence that archaeology presents, and in this case we are talking about the Israelite conquest, is fragmentary and inconclusive. Archaeology is still a fairly young science. What has been explored so far is only a beginning. Moreover, the methods of archaeology are constantly being refined by new technology and by input from allied scientific fields. The problem is that the more we know, the more complicated the picture becomes and the more inadequate is any “simple” answer, whether Biblicist, naturalist, or Marxist. The virtue that best befits a scientific explorer is modesty—modesty in the face of the Biblical texts and modesty in the face of the fragmentary and puzzling evidence presented by field expeditions to date.

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Finally, the meaning of the evidence disclosed by archaeology cannot be interpreted by the archaeologist as a scientist. The archaeologist’s task is descriptive, not interpretive and certainly not theological. Speaking as a Biblical theologian, I question whether “the better way for God to show his glory and establish his kingship” (Vander Kooi’s language) would be to accept at face value the account of a dramatic blitzkrieg in the book of Joshua. After all, that account was written from a faith perspective, particularly to glorify the God who liberated Israel and gave her a future. If it proves to be that this account is an exaggeration of faith, and that a “peasants’ revolt” led by what Vander Kooi calls “an unskilled, ragtag Israelite army” is closer to what actually happened, is not this in itself, from the standpoint of faith, something marvelous—even a “miracle” which discloses the presence of God in human history? This is the question that I am wrestling with as I begin the task of producing a fourth edition of Understanding the Old Testament. As a scholar and a person of faith, I do not want to place any limitations on how the glory of God was manifest and how God’s kingship was established in the bewildering events that brought Israel onto the stage of history. In the face of the tension between the Biblical account and the archaeological evidence, my position would not be that ascribed to Tertullian, “I believe because it is absurd,” but rather that of Augustine, “I believe in order that I may understand.”

To the Editor:

As a pastor who frequently answers questions from laypersons about the “reliability” of Biblical history, I find relevance in the issue posed by Mr. Vander Kooi. With the increased accessibility of literature on archaeology as it relates to Biblical studies, more and more nonprofessionals are in touch with data in this field. This awareness is not always matched by the ability to discern how the data is best used or what it actually means for Biblical research. My sense of it is that some people filter the archaeological data through what amounts to an “apologetic” framework. When they do, archaeology becomes a source for “proving” or “discrediting” the Bible.

I confess my own roots go back into a more fundamentalist mindset when it comes to assessing the importance of archaeological finds to Biblical matters. It has been only in the last ten years or so that I have slowly come to see how we have driven this apologetic perspective to its tendentious extreme. In saying this, I don’t speak for or against any others who share my roots.

A helpful alternative to this is found by shifting the focus away from apologetics to consider the “expositional” value of archaeology to Biblical study. As Dr. Callaway put it, the focus is on “my understanding of the event.” The shift of attention is from apologetics to hermeneutics. At the exegetical level, archaeological research becomes a tool to illuminate and explain rather than a defense of our best-loved reading of the text. For those who share “roots” with me, I’d like to say this shift in emphasis opens up the text in a way that adorns its authority rather than detracting from it. This may mean surrendering some preconceived ideas of what the text means, but the loss is offset by an enlarged understanding. And isn’t that the goal of one who truly desires to be a “servant of the Word”?

When I preach from the text of Joshua, archaeology may well help me to understand the way “God helped” Israel. What I may need to do to grasp His “method” is to appreciate the subtleties suggested by archaeology, not only its obvious, broad strokes. What I may discover about the city of Ai, for example, is that it was for all practical purposes a “ruin” and not a “fortress” when Israel set out to conquer it. But her disastrous defeat at the hands of this “ruin” is given its proper moral implication because I know that Ai was a “ruin.” Here archaeology serves to instruct and not merely to defend the text. The Word’s authority is enhanced when the critical tools of research make its meaning clearer to us.

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Disparaging the Bible

To the Editor:

After reading the editor’s comments about the 29th Psalm being similar to an Ugaritic psalm that was part of the Canaanites’ worship of Baal (Queries & Comments, BAR 10:01), I have decided against renewing my subscription to BAR.

I’m sorry because I have really enjoyed and learned from your magazine.

Surely you do not want us to believe the Ugaritic text was inspired of God, or that David irresponsibly had this Psalm put down apart from the revelation of God. “For all scripture is given by inspiration of God” (2 Timothy 3:16). I believe the Holy Spirit protected our holy text from just this type of error.

I take my stand against anything which disparages the reliability of the Bible. So I will not renew my subscription.

To the Editor:

I have just received and consumed my first copy of Biblical Archaeology Review.

At first reading, some of the terminology and word pronunciation slowed me up a bit, but neither detracted from the dynamics of the articles presented.

BAR is a fine response to the sincere quest of this layperson to develop a manageable working knowledge of Biblical archaeology and its related herds of endeavor.

Even the advertisements proved to be of assistance.

Keep up the good work!

Reference to John the Baptist Outside the New Testament

To the Editor:

I was interested in the discussion in the September/October 1983 BAR (Queries & Comments, BAR 09:05) about whether there were any references outside the New Testament to Jesus.

How about John the Baptist? Are there authentic references to him outside the Gospels?

Dr. Louis H. Feldman of Yeshiva University, New York, New York, replies:

The only reference, outside the Gospels, to John the Baptist in the literature of the first century is 076to be found in Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18, sections 116–119, a passage, incidentally, almost twice as long as the one in our manuscripts of Josephus about Jesus (Antiquities, Book 18, sections 63–64, the authenticity of which is very much disputed). The passage about John declares that to some of the Jews the death of Herod Antipas the Tetrarch (son of the infamous Herod the Great) was the result of divine vengeance for his murder of John the Baptist, who is then described as a “good” man who “had exhorted the Jews to lead righteous lives, to practice justice toward their fellows and piety toward God, and so doing to join in baptism.” This baptism was employed not “to gain pardon for whatever sins they had committed but as a consecration of the body, implying that the soul was already thoroughly cleansed by right behavior.”

That this passage was written by Josephus is indicated by a number of characteristics in common with this part of the Antiquities and not with others, such as the love of periphrasis (e.g., “consort with baptism” for “be baptized”) and the use of unusual words for “punish,” “kill,” and “sin.” The best proof, however, that the passage is genuine comes from the Church Father Origen in the third century. Origen explicitly states that Josephus did not believe in Jesus as the Christ and hence Origen did not have in his text of Josephus the Testimonium Flavianum (Josephus’s passage about Jesus), at least as it stands in all our manuscripts. Origen does, however, cite this passage about John (in his Against Celsus). Moreover, it is hard to believe that, if the passage about John in Josephus was interpolated by a Christian, he would not have associated John with Jesus and that he would not have connected the death of John with John’s rebuke to Herod Antipas about his wife Herodias, as in the Gospels.

As to the reason for Josephus’s silence about John’s connection with Jesus, we may suggest that one reason may be that Josephus was wary about speaking of Messianic movements for fear of Roman disapproval.

Josephus (Antiquities 18, 118) says that Herod Antipas put John to death because he feared that the latter’s eloquence, which was attracting crowds, might lead to some form of sedition, but the Gospels (Matthew 14:3–12, Mark 6:17–29) state that John was imprisoned because he questioned Herod’s right to marry his sister-in-law, an event which Josephus (Antiquities 18, 110) mentions but which he does not connect with John. We may suggest that there is no necessary contradiction between Josephus and the Gospels as to the reason why John was put to death: the Christians chose to emphasize the moral charges that he brought against the ruler, whereas Josephus stressed the political fears that he had aroused in Herod.

The historian Heirich Graetz, in the later editions of his history of the Jews, regarded the passage about John in Josephus as spurious on the grounds that Josephus would not have called John a baptist without giving an explanation of what baptism is and that Josephus would not have used different forms for the word “baptism,” as he does within section 7 of Book 18. But, we may reply, Josephus does not explain every movement, and since there was no established Greek word for baptism, he might well have used two different forms of the word.

A passage about John is also found in the Old Church Slavonic translation (made in the 11th century) of Josephus’s Jewish War (after Book 2, section 168). He is there described as a “wild” man, the leader of a political movement, who dipped his followers in the Jordan River and who abstained from eating bread (and even on Passover did not partake of unleavened bread) and drinking wine, restricting his diet to the fruits of trees. The general view of scholars is that the passage is interpolated there is much Christian phraseology in it, and it may have been used in the ideological struggle against the Khazars, the people in southern Russia converted to Judaism in the eighth century.

Why Stone Vessels Are Not Susceptible to Uncleanness

To the Editor:

Whoever wrote the caption on the stone vessel in the November/December 1983 issue not only 077misunderstood an important point in Nahman Avigad’s article (“Jerusalem Flourishing—A Craft Center for Stone, Pottery, and Glass,” BAR 09:06) but may have misled your readers.

Avigad explained the widespread use of stone vessels in first-century Jerusalem by quoting the Mishnah, which tells us that, unlike vessels of pottery, “stone vessels … are not susceptible to uncleanness.” This Mishnaic statement refers to “Tum’ah and Taharah, the laws of ritual purity and impurity.

The author of the caption, however, misunderstood Avigad and applied his statement erroneously, not to Tum’ah and Taharah but to the Jewish dietary laws: “If a stone vessel was designated for use with meat dishes, for example, and then accidentally came in contact with milk, it could be purified and then reused.”

While this statement may be correct, it misses Avigad’s point completely. A vessel in a first-century Jerusalem house was far more likely to come into contact with one of the sources of ritual impurity—a menstruating woman, for example—than it was to come into contact with both meat and milk. It was the ritual purity laws, rather than the dietary laws, which encouraged the use of stone.

Stone vessels were used not because they could be purified but because they didn’t have to be purified. Under the laws of Tum’ah and Taharah, they simply couldn’t receive ritual impurity at all. This is the point that your readers should understand, despite the erroneous caption.

Rabbi Cohen is correct. The error was BAR’s. Professor Avigad has called our attention to two other errors in the captions to his article. The tabletop is an original find, not a replica. The bowls were found in the Jewish Quarter, not near the Temple Mount.—Ed.

To the Editor:

Thanks very much for continuing to make recent archaeological discoveries so readily accessible to a broad audience. Your superb color photography is an important bonus. There is a printer’s error in one photo in the January/February 1984 issue (“Probable Head of Priestly Scepter from Solomon’s Temple Surfaces in Jerusalem,” BAR 10:01) that should be noted. The seal of ‘Eliyahu (the son of) Yaqimyahu, whose letters were inscribed in reverse, unfortunately appears upside down in the printed photo. The reader needs to rotate the page 180° to view the photo properly. (To see the script as it would have appeared in an impression of the ancient seal, the reader can then view the rotated page reflected in a mirror.)

To the Editor:

The foregoing is the complete text of Mr. Nussbaum’s letter. It is written in Early Hebrew script, which we have translated as follows: “The seal of ‘Eliyahu in the magazine is upside down.”—Ed.

The Date of the Capernaum Synagogue

To the Editor:

In the November/December BAR (“Synagogue Where Jesus Preached Found at Capernaum,” BAR 09:06), James F. Strange and Hershel Shanks mention the two different datings for the later Capernaum synagogue (a higher chronology, second–third centuries; a lower chronology, fourth–fifth centuries) and state that “each side seems to have a convincing case”; ergo no conclusion is drawn in the article. However, it should be pointed out that the lower chronology is based on a single element: the hoard of 10,000 bronze coins from the fourth and fifth centuries. For this, a counterargument has been presented: the possibility that “the pavement was relaid in the fourth century” or more likely the fifth—perhaps with the purpose, precisely, of concealing the coins at a time of persecution and oppression. These same political conditions form part of the complex of arguments for the higher chronology, which also include architectural patterns (a very strong and convincing point), and the social-economic conditions of the country at the time. For none of these have any counterarguments been presented. One must conclude that the case for a higher chronology is by far the stronger.

James F. Strange replies:

We bent over backward to be fair to the two positions on the date of the white limestone synagogue at Capernaum, but it seems clear to me 078that stratigraphy favors the late date. The coins in question are in soil that runs under the floors and beneath the stylobates. The coins are also to be found all the way to the floor of the earlier building. The simplest method of explaining such data is to be preferred. The simplest explanation is that the white limestone building is fourth- or early fifth-century. We already know that Jewish communities were thriving in Galilee during these centuries, in spite of what the history books say, because of the archaeological evidence from Khirbet Shema and Gush Halav, excavated by Eric Meyers, Carol Meyers, and myself, and also from excavation data from Nazareth, Tiberias, Hammath Tiberias, Chorazim, Yaphia, Beth She’arim, Beth Yerah, and Beth She’an, all excavated by others.

Footnotes from Albright’s Assistants

To the Editor:

I read your article on Albright’s unpublished book (“The Book Albright Never Finished,” BAR 10:01) with great interest. As Albright’s last research associate, I may be able to clear up one mystery—what was intended for the first part of his book.

I first met W. F. Albright in Oxford in 1959, shortly after he published his review of Rudolph Karl Bultmann’s The Presence of Eternity: History and Eschatology (New York, 1957). Albright’s stringent review (Journal of Biblical Literature LXXVII, 3 (1958)) was but the first ranging shot in a long-continuing battle; Albright was fighting existentialism, a fashionable philosophy among intellectuals of his day. Albright considered it the 20th-century equivalent of Gnosticism. At that first meeting with him, I called his attention to Archbishop Whateley’s 19th-century work Historic Doubts Relative to the Existence of Napoleon Bonaparte (a remote ancestor of Albright’s later attacks on the various “isms” associated with Bultmann’s disciples).

When later I became Albright’s assistant in his so-called retirement, he would often revert to his review of Bultmann’s lectures; on more than one occasion, Albright asserted to me that his intention was to preface his book on the religion of Israel by two chapters on attitudes to history, using the second chapter as a kind of confessio fidei of his own convictions on the nature of history.

Those of us who were privileged to know him not only knew him as a perfectionist, but also knew very well the phrase “in my forthcoming … ”! The last time I recall his discussing the never-published work was in 1970, when he was re-reading Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies and comparing it with Toynbee and Collingwood. But perhaps after all, he made his point in his ever-readable History, Archaeology and Christian Humanism.

Dr. Mann and Dr. Albright edited the Gospel of Matthew in the Anchor Bible series.—Ed.

To the Editor:

Allow me a note to your note on “The Book Albright Never Finished,” BAR 10:01. You correctly state that the Jewish Theological Seminary provided Albright with an office, a research assistant and a secretary—whose name you cite. Since you were aware that Emunah Finkelstein was the late Albright’s secretary, I am surprised that you were unaware of the name of his research assistant.

I am proud to say that the research assistant referred to was none other than the writer of this letter.

Biblical Maps Needed

To the Editor:

I have been a subscriber to BAR for some time and am very pleased with it.

One thing I have never seen advertised in BAR is a set of large, up-to-date maps of Biblical lands—such as could be mounted on a tripod and used in classroom instruction. Do you suppose you could use your expertise and connections to locate, promote and sell such a set of maps? I have in mind maps that would be four to six feet square, perhaps on a roll like a windowshade, and would incorporate the most up-to-date archaeological findings. There is a very real need for such a product.

We’re looking into the matter.—Ed.

Ibex, Not Goats

To the Editor:

My identification of the animals on the Tel Dor stamp seal (“Excavation Opportunities 1984,” BAR 10:01) as goats is no doubt an error. They are probably either antelopes or ibex.

Roman Gourmands

To the Editor:

I was most interested in Professor Nahman Avigad’s article concerning the prosperity of Jerusalem in the period from 50 B.C. to its devastation by the legionaries of Titus (“Jerusalem Flourishing—A Craft Center for Stone, Pottery and Glass,” BAR 09:06).

It may be of some interest, in view of the writer’s observations on the tables of the time, to recall the culinary preferences and trappings of Rome’s patricians. Real or 080fictitious, dinners like those described by the satirist Juvenal, the feasts of Lucullus, and the party given by Trimalchio have become proverbial.

The menu might be composed of salads, shellfish, eggs, honey cakes, lobster, asparagus, mullet, lamprey, goose liver, a capon, boar, truffles, mushrooms, apples and apricots.

The principal meal took place toward evening, although a glutton like Nero sat down for a main meal at noon.

During the Republic women and children sat at the table, but during the Empire both men and women ate while reclining on angled couches arranged around square or rounded tables. These couches were often inlaid with tortoise shell, ivory, silver or gold and covered with brocades from Alexandria or Babylon. The cost of tables could take the buyer to the brink of bankruptcy. Made of cypress or citrus woods, sought after for their exquisite texture and grain, they had fittings of silver or gold, marble, bronze and ivory.

Not having forks (they were introduced to the West by the Byzantine Greeks in the tenth century), the Romans used their fingers along with spoons, ladles and knives.

An all-out banquet often consisted of at least seven courses, each accompanied by wine mixed with water. Dessert often included spicy foods with the intent to stimulate the desire for drink.

Imaginary dishes were very popular—one meat made up to resemble another, game stuffed with different kinds of game, mushrooms steeped in honey.

When Vitellius ascended the imperial throne for what turned out to be a reign of a mere six months, a feast held to celebrate the event saw 2,000 rare fishes and 7,000 equally rare birds consumed by the guests!

But it is Elagabalus, who reigned from 218 to 222, who takes the prize for conspicuous gourmandizing. He was served fish seasoned with gold dust, lentils sprinkled with precious gems, peas mixed with amber and rice smothered in pearls. The meal was rounded out with camel heels, ostrich brains and the tongues of peacocks and nightingales! His guests reclined on couches of solid silver!

Is it any wonder that it was seen as proper that guests should eat until ready to burst, then have servants induce vomiting with ostrich feathers placed in the throat and start again?

Devouring BAR

To the Editor:

I was moved—nay, alarmed—by a letter in the November/December 1983 issue of BAR from Dr. William F. Duerfeldt in which he tells us that he “literally devour[s] each and every issue [of BAR] from cover to cover (see Queries & Comments, BAR 09:06).” As a physician, Dr. Duerfeldt no doubt has easy access to some efficacious purgatives! I hope that in the future he will distinguish more accurately between “literally” and “figuratively.”