Queries & Comments

020

Ai and the Bible

To the Editor:

I read the articles, “The Problem of Ai,” BAR 11:02, by Ziony Zevit and “Was My Excavation of Ai Worthwhile?” BAR 11:02, by Joseph A. Callaway. It grieves my heart to read such anti-Bible material in the name of “Biblical” archaeology!

Apparently, Professors Zevit and Callaway do not believe the Bible because they constantly elevate archaeology above what the Bible says. This is a very dangerous practice because the Bible is the Infallible, Inerrant, Holy Word of the Living God. It is literally God-breathed. It is not just any book that can be tampered with according to whim (2 Peter 1:20–21; 2 Timothy 3:16; Psalms 12:6). It is not for us to add to, take away from, or contradict when something doesn’t appear to agree with what we think. It does not have to be proven to be true. It is God’s Word, the final Authority. Tampering with God’s Word is bound to bring God’s judgment upon that individual (Deuteronomy 4:2; Revelation 22:19–20). God’s ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are higher than ours (Isaiah 55:9). What God says is so!

Perhaps the Professors should remember that archaeology cannot claim inerrancy and infallibility for itself. Therefore, when there is any doubt, or difficulty, it is with archaeology, not with the Bible. Many years ago, I was told that if there was something I didn’t understand in the Bible, or something I didn’t agree with, the problem was with me, not with the Bible. I thought that was good advice at the time, and I still believe it is. God says it, that settles it, I believe it! Perhaps Professors Zevit and Callaway ought to think about practicing this advice themselves.

To the Editor:

I want to begin by telling you how much I enjoy your magazine. I have found the quality and the scholarship displayed in the publication always to be of the highest caliber.

After saying that, I must tell you that I was outraged by the article in your March/April 1985 issue, entitled “The Problem of Ai,” BAR 11:02, by Ziony Zevit. This article portrays the Biblical account of Ai as nothing more than an old folk tale that was conjured up by some old man trying to get people to pay attention to him. In portraying the Biblical account in this way, Mr. Zevit reveals the archaeological centricity of his views. Secondly, Mr. Zevit also makes some logical fallacies in his reasoning that need to be pointed out.

First, Mr. Zevit very obviously feels that the current available archaeological information is both all-inclusive and infallible, and that everything the Bible says must fit in with the information available to us right now. It seems to me that scholars a few generations back made the same mistake when they concluded that the Biblical account of the Hittite nation was mythological. However, in 1906, they discovered that all of the evidence was not yet in and that the verdict that was reached years before was erroneous. Nowhere in Mr. Zevit’s article does he allow for the possibility that all of the evidence may not be in. His reasoning proceeds along the lines of someone who has all of the facts that will ever be discovered.

He also demonstrates his archaeological centricity by examining many possible explanations that would harmonize the Biblical account with the available archaeological information and dismisses them all on the basis that they contradict various archaeological theories. However, he has no qualms at all about accepting these archaeological theories as facts and dismissing the inspired Biblical account as fairy tales and folk stories. I believe that this reveals the slant of Mr. Zevit’s views.

Second, I would like to point out some of the fallacies in Mr. Zevit’s reasoning. When Mr. Zevit tries to establish the geographical location of the city of Ai in Joshua 7–8, he goes to Genesis 12, which speaks of a city in the days of Abraham (at least 1,000 years before the days of Joshua). What sense does this make? Secondly, Mr. Zevit makes the blatant blunder of trying to “have his cake and eat it too.” He tries to equate the city of Ai with the modern site of Khirbet et-Tell by making reference to the many geographical references within the Biblical account. He treats these geographical references as if they were literal, historical accounts. He then concludes that the events that were said to have taken place within these literal, historical places were nothing more than folk tales. Mr. Zevit, you cannot have it both ways! Either the Biblical account is an inspired historical account of what really happened, or it was a story that was fabricated over a period of time. You cannot choose to accept part of the account as historical and dismiss what you do not wish to accept as being fictional.

The third fallacy Mr. Zevit makes is “whether the story of Ai is historically accurate is not important.” My question is why is it not important? The Bible claims to be God’s word. The Book of Joshua is written as an historical account. Nowhere within the Book of Joshua is there even the slightest hint that the stories contained therein are anything but literal, historical accounts. One of the primary rules of interpreting any kind of writing is that you should accept what is said as being literal, unless there is something within the context to indicate that it is figurative. There is nothing within the context of Joshua 7–8 that indicates it should be accepted as anything but literal and historical. Thus, if the account of Ai is not just as the Bible says it was, then the writer of the Book of Joshua was misleading, deceptive and void of any inspiration from God. If this is the case, how many other books within the sacred canon would Mr. Zevit imply are not inspired? Indeed, whether the account of Ai is true or not is all-important!

It is obvious that I have been very much disturbed by the things that were stated in Mr. Zevit’s article. I am not of the opinion that your editorial policy should be to print only those articles with which you agree. However, I do feel that you have an obligation as the editor of this fine magazine to point out such flagrant blunders when they occur.

To the Editor:

What a marvelous magazine you have in BAR. There is always a scramble on our faculty to get hold of the latest issue. The March/April 1985 BAR was no exception. Varda Sussman’s treatment of oil lamps was fascinating, and Ziony Zevit’s article, “The Problem of Ai,” BAR 11:02, was of particular interest to me, as were Joseph Callaway’s follow-up remarks. I’ve visited Ai (et-Tell) a number of times, and have mapped out the events described in Joshua 8. Like Zevit, I conclude that the topography of et-Tell fits the Joshua account with remarkable accuracy. After considering the evidence, however, I dffer with his conclusion that the battle at Ai is merely a bard’s tale which never actually took place. Some observations:

(1) Zevit and Callaway are surely correct in assuming that the Joshua account was written in the Iron Age, some time after the initial conquest. It need not, however, have been as 022late as the First Temple period, as Callaway suggests. His reference to the “silver and gold, and vessels of bronze and iron” that were saved for the “treasury of the House of the Lord” (Joshua 6 24) could just as easily have referred to the Tabernacle that was set up at Shiloh (see 1 Samuel 1:17). It is quite possible that the Joshua account was written during the period of the Judges.

(2) Zevit says that the ambush force at Ai consisted of 5,000 men, and that Joshua’s main attack force was 30,000 strong. The numbers in Joshua 8 are confusing, but I read it to be that the 30,000 were the ambush force. (Callaway points out that the confusing allusion to a 5,000-man force is not found in the Septuagint or the Qumran fragment.) To anyone who has been to Ai, however, the thought of 30,000 men sneaking undetected through the wadis around et-Tell is absurd. Perhaps the Hebrew word rendered in Joshua 8:3 and 8:25 as eleph (thousand), should instead be understood as aluph (professional soldier^a). The passage would then read “Joshua chose out thirty soldiers, mighty men of valor, and sent them away by night” to lie in ambush. The next morning he took an attack force with him whose numerical strength is not specified.

(3) In one sentence, Zevit dismisses W. F. Albright’s assertion that Bethel was the real object of the Israelites’ attack. Evidence is clear, however, that a major city was destroyed there at the end of the Late Bronze Age, the period we ascribe to the conquest. Ai must have been closely associated with Bethel, for Joshua 8:17 tells us “There was not a man left in Ai or Bethel that went not out after Israel,” leaving the city open. (This important aspect of the battle was omitted from the schematic plan that appeared with the article.) One might assume, as I do, that Bethel was the major target of the Israelite thrust, and that Ai was just a military lookout post manned by a few troops, whose assignment was to guard the approach wadi that led up from the Jordan valley to Bethel. Joshua 7:3 alludes to how few people were actually located at Ai, an abandoned ruin since the Early Bronze period. Furthermore, if Joshua 8:25 does refer to twelve soldiers instead of twelve thousand, we could hardly expect to find much of a Late Bronze settlement at Ai. Indeed it would suggest that Callaway was correct in assigning the Iron Age IA settlement, with its one burnt structure and population of not more than 150, to the Canaanite Hittites.

I believe the Bible is the Word of God as far as it has come down to us correctly, but I’m not a literalist who insists that every verse and story in the Bible must be accepted as absolutely accurate. Obviously Ai (et-Tell) had no large population at the time of the conquest, and suffered no great destruction at the hands of Joshua’s forces. Archaeology proves that. The Joshua 8 account, on the other hand, fits the lay of the land around Ai exactly; and Ai’s neighbor Bethel was destroyed in the conquest period. Archaeology proves that, too. It’s not so hard for me to believe that Joshua 8 is a somewhat embellished account of a real event—the rout of the Ai “lookout detail”—followed by the destruction of Bethel. But it’s not so easy for me to believe that Joshua 8 is an old bard’s tale that was edited into the conquest story three centuries after the fact, regardless how good the intent. Thanks anyway to Zevit, Callaway and BAR for some enjoyable and thought-provoking reading.

Ziony Zevit replies:

Mr. Chadwick suggests an alternative to the hypothesis presented in my article. He proposes that the absence of a Late Bronze destruction level at et-Tell be explained by hypothesizing (1) that Late Bronze Ai was but a small lookout station guarding the approach to Bethel from Jericho, (2) that it was manned by 12 soldiers, (3) that it was taken and destroyed by an ambush force of 30, (4) that because of its size and possibly makeshift nature no Late Bronze remains should be expected, and (5) that Bethel, which has a Late Bronze destruction level, was the true objective of the Israelite attack.

This “garrison” hypothesis is a more sophisticated one than that which was suggested off-handedly by L. H. Vincent more than 40 years ago in his attempt to explain away the implications of Marquet-Krause’s early work at Ai (“Les fouilles d’Et-Tell-‘Ai,” Revue Biblique 46 [1937], p. 262). Vincent’s hypothesis has generally been ignored by subsequent scholarship. Chadwick, like Vincent, purposes to maintain the general accuracy of the Biblical narrative, the integrity of the archaeological data and the Late Bronze date of the Israelite conquest. However, even in Chadwick’s formulation, this hypothesis remains untenable.

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The confusion that Chadwick discerns in the numbers is owing to the fact that verses 8:12–13 appear to be part of a parallel recension of the Ai story that was grafted on to the texts: verse 12 parallels verses 3b, 9a; verse 13a parallels verses 9b, 11a; verse 13b parallels verse 9b. (For additional details, see my study in Bulletin of American Schools of Oriental Research 251 [1983], p. 24.) It is far from certain that the tradition of a 30,000-man ambush force is preferable to that of a 5,000 man force, even if reference to the latter is absent from the Septuagint. The number 5,000 strikes me as narrative hyperbole.

Chadwick, however, interprets Hebrew ’-l-p not as it is vocalized, ’eleph, meaning “thousand” but as ’aluph, meaning “soldier.” Thus, a force of 30 (Joshua 8:3) supposedly wiped out a small garrison of 12 soldiers (Joshua 8:25). However, since the narrative in 7:5 indicates that Aiites managed to kill 36 Israelites out of an attack force of 3,000 soldiers—there is no possibility of the ’eleph/’aluph interpretation here (cf. 7:3). Moreover, since Joshua 8:1, 2, 23, 25 refer to the king of Ai, his territory and his citizens, both men and women, it is impossible to maintain that the narrative’s author intended to indicate that a mere 12 individuals inhabited Ai. Thus, the absence of the destroyed Late Bronze domiciles inhabited by 12,000 Ai-ites remains to be clarified.

Furthermore, the hypothesis ignores the data presented in my study that illustrate that the details of the Ai stories are congruent with the topography of the excavated Iron Age village, which was never destroyed, and not only with the general lay of the land. It also disregards the data that link both phases of the Iron Age village with the material culture of neighboring, contemporary Israelites.

The “garrison” hypothesis does find some apparent support in Joshua 8:17a, but this is not real. If Ai was actually a garrison for Bethel, it was an easily circumvented one, topographically irrelevant in a strategy to take Bethel. But most important, the story emphasizes that Ai was conquered, not Bethel, and that it and its population were destroyed. In and of themselves, the words “in Bethel” in Joshua 8:17 cannot support Chadwick’s hypothesis. There is no Bethel story in the extant Book of Joshua, and the seemingly intrusive words remain an exegetical enigma. (They are absent in the Septuagint!)

In final consideration, the “garrison” hypothesis, despite its intentions, fails to maintain the integrity not only of the archaeological data, but also of the Biblical narratives. Both are sacrificed at the altar of an a priori hypothesis that Ai must have been destroyed by Israelites at the end of the Late Bronze Age.

I do concur, however, with Chadwick’s first point, that the narrative could possibly have been written earlier in the Iron Age than suggested in my study.

Joseph Callaway replies:

Mr. Chadwick’s observation (3)—that “Ai must have been closely associated with Bethel, for Joshua 8:17 tells us “there was not a man left in Ai or Bethel that went not out after Israel”—assumes that Bethel was the main target of the Israelite invasion, and that Ai was the site of a military lookout post assigned to guard the wadi approach to Bethel.

The problem with this is that “or Bethel” does not appear in the Septuagint text of Joshua 8:17, and the Septuagint text is probably supported by the Qumran fragment of Joshua 8. The latter is a short text like that of the Septuagint, although the part of verse 17 referring to Ai is missing.

In any case, there is textual evidence from the Septuagint that does not associate Bethel with 024the capture of Ai in Joshua 8. This jeopardizes the theory—first proposed by Père L. H. Vincent of the École Biblique—that the ruin of Ai was a lookout post manned by soldiers from Bethel, the same theory held by Mr. Chadwick.

To the Editor:

Why is it not possible that the site of Biblical Ai was “so ravaged” by (a) the winds of time, (b) seasonal torrential downpours, (c) farmers looking for rubble to build walls, terraces, and houses, that an accurate archaeological interpretation is not possible? This to me seems very likely.

To the Editor:

C’mon BAR … you’ve been a class act. To print an article that states that the archaeology concerning supposed Ai presents problems with the Biblical text is one thing. But to print one that makes the grandiose conclusions Mr. Zevit makes is quite another. I wonder if Mr. Zevit thinks God is in as much of a hurry to have human scholarship reach a final conclusion on Joshua 8 as he is.

Mr. Zevit blatantly displays his presuppositions near the end of his article when he says, “Whether the story of Ai is historically accurate … is not important. What is important is the meaning of the story.” That kind of existentialist statement should have no place in your magazine. I read your magazine for archaeology, not for some sophomoric bias against God’s ability to communicate to us accurately. The Word of God is not on trial—the resolve to keep digging is.

To the Editor:

I read with great interest the articles on Ai in the March/April BAR. Also, with quiet amusement. Once again, human science finds itself in complete opposition to a literalist interpretation of the Scriptures.

The nervous Nellies among the faithful can take comfort in the fact that human science is admittedly, and by its very nature, incomplete. Fresh discoveries are always being made, which not infrequently completely invalidate convictions firmly held for ages.

The divine Revelation is not incomplete. It is, however, subject to considerable misinterpretation. When the archaeologists and the exegetes have finally gotten to the bottom of the matter, they will agree.

Sit tight, and wait for the spade-and-shovel crowd to get it straight.

No Idols on the Cover

To the Editor:

I have received and read my first issue of Biblical Archaeology Review (March/April 1985), and I have decided to cancel my subscription.

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I find it disturbing to have a magazine in my home with a cover showing an idol that was an abomination to God. He commanded that those images be burned and destroyed. I will not allow anything used for idol worship to remain in my home—even on a magazine cover. It is an abomination to me also.

I am interested in Biblical archaeology, but that interest is not as important as my desire to serve and glorify our Living God.

Thanks from Poland

To the Editor:

I am a student of Christian archaeology at the Catholic Academy of Theology in Warsaw. Thank you and thank you again for the issues of Biblical Archaeology Review. This is a great help for me and my friends from the academy, because BAR cannot be bought in Poland. Your magazine is informative and excellent, scholarly and scientific. Once more, thank you very much for your unique magazine.

The Borowski Collection and Pillage

To the Editor:

I find it hard to believe that you would give space to “The Homeless Treasures of the Borowski Collection,” BAR 11:02. It may be a pretty collection, but no responsible curator of ancient art would give space to that collection. Indeed, Mr. Borowski and men like him are the reason that ancient sites are pillaged by the local population, since they make it worthwhile to carry out the pillage. No wonder the Borowski collection remains in the vaults of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada. You should have realized that Borowski’s collection has no place in any serious collection of antiquities.

To the Editor:

Reading the end of your article about Borowski and his collection was sad for me. It seems strange to have so much trouble. At such time as requests are made for the fund for the Bible Museum, I will donate $100.

American Archaeologists Consider Selling Artifacts to Finance Excavations

To the Editor:

Your readers may be interested to know that the issues raised in BAR recently concerning selling antiquities to finance professional excavations (“BARview: A Radical Proposal: Archaeologists Should Sell Ancient Artifacts,” BAR 11:01) have also come up in the context of American archaeology.

In a recent issue of the newsletter of the Society of Professional Archaeologists (Vol. 9, Nos. 3–4, March and April, 1985), Thomas A. King, a professional staff member of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (speaking for himself and not the council), included the following in his remarks:

“We are unlikely to stop people from digging up sites, whether on land or undersea, through police action. There are not enough archaeo-cops to patrol even the Federal lands … not to mention the seabed. Potters are free to plunder on most private land, and absent the sort of revolution few of us would welcome, we haven’t a prayer of even enacting laws to stop that, let alone enforcing them. There is a commercial market for the stuff people dig up, and it is not going to disappear.

“I think an argument can be made for altering our approach to pothunting that’s similar to that made for decriminalizing the use of marijuana—maybe a better one, since there’s little evidence that pothunting is dangerous to health (unless, like Moshe Dayan, one is careless with one’s pit walls). The cops can’t catch all the pothunters any more than they can all the pot growers, smugglers, and users; it may make more sense, in terms of social and economic costs and benefits, to legalize and regulate.

“We could with a clear conscience establish cooperative arrangements with private financiers to expand the scope of 078excavations in endangered sites, provided that, after analysis, commercially valuable items were registered and went to the backers for their use or sale. We could establish systems like the one I understand State Archaeologist David Madsen is considering in Utah, in which artifacts coming from approved excavations are registered, legally transferable, and the source of tax credits if donated to museums. With such strategies we could begin, at least, to co-opt the black market that drives much of the pothunting and wreck salvaging industry. We could expand our own base of political and financial support, reduce the waste of time and resources associated with police action against pothunters, and redirect the energies of many pothunters and their financial backers unto useful endeavors.

“It is difficult to justify an ethic that calls for every Caddoan pot and pirate doubloon to repose in a museum or laboratory when proper storage of the stuff is becoming a national problem, and nobody has demonstrated a research imperative for having them all there.”

Keep up the excellent work with BAR. The only problem I have with it is that your seminars and requests for diggers make me want to pack up and leave for Israel. A “good” site in South Texas will contain maybe seven pieces of flint, two mussel shell fragments and one piece of pottery, all on the surface or within the top 20 cm. Quite a letdown from digging in BAR.

Thanks again for keeping us informed.

The Use of Chains in Siege Warfare

To the Editor:

I reread with interest the article by Yigael Yadin on “The Mystery of the Unexplained Chain,” BAR 10:04, and thought you might be interested in a passage from Thucydides’ “The Peloponnesian War” that describes the use of a similar “anti-siege” apparatus:

“At the same time as they were constructing the mound the Peloponnesians brought up siege engines against the city. One of these was brought to bear on the great barricade facing the mound, and battered down a considerable part of it, causing much alarm among the Plataeans. Others were brought up against various parts of the city wall. Some of these the Plataeans lassoed and then broke; they also suspended great beams by long iron chains fastened to the ends of two poles projecting horizontally from the top of the wall, and whenever an engine was being brought up into position they drew the beam up at an angle to the engine, and let it go with the chains slack, so that it came rushing down and snapped off the nose of the battering ram.”

This is a fifth-century B.C. explanation of an eighth-century B.C. artifact discovered by David Ussishkin at Lachish; although Yadin’s commentary pertains to a ninth-century B.C. relief, this quote from Thucydides may be relevant, given that siege warfare did not appreciably change until gunpowder and the cannon became major factors at the end of the Middle Ages.

How Was the Tetragrammaton Pronounced?

To the Editor:

An editorial note in BAR, November/December 1984 (“Who or What Was Yahweh’s Asherah?” BAR 10:06) states that the pronunciation Yahweh for the Tetragrammaton is “by scholarly convention.” It should be noted that there are many strong linguistic and epigraphic arguments in favor of Yahweh as the correct form. There are Greek transcriptions from religious papyri in Egypt; there are personal names in Biblical Hebrew ending in –yahu, which is the typical “short form” (jussive, i.e., commands, and past tense) for verb forms of the particular type in which the last two consonants were originally waw (w) and yod (y). The “long form” of those same verbs ends in –eh. The Anglicized form, Jehovah, is a “ghost word” based on the four consonants, YHWH, with the vowels of another word, adonai, meaning, “my Lord.” The Hebrew scribes of the Middle Ages put those vowels in to remind the reader to say adonai rather than pronounce the sacred Name. But 079in the first syllable, they nevertheless put in an e rather than an a so as not to cause anyone to see the syllable ya– and inadvertently blurt out the sacred Name! This is just further proof of the correct first syllable, which in any case is confirmed by Greek spellings and the evidence of Hebrew linguistics. So Yahweh is not just some sort of “scholarly convention.”

Woman’s Work Is Never Done

To the Editor:

I read with interest Varda Sussman’s article on ancient lamps, “Lighting the Way Through History,” BAR 11:02. I would like to make the following comments.

The story in the editor’s caption that “it was the woman of the house who was obliged to perform this chore” (adjusting the wick of a lamp), “getting up two or three times each night, winter or summer, to keep the ‘pilot’ light burning” goes back to the classical paper of Robert H. Smith (Biblical Archaeologist 27 [1964], pp. 1–31). I do not know where this scenario originated, but surely it cannot be deduced solely from the second part of Proverbs 31:18. The verse in question reads:

“She perceives that her work is profitable—
her lamp does not go out at night.”

The author uses here a form of poetic parallelism in which the second part of each verse expands on the first part (cf verses 31:19, 20, 21, 22, etc.). If the second part of verse 31:18 had referred to household chores of the wife, then the first part of the verse would have to deal with a related activity. But this is not the case. The most reasonable interpretation of the second part of verse 31:18 is that a good wife “burns the midnight oil,” or alternatively that she makes the household so prosperous that she can afford to keep a lamp constantly burning. In neither case can the verse be related to the chore of trimming the wick of a lamp.

To the Editor:

“Lighting the Way Through History,” BAR 11:02, by itself was worth the price of the issue. I look forward to each issue for I know that you are going to have something really worth reading and filing in my library.

Iron Age Cadillacs

To the Editor:

Norman Ward’s letter to the editor on “How to Reconstruct an Ancient Inscription,” Queries & Comments, BAR 11:03, is the best spoof on archaeology I have seen in a long time.

It reminds me of the days when I was a student of archaeology at the Sorbonne, Paris. My husband used to tease me that while he was free to admire the beauty of classical art, all I was interested in were “bore holes” as clues for proper dating of Roman sculptures.

I stopped looking for bore holes years ago. My enjoyment of archaeology comes now primarily from scholarly articles in BAR. Finding a pearl of irreverent wit such as the “Iron Age (Cadil)l(acs)” letter adds to the pleasure of reading BAR from cover to cover (as I do).

Thank you for printing it!

Thank you for writing.—Ed.

To the Editor:

I have just finished reading Norman Ward’s letter, “Iron Age (Cadil)l(acs)—or How to Reconstruct an Ancient Inscription,” and I must say I almost laughed myself sick.

Is there any possibility of your getting Mr. Ward to appear in BAR with his own column?

Your magazine and the field of Biblical archaeology needs this kind of humor in the worst way.

Charges BAR with Pandering to Sensationalism

To the Editor:

Readers expecting a report on the significant archaeological discussions of the December 8–11 meetings in Chicago must have been startled to read the BARview on those meetings (“BARview: Annual Meetings Offer Intellectual Bazaar and Moments of High Drama,” BAR 11:02). Of nine columns devoted to a report of the meetings five focused on the bizarre incidents peripheral to the SBL plenary session honoring Jacob Neusner.

Although the BAR reader will never learn the content of that session from reading BARview, the discussion was on two books of Professor Neusner’s dealing with Judaism in late antiquity as viewed through the Mishnah and the Palestinian Talmud.

Rare indeed is any consideration in the pages of BAR of matters dealing with the archaeologically recoverable life of the Jewish communities in the Near East during the Amoraic and Saboraic periods. (That paucity at least accurately reflects the quantity of archaeological activity devoted to the archaeology of Judaism in late antiquity; see Eric Meyers, “The Use of Archaeology in Understanding Rabbinic Materials,” Texts and Responses, Nahum Glatzer Festschrift, eds., M. Fishbane and P. Flohr, 1975.) It is even rarer that a journal committed to archaeological reporting should focus its attention on a session devoted to two classic works of ancient Judaism.

From the perspective of the BAR reader, this aspect of the report is minimally a case of mistaken emphasis. Having made that error of judgment, it is even more dubious to report not at all on Professor Neusner’s and the panelists’ papers, but only on the discussion of Professor Smith dealing with another 080work of Professor Neusner’s, a work not under discussion in that session.

If BAR wishes to give space in its pages to discussions of other ancient Jewish classics than the Bible and to broaden the chronology of its normal concern, it should do so and be commended for that action. But it should do so in a forthright manner by discussing Yerushalmi translations directly and not as an unrelated addendum within a general report on a meeting with a plethora of scholarly riches, many of which, like Mishnah and Yerushalmi, have been presumed to have little interest for the BAR reader.

Your justification for a distorted report is that it was “the dramatic high point of the meeting.” From my perspective it was far from a high point. The pursuit of scholarly truth is a high calling and disagreement in the interests of eliminating error should be encouraged. None of these norms, however, is served by those who destroy discussions devoted to other topics without regard for any acknowledged canon of dispute. Those who devote valuable space to such a travesty of scholarly discourse lay themselves open to the accusation of pandering to the sensationalism which fosters the increase of subscribers, but not the increase of truth.

To the Editor:

If a lay person may enter a scholars’ hassle, I’d like to comment on the Lieberman-Neusner-Smith argument over the Jerusalem Talmud. With Professor Morton Smith, I congratulate you on opening the issue, and with him, think it “a public service,” not because of “the wretched translation,” but rather because it will get the Talmud—a compendium of Judaic thought—into the public domain, as part of American education where it belongs.

Dean Kraabel, commenting on your coverage, writes in the May/June issue of BAR (Queries & Comments, BAR 11:03): “I had sufficient to say about Neusner’s failings, but for all his faults, he is the best thing to happen in Jewish studies for the Gentile Academy in a very long time. If other Jewish scholars were covering the areas he does, and reaching the vast audience he does, that would be one thing, but they are not. They do not wish to, nor do they wish Neusner to, and that is unfortunate.” Who is “they”? And why does Dean Kraabel need to be so protective of Neusner with all his “failings and faults”?