Queries & Comments

020

Text and Pictures on the City of David

To the Editor:

I must congratulate you on a spectacular November/December issue. This issue is one of the best and most interesting I have received during my two years of subscribing. The article by Hershel Shanks summarizing Yigal Shiloh’s book on his excavations in the City of David was particularly helpful to me. When I visited Israel in June, 1983, I took pictures of the area of the “stepped-stone structure” and Ahiel’s house, but at the time no one in our party was able to say much of anything conclusive about these excavations. It’s been great to go back to my snapshots after reading this article and identify structures that puzzled me earlier.

I am inclined to agree with Mr. Shanks’s statements concerning Warren’s Shaft. If it is truly a natural crevasse in the rock, why wouldn’t it have been used in the time of David?

The crowning glory of this month’s magazine is Lloyd Townsend’s watercolor of Solomonic Jerusalem. When I saw it, I was thrilled. While it may not be 100 percent accurate (I would have put more trees and signs of occupation in the environs), that painting gave me more of an appreciation for what ancient Jerusalem was like than all the maps in all the Bible atlases I have on my shelves. Would you kindly let me know how I can obtain a print of this work? BAR would be doing its readers a great favor by making it available in the catalogue. I’m sure many synagogues and Sunday schools would be glad to have a painting like this on their walls. Please convey my appreciation to Mr. Townsend. I would like to see more of his work in the pages of BAR.

Thank you again for a marvelous issue.

To the Editor:

My wife and I were among the first visitors at the City of David after it was opened to the public in July 1985. The experience, especially descending the Jebusite tunnel, was both exhilarating and confusing. I simply could not orient myself. What had the City of David looked like? Could it really have been built on such a steep hill? Where did the people live? Your absorbing article dealing with Yigal Shiloh’s report answered many of my questions.

I was gratified by Lloyd K. Townsend’s rendition of Jerusalem in King Solomon’s time. For the first time, I saw a picture of the entire city, including the Temple and palace. But some of the details of the painting puzzled me. Although I understand the buildings in the residential area were terraced, the area still seemed not nearly steep enough. I base this on what I saw during my recent visit. Also, the southern wall and enclosed residential buildings appear far too high above the surrounding terrain.

I suggest you have artists portray restorations of other archaeological sites based on literary and archaeological facts. I have in mind sites such as Herod’s Masada, Megiddo, Hazor, Herodium, Gamla, Gezer, Jericho. Of course, there are so many more.

To the Editor:

I loved Lloyd Townsend’s picture of Solomon’s Jerusalem. I would like to have a copy suitable for framing.

What would be the cost?

Lloyd Townsend requests that anyone interested in prints of his painting write him at 133 South River Street, PO. Box 36, Maytown, Pennsylvania 17550.—Ed.

The Neusner Affair

To the Editor:

Thank you for your well-done editorial on the disturbing Jacob Neusner fiasco (“BARview: The Neusner Phenomenon—Personality and Substance,” BAR 11:06). I am a long-time admirer of his and have read many of his pieces. I have always come away from him immensely more informed and with numerous exciting insights.

I am now saddened by all of these recent events. Morton Smith is not blameless, but neither is Jacob Neusner. I must admit that I have always wondered about Neusner’s penchant for publishing more books than many people ever read. I guess you really cannot have it both ways, can you?

Thank you again for your contribution to this discussion.

This letter, by the way, comes from a former East Texas fundamentalist preacher and Bob Jones University graduate; much has happened since then. Thanks for your assistance in my process.

To the Editor:

BAR continues to be a high quality (in appearance) and informative journal to which I plan to continue subscribing.

But I do find distressing your devoting valuable space to the ego-tripping Jacob 021Neusner and his rabbinical stance within whatever circles (or squares) he moves. BAR readers are not largely interested in infightings, intrigues and repartee of insults whether by Jews, Christians or Moslem scholars.

The Neusner affair gives scholarship a bad name and is not a good example to the youthful readers that BAR seeks to attract.

I say, Let Neusner et al. fight their battles in their esoteric, sectarian journals.

To the Editor:

As a new subscriber as well as a nonprofessional, I was intrigued by the guerre de plume between Jacob Neusner and Shaye J. D. Cohen. The editorial comments under “BARview: The Neusner Phenomenon—Personality and Substance,” BAR 11:06, were worth the subscription price alone.

One thought was in my mind as I read this review, a maxim that I have tried to live by (not always successfully): “The real test of good manners is the ability to put up with poor ones.” Bless you, Professor Cohen, for passing the test!

To the Editor:

I am writing this letter after long and painful deliberation. I have been a subscriber to BAR for many years and your reports on archaeological activities in and near Israel, your scholarly articles and beautiful photographs bring intellectual stimulation and pleasure to this retired rabbi and lover of the Bible. I am especially pleased by the absence of bias, prejudice and missionary zeal in your publication.

However, I must strongly disagree with your views on the “Neusner Phenomenon” (“BARview: The Neusner Phenomenon—Personality and Substance,” BAR 11:06).

1. Your report on the “dramatic episode at the Society of Biblical Literature meeting” (“BARview: Annual Meetings Offer Intellectual Bazaar and Moments of High Drama,” BAR 11:02) was hostile against Professor Neusner. Your subsequent report (“BARview: Neusner Joins Ranks of Superman,” BAR 11:03) added only obfuscation and confusion to this much misunderstood controversy. I assume Professor Neusner also overreacted when he threatened to bring suit against BAR. After your second article the question was no longer: Who is right? Or: What is the academic value of Jacob Neusner’s work? You changed the question to: Why is Jacob Neusner less admirable?

2. To pass judgment on the scholarship and academic value of Jacob Neusner’s achievements is completely outside the field of Biblical archaeology. The Society of Biblical Literature may find it within its competence to judge writings on post-Biblical literature, if one wishes to classify the Mishnah and the Talmud as such. Biblical archaeology, however, cannot be expected to contribute to a better understanding of Mishnah, Toseftah, Midrashic literature, or any other works of the rabbis of late antiquity.

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3. If I am correct in assuming that Jacob Neusner does not claim to be an authority in the field of archaeology and if I am correct that BAR does not claim to be an authority in the field of rabbinic literature, then I am perplexed by your continuous dwelling on “The Neusner Phenomenon.”

In my opinion this discussion does not belong in your magazine. To use the words of the late Professor Louis Ginzberg:

“You may be right from your point of view, but your point of view is wrong.”

I hope and trust that you will resume your unbiased scholarly publication, bringing us the fascinating reports on excavations. That is where you are at home—and that is where we need your guidance.

To the Editor:

Professor Jacob Neusner’s fertile imagination, coupled with a notorious fixation for secularizing Judaic Studies, has led him to conclusions hopelessly more colorful than credible.

Particularly outrageous is his conjecture that the Mishnah is not a compilation of laws and traditions, but a philosophical reaction to the national disasters of the destruction of the Temple [70 A.D.] and the Bar Kokhba war [132–135 A.D.]. As a response to the theological crisis brought about by these tragedies, Neusner claims, the Tanaaim created the Mishnah.

That the Mishnah was compiled as a result of certain national problems is not a new concept; traditionalist scholars said this long ago. To be sure, there were problems: In the aftermath of the destruction Israel was leaderless and disorganized, drowning in a sea of suffering. There was a danger of the nation’s breaking into fragment—sects. Rome would not consent to the establishment of a central authority capable of unifying the nation. Any hope of regaining national stability was crushed under persecution and oppression by the emperors Domitian, Trajan and Hadrian. There was a dire need to codify the myriad laws and traditions of the Torah hitherto largely disjoined and lacking any sort of organized arrangement or codification.

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But a theological crisis? If there was such a crisis, surely there would be some evidence of it in the Mishnah itself. But alas, there is none! The Mishnah often confronts theological issues and engages in philosophical probes; never, though, is Neusner’s crisis so much as hinted at.

If the Mishnah was indeed created in reaction to these tragedies, why is the issue not dealt with directly and at length—why does the Mishnah not address the all-important theme of Judaism after the destruction? Indeed, these tragedies are rarely cited in the Mishnah in any context; and in relation to their aftermath they are never mentioned at all—a ridiculous way for the Mishnah to treat its very reason for existence.

As to why there was no such theological emergency, Professor Shaye Cohen calls this “a question worth pursuing.” Actually, the reason is quite simple: Long before the destruction of the Temple, Claudius gave to Agrippa II, governor of Chalcis, the power and authority to supervise and manage the Temple affairs. Agrippa took advantage of this position for power and profit by plundering the Temple treasury (hitherto used for the benefit of the people) and selling the office of Temple high priest to whomever he pleased. Many of these high priests were low and ignorant men of the deviant Saducee sect who used their position of power to wreak untold havoc for their own benefit.

Under these high priests and their cohorts the people suffered a reign of terror as yet unexperienced in Israel. Nothing the people could do would rid them of this ineradicable cancer, and the Sages eventually came to the terrifying realization that “If a serpent would coil itself around a keg of honey, would not the keg have to be broken to destroy the serpent? (T.B. Gittin 56b)”; Judaism would be able to function unencumbered only after the destruction of the Temple.

After the destruction, the Saducee high priests no longer existed. Indeed, the entire Saducee sect is almost entirely unheard of after the destruction. The Herodians were lost among the Romans. The Essenes went out of existence. Judaism was now basically pure, and the nation could go back to serving God without the influence and oppression of these dissident elements.

There was no post-destruction spiritual crisis because the people were prepared with a weltanschauung that allowed them a healthy acceptance of the destruction as a tragic but necessary evil for the proper functioning of the nation. There was grief, to be sure, but also relief; the only leader the nation now had was the Torah. It is interesting to note that 074among a people who were constantly plagued by deviant theological groups, for the next 400 years no new groups like this were born, and the old ones were almost totally forgotten. Puzzling, isn’t it, in view of the massive theological crisis taking place (according to Neusner)?

Neusner admits that the ancients themselves understood the Mishnah to be a code of laws and not some philosophical troubleshooter. He proposes, however, that the sages of the Talmud misunderstood its meaning, that they distort the original significance of its conception. Could be. But if, say in 1,000 years from now, some scholar with an obsession for de-Americanizing the American Constitution will claim that the Constitution is not really a book of laws as it appears to be, but a theo-philosophical essay whose original meaning was oh, so thoroughly distorted all these centuries—well, even those gullible ones who wouldn’t laugh would agree that the onus probandi would lie quite heavily, quite completely, on his shoulders. Neusner expects us to accept his fairyland as fact without the scholarly corroboration necessary to back it up. Without such corroboration, Neusner’s suggestions are so hollow that they can be considered by the objective listener naught but a twisted, counterfeit image of history.

Jacob Neusner’s considerable capabilities as a serious scholar are so wedded to secularism that they are obliged to leap to their deaths proudly waving its banners. The choice, as always, is his.

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A Nude Philistine Captive from Jerusalem?

To the Editor:

The bearded figure on a recently discovered cultic stand from Jerusalem (illustrated in “The City of David After Five Years of Digging,” BAR 11:06) is perhaps much more interesting and significant than your brief caption and paragraph would indicate. Most obviously, he is wearing a type of headdress (or hairstyle) which identifies him as a Philistine: it is the so-called feathered crown so familiar from Egyptian reliefs a couple of centuries earlier. Even closer parallels, how ever, with pointed beard and wild splaying headdress, comes from Enkomi, Cyprus (see drawing).

Yigal Shiloh suggests the man is clutching the legs of an animal carried across his shoulders. But is there really room for an animal’s body behind his head? The published photograph and drawing (below) argue against it, and in any case we would expect four legs (not two) and some indication of hoofs below. Furthermore, the position of his supposed hands and forearm would require that his elbows be somewhere below his genitals and that his shoulders and chest be remarkably broad. Obviously something is wrong here. Why would a “nude male captive,” as you suggest, be carrying an animal on his shoulders anyway?

You come close to the truth in noting “another pair of hands” which perhaps “belong to someone else who holds (him).” The confusion comes in determining which 069hands are his, and which are someone else’s. It seems clear to us, as the drawing below shows, that the “animal legs” are in reality the captive’s arms, hunched up at the shoulders; that the upper pair of hands (with attached forearm) are “someone else’s”; and that the lower pair of hands are in fact the captive’s. Note that the arms are clearly defined on the outside, but smoothly joined to the man’s body on the inside. The knobs above the captor’s hands are the captive’s elbows; and if the deep line across the man’s wrist is an incision and not a break, it may represent ropes or handcuffs (as seen in this depiction of Philistine prisoners [bottom] from a wall painting at Medinet Habu in Egypt).

The date of the piece (Iron Age II, tenth century B.C.) places it soon after the Philistines’ defeat at the hands of David, a time when they were no longer expanding, but were not yet conquered. The appearance of a captive Philistine on a cultic stand from the City of David takes on added significance then, for the enemies of Israel were the enemies of Yahweh, and what better way to depict God’s favor than to decorate his Temple furnishings with his vanquished opponents?

The writers of the foregoing letter are BAR readers who also re-interpreted an installation at Tell Dan (Queries & Comments, BAR 08:03). The excavator had interpreted it as a cult installation involving a water libation ceremony (“The Remarkable Discoveries at Tel Dan,” BAR 07:05). The Smalls were the first to identify it as an olive press. Subsequently, a number of prominent scholars came to the same conclusion as the Smalls had (“Is the Cultic Installation at Dan Really an Olive Press?” BAR 10:06). We look forward to seeing what happens to their latest suggestion printed above.—Ed.

BAR’s Radical Proposal and the Advertising of Antiquities

To the Editor:

As a recent subscriber and archaeology/anthropology student (in the American fashion), I have been following with some interest the debate over your “Radical Proposal” for archaeologists to sell artifacts (“BARview: A Radical Proposal: Archaeologists Should Sell Ancient Artifacts,” BAR 11:01). It is a logical and sensible idea in many ways. However, I still find your present position of carrying ads for the sale of antiquities untenable under present conditions. Were your proposal now actually in effect worldwide, the support of antiquities sales would not be hurting archaeology, but helping it, as you so admirably point out. That is, sadly, not the case at present.

To say that site robberies and destruction took place before you ran any of those ads, and that not running the ads wouldn’t prevent any robberies is a ridiculous argument. No one is saying that your handful of ads supports the totality of site robberies, or that your choosing not to run them would end the problem, but the people who run those ads give the practice a legitimacy it should not have (and I must admit, I’m tempted by some of the items in those ads myself).

I don’t think anyone expects BAR to stem the tide of illegal artifact markets single-handedly by not running a few ads, but you can stem the trickle for which you are responsible, and make a statement to and for your readers on the problem in general. Maybe your readers will be less likely to buy illegal goods when overseas if a publication they respect makes a firm stand against such 075practices.

I hope you will reconsider your present policy. Your “radical proposal” is a great idea, and a major step towards a real workable solution to the problem, but we aren’t out of the woods until it becomes more than just a proposal.

BAR’s Objectionable Ads

To the Editor:

I have been an enthusiastic reader of BAR for the past four years. Obviously there are many viewpoints on most topics and nearly all have challenged my thinking. Most of the time the articles are professionally written without any obvious hidden agendas.

This is why I am disturbed by the ad “Books on Biblical Criticism” by Prometheus Books. The tone of this ad betrays its intent. Christianity did not arise totally outside of any historical content, but to claim that Christianity is a hoax as these book summaries indicate is beyond the scope of a magazine of your stature. Is BAR trying to challenge or alienate its readers? I would be equally incensed by ads with an anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic bent.

It would sadden me to have to discontinue your publication.

To the Editor:

Lately I have noticed certain ads (and I am well aware of the necessity of advertising revenue to hold down production costs and all that) which make the magazine look … well, spurious. It is somewhat embarrassing to show BAR to friends when they see “SENSATIONAL NEW DISCOVERY PROVES BIBLE INSPIRED—DECODE BIBLE RIDDLES … Did Jesus pantomime the year of His return?”

Even worse, then I see an ad from a company that is unashamedly opposed to conservative Judaism, Evangelical Christianity, and any other faith that rests on revelation: “Books on Biblical Criticism” reads the heading for an ad for Prometheus Books. Who brought us that masterpiece of atheistic secularism, Humanist Manifesto I & II?

I spend a lot of hard-earned money for BAR and I don’t want to pay for advertising mumbo-jumbo and a publisher who wants to muzzle anyone with a religious opinion of any kind except hostility to religion. I’m not planning to cancel my subscription as a 076knee-jerk reaction, but I would really like a clarification as to BAR’s orientation. Is the intent of BAR to be Biblical, or to be anti-Biblical?

Traveling Companion

To the Editor:

I was delighted to see Nitza Rosovsky’s article “Traveling Companions—A Guide to Guidebooks,” BAR 11:06, which included reviews of three of my guides (Berlitz Jerusalem and the Holy Land, Frommer’s Israel on $30 & $35 a Day and Berlitz Egypt). All in all I found the reviews very perceptive and accurate.

My new (’86-’87) edition of the Frommer guide to Israel on $30 & $35 a day (not available when you did your reviews) does indeed treat the Nea, the Cardo and the four Sephardic synagogues; it also has new maps.

Again, thanks for actually studying the books, and for finding the real strengths and weaknesses. So often, reviews of travel guides are sketchy and based on stereotypes and vague assumptions. It takes a scholar to do it right.

Another Guide to Egypt

To the Editor:

I was surprised by the absence of W. J. Murnanes’ The Penguin Guide to Ancient Egypt (Penguin, 1983) in Rosovsky’s article on guidebooks (“Traveling Companions—A Guide to Guidebooks,” BAR 11:06). I would find this compact paperback an excellent companion. The first 100 pages are devoted to background information that is well worth reading before arriving in Egypt. There is a capsule king list and history (six pages) and recommendations for further reading (keyed by chapter). The remainder of the volume is a well-indexed guide to the monuments. Practical information includes museum hours. The 8 maps and 166 figures are often annotated so that the reader can orient himself or herself and follow the discussion of the monument panel by panel.

My evaluation of this book is:

5 Index

3 Practical Information

5 Maps

0 Hotels

5 Site Plans

0 Restaurants

5 Chronology

4 General Appearance (no color except on the cover)

5 Essays

Text and Pictures on the City of David

To the Editor: