Queries & Comments

012

Praise and Blame for La Sor

I enjoyed your article on “Discovering What Jewish Miqva’ot Can Tell Us About Christian Baptism,” BAR 13:01, by William La Sor. I found it scholarly, well researched and well written. I would like to see more articles like this, paralleling archaeological facts with church customs. Well done!

I hope Professor La Sor’s interpretation of archaeological findings concerning Miqva’ot is more accurate than his distinction between Jewish immersion and Christian baptism. To say that “Christian baptism … is initiatory” is a complete misrepresentation of Christian belief and the Bible. Professor La Sor is wrong in stating that baptism “ … initiates the person into the sect.” A person becomes a Christian through acceptance of Christ’s death as an atonement for sin, not through some “initiation” called baptism. The professor overreaches when he talks of baptism as some sort of initiation and underreaches when he refers to Christian belief as a “sect.”

A sect is a group united by some specific doctrine and is usually thought of as persons that do not accept the traditional beliefs of a larger group. Since Professor La Sor made an effort to introduce the “technically correct” terms “initiatory” and “purificatory,” he should have used a term more technically correct than sect, also.

I look forward to future issues of BAR with articles as interesting (including the one I take issue with) and pictures as vivid as in the January/February 1987 issue.

William La Sor replies:

Christianity was considered a sect at the beginning. My authority for this is the Bible itself: Acts 24:5, 14, 28:22. The Greek word is hairesis, from which we get our English word “heresy.” I did not imply that Christianity today is a sect.

Mr. Richard apparently did not look up the definition of “initiatory” (introductory, initial, the first step), although he did correctly note my distinction between “initiatory” and “purificatory.” There are several kinds of baptism, of which two are mentioned in my article on Jewish miqva’ot and Christian baptism. One kind of baptism is performed whenever the person feels the need of it for spiritual cleansing: such is Jewish immersion. A second kind is initiatory: it is performed when a person enters a religion (in this case, Christianity) and does not need to be done a second time. Nothing was said or intended about “initiation.”

Of course, a person must be “born again to enter the Kingdom (John 3:3). That is not the same as “becoming a Christian,” which I would equate with entering into a relationship with some Christian church. It is entirely possible (and Biblically correct) to believe that some “Christians”—perhaps even some who have been baptized—have not been “born again.” And there are some who have been born again who have not matured in Christian living (Hebrews 6:1 1–14).

Thank you for your helpful letter.

The Division of the Stairs in Ritual Baths

William S. La Sor’s article on ancient Jewish ritual immersion baths was most interesting. In support of the suggestion that the stairs to such pools were divided so as to allow (impure) descent on one side and (purified) ascent on the other, let me cite the apocryphal Christian gospel fragment known as Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 840 (found in Ron Cameron, The Other Gospels [Harper & Row, 1984]). There the chief priest in dialogue with Jesus in the Temple Court claims that bathing and changing of clothes are necessary for everyone in that holy place. Then the priest states: “I am clean. For I have bathed myself in the pool of David and have gone down by the one stair and come up by the other and have put on white and clean clothes, and (only) then have I come hither and viewed these holy utensils.” Plainly, the distinction of the stairs is evidence of the priest’s precautions.

Let me begin by thanking you for your fine publication whose arrival I await eagerly. Your presentation of scholarly material in an intelligent and readable format is to be commended; continue “from strength to strength”!

A comment on William S. La Sor’s article on Miqva’ot. The explanations offered for the division of the stairways leading to the 013Miqveh by a low wall or pillars are not sound. The stairway itself, being Mehubar L’Karkah permanently affixed to the ground, can neither contract nor impart ritual impurity. If the fear was contact with ritual contaminants such as dead insects or the like, such a nominal division couldn’t preclude a mishap. More likely, larger Miqva’ot that had a large volume of users, had these dividers to separate those entering from those exiting, or the entire process was simply a formality similar to that mentioned in the Mishnah (Middot 2:2) of entering and exiting the Temple Mount using different gates.

Volunteers Move Stones as Done Over 2,000 Years Ago

I thoroughly enjoyed reading “Excavating in the Shadow of the Temple Mount,” BAR 12:06 and “Herod’s Mighty Temple Mount,” BAR 12:06. They brought back some very pleasant memories of my first dig as a volunteer in the winter of 1970–71. My immediate superior was Ron Gardiner (who Meir Ben-Dov mentions in his account), an indefatigable worker and terrific guy. I shall also never forget Benjamin Mazar, a truly fine gentleman, who came very often to see how the volunteers were faring.

I was particularly amused by Marta Ritmeyer’s sketch of the oxen hauling the stones on rollers from the quarry. Nearly 2,000 years after Herod, we were still utilizing the same principle of moving heavy stones on rollers, albeit without oxen. The photo illustrates how we moved these huge ashlars. First, we placed metal rollers under the ashlar. From an area close to Robinson’s Arch, we rolled these huge stones to where they now sit. Instead of oxen we used a horizontal jack to push the stones forward on the rollers. As the back end of the stone cleared the back roller, that roller was placed under the stone at the front end.

Over the years I have worked at other digs and found it most enjoyable. At age 76, I still look forward to going back next summer. But the memory of my first dig at the Temple Mount remains one of my most cherished of memories. Your articles helped bring them back vividly. Thanks.

A Swastika in the Temple

In this, my first letter to an editor, I begin by congratulating you for producing an excellent journal. Your articles and photos are clear, educational and answer many questions. Your November/December 1986 issue was thrilling. Although I visited Israel I now feel I see Jerusalem for the first time through the eyes of the excellent articles on the Temple Mount excavations. For Jews, Christians and Moslems, these essays were most enlightening.

Let me move on to something understandably morbid but which tantalizes me. There is a photograph of an ornamental design that once graced the Second Temple in Jerusalem. It is a form of a swastika. The trauma of World War II aside, the swastika is one of the oldest symbols known to man. It is found on almost every continent and its age is unknown.

Could David, Solomon or Herod have known—well, such is the stuff of fantasy.

The World’s Largest Cut Stones

Meir Ben-Dov’s article, “Herod’s Mighty Temple Mount,” BAR 12:06, stressed the oversize ashlar stones incorporated in the walls of King Herod’s Temple Mount. Ben-Dov states 014that these stones “are unequaled in size anywhere in the-ancient world.”

Although the Herodian Temple Mount was a huge undertaking and the holy precinct was one of the greatest edifices of its kind, it should not be adorned with this superlative regarding size. It is well known that the largest stones ever cut out of bedrock and dressed in the ancient world are located in Ba’albek, in the Lebanon. Three huge stones, laid adjacent to one another, there served as the stylobate of the western facade of the Temple of Jupiter Heliopolitanus. The average measurements of each of these blocks is about 65 × 12 × 14 feet. If multiplied by a density of about 2.5, they weigh 800 tons each! This is twice as heavy as the stone described by Ben-Dov. (Moreover, Ben-Dov used a somewhat exaggerated density of about 2.75, unless his figure was simply a wild estimate.)

But the greatest stone of all, to the best of my knowledge, is in a quarry located about half a mile outside Ba’albek. This famous stone known by the locals as “Hajar el-Qiblah” (the southern stone) measures 72 × 14 × 14 feet and weighs 970 tons! This achievement was surpassed only in the 18th century A.D. A stone weighing about 1,250 tons was cut to serve as a podium in a monument dedicated to Peter I, the “Great,” in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Superlatives should, indeed, be handled more cautiously!

How Many People Were Killed in the Roman Destruction of Jerusalem?

The articles on the Temple Mount in the November/December issue were outstanding.

In one article, Meir Ben-Dov notes the accuracy of Josephus’s description of the Herodian Temple Mount, stating that “details given in Josephus’s works are not only far from exaggerations, they correspond amazingly to what has been uncovered in the field.” He also indicates that Jerusalem’s population in the first century was between 150,000 and 200,000.

This brought to mind Josephus’s assertion that 1,100,000 persons were killed in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 A.D.

Has any archaeologist or Biblical scholar ever considered the accuracy of this figure?

Magen Broshi, curator of the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem, replies:

Josephus, our main source for the history of the Second Jewish Commonwealth, and otherwise a very good historian, is notoriously inaccurate with his population data. Most of the figures in Josephus are grossly exaggerated. Such is undoubtedly the case with the number of 1,100,000 victims killed by the Romans during the siege and conquest of Jerusalem (Josephus, The Jewish War VI. 420). There are good reasons to believe that the total population of Palestine at that time did not reach that size.

The absurdity of Josephus’s figure can be shown in several ways: For example, Josephus states that the defenders of Jerusalem during the siege numbered 23,400 (VI. 248). This is a very plausible figure, probably derived from Roman military field reports, but it stands in flagrant disproportion to the number of the fallen, to say nothing of the survivors (Josephus speaks of 97,000 taken into slavery). For more details, see my article, “The Credibility of Josephus,” Journal of Jewish Studies 33/1–2 (1982), pp. 379–384.

For various reasons (dealt with at some length in my article “Estimating the Population of Ancient Jerusalem,” BAR 04:02), it seems safe to assume that the population of Jerusalem in its heyday—prior to its destruction—was at most 80,000, and probably somewhat less. During the siege, the city was filled by refugees, but not to the extent claimed by Josephus.

Inflated figures was a vice shared by many ancient historians. For example, the Greek historian Herodotus says Xerxes’ expeditionary force (480 B.C.)—enumerated with minute details—added up to the precise figure of 5,283,220 (VII. 184–187). However, modern scholars are of the opinion that the real number was not more than 40,000.

Where was the Trumpeting Inscription Located?

Contrary to the assertion of Aaron Demsky in the November/December 1986 issue (“When the Priests Trumpeted the Onset of the Sabbath,” BAR 12:06), there is no reason to believe that the so-called trumpeting inscription “graced the topmost pinnacle of the Temple Mount,” to use his words.

Just because it was found at the base of the southwestern corner of the Temple Mount does not mean its original location was directly above. This is shown by two other examples of inscriptions from the Temple.

Long ago, two inscribed stones were found from the Sorég, the barrier surrounding the Temple proper. The one, a complete inscription, is now in Istanbul; it was 015discovered, however, near the Via Dolorosa, more than 500 feet as the crow flies from the nearest location of the Sorég;^a the other inscription, a fragment only, is now located in the Rockefeller Museum, Jerusalem. It was found outside the Lion’s Gate (St. Stephen’s Gate). The shortest distance as the crow flies between this spot and the Sorég is about 650 feet.^b

In view of this comparison, it should cause no surprise that the second portion of the trumpeting inscription has not yet been found. It probably lies buried under the Temple Mount.

In any event, its original location was not where Demsky places it, but in a chamber of the Temple.

Demsky correctly translates the inscription: “[Belonging] to the house of trumpeting. … ” However, it should be understood that the word bét translated literally “house of” is the word used in Temple language to denote a chamber within the Temple. (Compare, the chamber of the house of oils, Middot 2:5; and the house of Parvah, which was a chamber, Middot 5:3.)

The chamber of trumpeting was located on the western side of the Temple precinct and not within the outer Temple court.

The sketch of the tiny figure of a priest standing on the tower at the Temple Mount’s southwest corner is but a figment of the imagination.

I must express my indignation that two learned contributors to BAR, Meir Ben-Dov and Aaron Demsky (“Herod’s Mighty Temple Mount,” BAR 12:06, and “When the Priests Trumpeted the Onset of the Sabbath,” BAR 12:06) misinterpreted a passage from Josephus’s Jewish War IV. 580–583.

During the euphoria caused by the discovery near the southwestern corner of the Temple Mount in the late 1960s of an inscription-carrying part of a building stone, it was suggested that this fragment had toppled from the pinnacle above and that its location at the time of its revelation 063proved that the “Place of the Trumpeting” had been near its original place. Benjamin Mazar gave his approval to this idea in an article that appeared in Qadmoniot III/4 (12) 1970, p. 144.

The passage from Josephus cited above tells a quite different situation: The locations of the first three towers are given in only a few words. There is no doubt about the spot where the first of them stood. The site of the second tower is also clear; it stood above the gate to which the predecessor of Wilson’s Arch led. The third tower could only have been erected above the Temple Mount’s southwestern corner, which rose above the Lower Town. Neither Josephus nor the Mishnah mentioned priests’ chambers in that relatively secular part of the sacred precinct. The “Place of Trumpeting” could therefore not have been located there.

Such offices did exist in the high building, which surrounded the Inner Court with the Sanctuary in its center. From the roof of the westernmost part of that office building you could look over that portion of the western hill of Jerusalem north of the transversal valley, which descended to the Tyropoeon Valley from the west. This area contained commercial and small-industry centers.

If there was a place from which a trumpet blast could be heard above the noise made by the craftsmen and merchants, this was the right spot.

I hope that this reader’s letter will come to the attention of scholars who plan to write about Jerusalem during the Herodian period and its aftermath.

I also wish to use this opportunity to tell you that I like BAR because it provides its readers not only with informative but also with thought-provoking articles and gives them ample space to make their point of view known in letters to the editor, as I do now.

The interpretation, given above, is one of many others found in my book New Ideas on Jerusalem’s Topology, which will be published shortly by the Franciscan Printing Press, Jerusalem.

In Praise of Leen Ritmeyer

I must take exception to a caption in the November/December issue. The man referred to as a “guide” is Leen Ritmeyer, a well-respected restoration architect. His accomplishments are too numerous to mention here, but suffice it to say that the title does not begin to encompass them all.

This is not to say he isn’t an excellent guide. He is. I have had the pleasure of touring the Temple Mount site with him on three different occasions.

Thank you for an otherwise excellent issue.

Scholars Discuss BAR

You will be interested to know that two of my colleagues, LaMoine DeVries and Victor Matthews, and I have a lunch soon after each issue of BAR arrives to discuss the contents and reflect on the significance of each of the articles.

Pure Praise

I would like to compliment you on your excellent product. I have been researching the Bible and its background for the last 19 064years. I must say I find your magazine fascinating, I only wish it were published more often.

I consider the bimonthly issues of BAR one of the highlights of my reading. Thanks a million.

Subscriptions to BR and BAR were gifts from my son’s fiancee.

These magazines are outstanding. They are informative, well written and interesting. The illustrations are beautiful enough to frame.

I am a Roman Catholic, and since reading BR and BAR my knowledge of the Old and New Testaments has increased enormously.

Congratulations to you and your deserving staff! Your magazines are great!

Preserving Mosaics

What is that klutz of a photographer doing standing on top of a newly uncovered mosaic floor? Documenting his contribution to the disassembling of a mosaic matrix?

This contemporary mosaic artist shudders when the army of “summer archaeologists” lace up their hush-puppies and reach for their pointy trowels and soft-haired brushes. Surely, by now, Robert J. Bull and his Drew Institute volunteers should know that uncovering an ancient mosaic requires the same sensitive care accorded any major masterpiece.

Better that novices be taught to erect tents to shade the fragile and calcified mortar bonding from the relentless sun during the day and to very carefully lay on straw and tarpaulins at the end of each day’s work to minimize the sharp drop of heat at night. Rapid temperature fluctuations are ruinous when uncovering a “spectacular” mosaic find, and particularly so for marble floor mosaics originally created to exist under roofed structures. Thus, in this instance, the exhumation process is comparable to finding a magnificent clay pot and then allowing a novice to systematically stomp it into sherds.

Defaming Fritz Frank, Nelson Glueck and Beno Rothenberg

In “Rabbi Nelson Glueck: An Archaeologist’s Secret Life in the Service of the OSS,” BAR 12:05, Floyd S. Fierman quotes a letter supposed to have been written by Rabbi Nelson Glueck to “his OSS superior” during World War II, stating that Fritz Frank was a German spy who used archaeology as a cover. For Frank’s wife and daughter and for Frank’s friends—the undersigned included—who are still amongst the living, this statement is a serious act of defamation.

Fritz Frank, a German Templar native of Palestine, was a young man in Turkish Jerusalem at the time of World War I and was called up by the German authorities. He spent several years of the war getting supplies and information through the desert for the Turkish-German army in Palestine and Sinai. After Germany lost the war, he was permitted by the British administration to return to Jerusalem and to his previous profession as a civil engineer. He built many of the buildings and installations in the German Colony in Jerusalem. In 1934, Frank published the first reliable report on the ancient sites in the Arabah. (“From the Arabah,” Z.D.P.V. 57 [1934], pp. 192–194.) According to the eminent Old Testament scholar Albrecht Alt, it was Alt himself who involved Fritz Frank in the exploration of the Arabah in 1932 and 1933, long before the Nazis came effectively into power.

I visited Fritz Frank in Weinsberg, Germany, several times before his death at the age of 95 in 1968. As a fellow explorer of the Arabah (the center of my own research since 1959), I regard Frank’s publication as a minor classic, and I very much valued our friendship and the sharing of our field experiences.

During one of my visits Frank told me that he was particularly keen on the work in the Arabah because he wanted to “get away from the politics” of his fellow Templars. In fact, he settled for a while in Ein Gedi—a fabulous place for a passionate hunter like Frank—but had to give it up when one day, as he was away hunting, the Bedouins ransacked his plantation.

It can be easily demonstrated that Fritz Frank was not a Nazi: I have in my files a German newspaper serial (from the infamous “Der Fuehrer,” 13–16, Jan. 1938) that describes in detail some of Frank’s World War I activities and complains that he refused to take any part in the “New Germany.”

As quoted by BAR, Glueck wrote that Frank “and other native born Palestinian Germans disappeared,” shortly after World War II broke out. Glueck continues: “I have 066reason to believe that they are working in Transjordan and Sinai.” This is extremely doubtful, at least as far as Frank is concerned, because Frank was interned as an enemy citizen by the British at the outbreak of the war, and deported from Palestine for the duration of the war. After the war he was allowed to return with his family and was repatriated to Germany together with the whole Templar community at the establishment of the State of Israel.

Moreover, it seems difficult to understand why Rabbi Nelson Glueck had to “spy out the country” and pass on its geographical and other “secrets” in “coded messages” in the shape of beautiful, romantic descriptions of landscapes, springs and ancient sites, when the country was fully under the control of the Allies and all the information which, according to Floyd Fierman, was hidden in these letters to his archaeological colleagues could have been easily obtained from the official Geographical Handbook Series, prepared and published by the British Naval Intelligence Division, available since 1915 and reissued in revised form during World War II. Incidentally, all the springs and sites mentioned by Fierman as samples of the kind of secret information passed on by Glueck to the OSS, appeared on the official maps of Eastern Palestine, which surely must have been in the possession of the American military authorities.

Gary D. Pratico, in the same issue of BAR (“Where is Ezion-Geber—A Reappraisal of the Site Archaeologist Nelson Glueck Identified as King Solomon’s Red Sea Port,” BAR 12:05), gives a vivid description of Glueck’s excavations at Tell el-Kheleifeh. After a short review of Glueck’s original theories regarding Ezion-Geber (Eilat as “the Pittsburgh of Palestine”), Pratico continues: “I have recently completed a reappraisal of Glueck’s excavation of Tell el-Kheleifeh. … ”

Is this really a true and honest description of the often rather harsh scientific arguments, discussions and publications concerning Tell el-Kheleifeh that swept the Near Eastern archaeological scene since my paper in Palestine Exploration Quarterly in 1962 (“Ancient Copper Industries in the Western Arabah”)? This scholarly discussion has been going on for over 20 years! In my 1962 publication I proposed a revision of Glueck’s metallurgical interpretation of Tell el-Kheleifeh as a copper smelter and seaport—a proposal accepted by Glueck in 1965 in full acknowledgment of my PEQ proposals. In subsequent years, there were radical changes concerning Glueck’s supposed King Solomon’s Mines, which are an integral part of the Tell el-Kheleifeh-Ezion-Geber story. (For a full review see Suzanne Singer, “From These Hills … ,” BAR 04:02). There is not the slightest hint of all this in Pratico’s exposition. He simply claims all the credit for the “reappraisal” of Glueck’s work for himself.

The same applies to the fundamental issue of the date and nature of the pottery from Tell el-Kheleifeh, which was already discussed by others, including myself in Eretz Israel, 1981, p. 89, and again in Midian, Moab and Edom, 1983, p. 75–76.

There is one sentence in Pratico’s paper which I find particularly unacceptable, as it seriously diminishes Glueck’s integrity as an archaeologist: “[T]o date the Four-Room House, he [Glueck] saved only these handmade wares to document the chronology of the building. The wheelmade pottery he threw out. Therefore we are now deprived of the only reliable evidence for dating the structure.”

It would be important to hear Pratico’s evidence for such a devastating statement. Is it not rather more likely that there was only handmade “Negevite” pottery in this earliest structure of the tell, as is the case in so many of the Negev strongholds and structures?

As a fellow archaeologist who greatly honors the memory of Nelson Glueck—in spite of our different professional views and methods—I would like to ask Gary Pratico for a reconsideration or, at least, rephrasing of this statement.

Did the Israelites Destroy Level VII at Lachish?

As usual, your January/February 1987 issue of BAR was excellent. David Ussishkin’s well-written article “Lachish—Key to the Israelite Conquest of Canaan?” BAR 13:01, was of special interest to me, having visited Lachish on several occasions, and having spent a great deal of time studying the site in graduate school. Ussishkin’s thoughtful and professional excavations may just be the most significant now taking place in Israel. In his article, however, the attribution of the destruction of Level VI to either the Israelites or the Sea Peoples left me a bit puzzled. May I make an alternate proposal to the author and to BAR readers?

Ussishkin reports that Level VII, a Late Bronze phase contemporary with Fosse Temple III, was violently destroyed by an unknown invader. Then he writes “After the fiery destruction of Level VII (probably at the end of the thirteenth century B.C.), the city was soon rebuilt.” “The end of the thirteenth century B.C.” seems to me 067to suggest a date near 1230 B.C., the date suggested by W. F. Albright and others for the Israelite Conquest which marked the beginning of the end of the Late Bronze Age. It also corresponds with Yigael Yadin’s 1230 B.C. date for the destruction of Canaanite Hazor by the Israelites (see Joshua 11). Is it not possible that the Israelites of Joshua chapter 10 were responsible for the violent destruction and torching of Level VII and its Fosse Temple? If so, it would be another link in the chain of evidence for the generally accepted date of 1230 B.C. for the Israelite Conquest. Other sites showing a Late Bronze destruction around that time include Bethel (which was probably the real target of the Israelite attack on Ai) and, of course, Hazor.

If there was any Israelite attempt to occupy Lachish after the destruction of Level VII it would have been quickly foiled by the reestablishment of Egyptian hegemony in southern Canaan under Pharaoh Merneptah. About 1220 B.C. Merneptah’s army attacked Canaan and apparently had some degree of success. In a poetic account of his campaign the Pharaoh boasted “Israel is laid waste, his seed is not.” With the Israelites repulsed from the Lachish area, Egyptian-backed Canaanite occupation of the site recommenced immediately, and the Level VI city was built up, as suggested by Ussishkin, with its Temple at the acropolis. That Egypt’s protective influence continued for some decades is suggested by the discovery of the Ramesses III cartouche in the Gate Area.

To whom, then, should the destruction of Level VI at Lachish be attributed? The Philistines, or Sea Peoples, that attacked and weakened Egypt during the reign of Ramesses III, would seem the logical answer.

Finally repulsed by Ramesses, these Philistines attacked the southern coast and Shephelah of Judah in the twelfth century B.C., sacking and burning Lachish. Why is none of the distinctive Philistine pottery found on site? The Philistines simply chose not to occupy the mound. To recapitulate, then, the proposal is the destruction of Canaanite Level VII by the Israelites c. 1230 B.C., and the destruction of Canaanite Level VI by the Philistines c. 1150 B.C. The site then remained unoccupied until an Israelite presence (Level V) was established sometime in the tenth century B.C.

By the way, in the diagram, is not the “Solar Shrine” erroneously marked “Persian Period”? If I am not mistaken, the Persian Period shrine lies farther south, nearer the great shaft. The Solar Shrine depicted in the diagram is the Iron Age edifice of Levels V–II. But this in no way detracts from the succinct and informative style of writing and the superb photography of the article. Congratulations again to Ussishkin and BAR for another fine effort.

Although I enjoyed David Ussishkin’s article on Lachish, I wonder about a major conclusion. According to Ussishkin, Lachish Level VI was destroyed by the Israelites. I have no quarrel with that, but from the evidence Ussishkin has presented it does not follow that Level VII could not have been destroyed by the Israelites as well. Ussishkin rejects this possibility, though he gives no alternative. Perhaps Ussishkin has read more into the Biblical evidence than there is. Joshua 10:31–32 only states that the Israelites captured the city, but it does not state that the Israelites settled there. If this was a “Blitzkrieg” without settlement then the Canaanites could have returned and rebuilt the city. It could be argued that in that case the people would have built a wall. But they did not, 068whoever may have been the destroyers of Level VII. As Ussishkin points out, Lachish remained within the Egyptian sphere. If my “capture without settlement” is correct (unless Ussishkin can give enough evidence to the contrary), then Ussishkin’s two corollaries may not be corollaries after all.

In the same issue, in “Jerusalem Model Rediscovered,” Stephan Illes is called a Hungarian. How accurate is this terminology? Pressburg-Pozsony-Bratislava was up to the 19th century largely a German city, even though it was the capital of Hungary between 1541 and 1784. During the 19th century it was mainly a Magyar city, but in the 20th century it became the capital of Slovakia.

I read the article “Lachish—Key to the Israelite Conquest of Canaan?” BAR 13:01, by David Ussishkin with great interest. May I point out a minor error in one of the descriptions of the color plates that accompanied the text?

The photograph was described as including examples of ancient glassware found in the excavations at the Fosse Temple. Of the pieces shown in the photograph, all appear to be faience vessels with the possible exception of one which might be made of stone.

David Ussishkin replies:

The first and most important duty of the Biblical archaeologist working in the field is to evaluate the data, and to attempt to establish the facts solely on the basis of the internal evidence recovered from the site being excavated Once this is done, the archaeologist can then turn to evaluating the comparable archaeological material, the Biblical sources and the external historical sources.

Scrupulously following this procedure in the case of Lachish, we reached the conclusions that (a) The Level VII city was destroyed by fire; (b) The City was rebuilt in Level VI—the latter city showing a marked architectural change from Level VII, but a clear cultural continuity; (c) The Level VI city portrayed a marked Egyptian presence and influence; (d) The Level VI city was burnt and devastated c. 1150 B.C. or slightly later; (e) Following the destruction of Level VI, the city was abandoned for a long period of time. These conclusions were reached on the basis of the internal evidence and to my mind form the basis for further discussion.

Turning to the suggestions of Mr. Chadwick and Mr. den Boggende that the Israelite conquest and destruction should be ascribed to the destruction of Level VII rather than Level VI, it must be stressed that the factual data from the site cannot elucidate the matter. With the absence of inscriptions, it is impossible to verify who burnt Level VII. From the purely archaeological point of view, therefore, their suggestion is possible.

Nevertheless, it seems to me difficult to consider such a suggestion on the basis of the Biblical account. If we accept Joshua 10:31–32 as an expression of a reliable historical tradition, we notice that the Israelites annihilated the Canaanite population following the conquest of the city. Thus, an Israelite conquest of Lachish which had been followed by a rebuilding and a renewed prosperity of the Canaanite city under Egyptian aegis seems unlikely and contradictory to the Biblical source. On the other hand, the destruction of the Level VI city, followed by a long period of abandonment which indicates annihilation or deportation of the populace, would fit this written account.

Praise and Blame for La Sor

I enjoyed your article on “Discovering What Jewish Miqva’ot Can Tell Us About Christian Baptism,” BAR 13:01, by William La Sor. I found it scholarly, well researched and well written. I would like to see more articles like this, paralleling archaeological facts with church customs. Well done!