Queries & Comments

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“You Are There”

Congratulations on a very fine article, “The Galilee Boat—2,000-Year-Old Hull Recovered Intact,” BAR 14:05, by Shelley Wachsmann .

Of course I was fascinated by the story of the boat’s raising, but more than this I found myself drawn into the article by BAR’s use of the first person throughout the story. Reading Shelley Wachsmann’s highly personal account, I really got a sense of “being there” as Wachsmann’s team raced first to preserve and then to raise the boat.

I hope BAR will continue to edit select articles in this fashion in future issues.

As a long-time subscriber, I know that you provide ample detailed diagrams for every hole in the ground that comes along. After 2,000 years, I still don’t know what the “Galilee Boat” looked like. Is there any excuse for this?

First, we doubt very much that you are 2,000 years old, as your letter suggests.

Second, if the picture of the boat on the cover, the photos and drawings in the article, and the picture of the mosaic (showing a possible sail structure) don’t do it, we have erred. We have written author Wachsmann to see if he can supply us with a reconstruction drawing of the boat.—Ed.

Wrong Volume Numbers in May/June and July/August Issues

No, it’s not one of those lively “agony-letters” that you delight to print in BAR. But can nobody, but nobody, count in Roman numerals in great big America any more?

The January/February and March/April issues of BAR correctly bear on their outer covers the denotation “Vol. XIV”; but the May/June and July/August issues suddenly jump to “Vol. XV” at their masthead. Do you really intend to jump from Volume 14 to Volume 15 in mid-Spring this year? If not, PLEASE see that September/October and November/December get back to XIV, ready for a real XV in 1989. I foresee chaos in BAR references in days to come.

Oops! We’re sorry! It’s the work of gremlins. We don’t know how it happened. We made the corrections in the last two issues of the year.—Ed.

Do Religious People Tend to Put Their Money on Their Backs?

BAR and Bible Review are entertaining magazines, and I read most of the articles that I can understand. However, a glossary or a vocabulary page should be a part of each issue.

Also, I think your goofy advertisers are the reason that your subscriber list doesn’t get any bigger.

Why don’t you solicit mail order houses that sell clothes—high fashion stuff? I have noticed that religious people tend to put their money on their backs.

We’ll take up at least your first suggestion. In the meantime, see the mini-glossary to the dig survey.—Ed.

Other Times and Places Confirm BAR’s Interpretation

Re the article by John D. Currid and Jeffrey L. Gregg (“Why Did the Early Israelites Dig All Those Pits?” BAR 14:05), I wonder if the authors looked at other parts of the world for similar grain-storage practices. We served as Presbyterian missionaries for 17 years in Sangli, India (280 miles south of Bombay), and saw many grain and produce storage pits in that area. They were much like those described in the BAR article.

John F. Currid replies:

The practice of storing grain in subterranean pits is widely distributed both in geographical and temporal terms. It is well documented in sources from antiquity (especially Greek and Roman authors). Modern examples, as well, are plentiful. Grain pit storage, for example, is still used in the western Sahara, Ethiopia, Algeria, Tanzania and elsewhere. See my forthcoming article in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, “Iron Age Pits and the Tell Halif (Lahav) Grain Storage Project.”

Rabbinic Interpretation of Marzeah

Re Professor King’s article on the mysterious marzeah in the July/August issue (“The Marzeah Amos Denounces—Using Archaeology to Interpret a Biblical Text,” BAR 14:04. The great 11th-century Biblical scholar Rashi refers to a Sifre in Genesis which equates the word marzeah with the word for banquet. Rabbi David Kimchi [12th–13th century] quotes his father to the effect that marzeah is the act of raising one’s voice either for sorrow or for happiness.

Did They Dress Naked in Those Days?

Like others that have written, I don’t like some of your pictures that are perhaps dirty or of naked people, but I guess some people dressed that way in those days. What I don’t like mostly is the bad words in your magazine, otherwise it is alright. What your magazine mostly does is analyze the material you dig up and decide whether those things were true. I still like your magazine because I will never get to those places. I am a born-again believer, wholly for Jesus Christ who saved me and changed me.

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Has the PLO Penetrated Archaeological Digs?

On the cover of your January/February 1987 issue, I made a careful study of the feminine head scarf design on a volunteer worker at Tel Miqne.

Then in the same January/February issue (“Excavation Opportunities 1987,” BAR 13:01) I found the same head scarf design on a male volunteer worker. My conclusion was that the man was probably the photographer who took the superb cover photo and loaned her his head covering so she would not be overexposed.

The mystery seemed solved until I received my October 7, 1988, issue of Christianity Today and found the article “The Other Side of Arafat”—there is Arafat wearing the same head scarf design. Are PLO members infiltrating your Philistine digs? Is Arafat shopping at the same Target Store as archaeology volunteers? Is this scarf design a widespread common design? Is there some special cultural or religious significance to the design?

The scarf is the traditional Arab headdress, called a kaffiyeh. Arabs usually hold it in place with a circular band called an agal, which the male volunteer is wearing. The kaffiyeh is an effective protection against the sun, catches the slightest breeze in summer and retains warmth in winter. It has become popular among young Israelis—Jews and Arabs alike—and is especially popular among archaeological volunteers. Sometimes several kaffiyeh scarves are sewn together to make blouses and even dresses.—Ed.

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One Last Word on Bethel and Ai—Fairness Requires No More

In a recent issue of BAR (Queries & Comments, BAR 14:05), Anson Rainey took us to task regarding our suggested new location for Bethel and Ai. Most of his remarks are not new and appeared in The Westminster Theological Journal of May 1971 in answer to my original article on “The Location of Biblical Bethel and Ai Reconsidered” in the November 1970 issue. I then answered his remarks in the November 1971 issue of that journal. A few remarks in addition to those articles may be appropriate.

The pillar he refers to at the Damascus Gate and shown on the Madaba map cannot be the 0 milestone. Milestones discovered along the road north to Nablus early this century clearly indicate that the 0 milestone was in Jerusalem’s center. Furthermore, the distance measured by auto from the Damascus Gate to the center of el-Bireh is slightly over 16 kilometers (10+ miles). This equals just over 11 Roman miles. Adding about one-half mile to reach the 0 milestone in the center of Jerusalem would put the 12th mile(stone) just north of el-Bireh. Using Eusebius’s criteria, Bethel cannot be at Beitin.

“Beitin” might be a reflex of “Bethel.” But it also might not. Others have suggested it might reflect “Bethaven,” which they apparently feel is linguistically just as valid. Among them is Claude R. Conder in Tent Work in Palestine, vol. 2, p. 334. Eusebius’s Onomasticon itself may bear this out in that “Bethaven” is likewise spelled “Bethaun.” Another example of this possibility is in “The Pilgrim of Bordeaux,” found in John Wilkinson’s Egeria’s Travels to the Holy Land. Written about the same time as the Onomasticon, the pilgrim says: “Twenty-eight miles from there [Nablus] on the left [east] of the road to Jerusalem is the village called Bethar [fn., “Bethaun” or “Bethaven,” Joshua 7:2, 18:12], and a mile from there [southward] is the place where Jacob slept on his way from Mesopotamia [fn., “Bethel”] … Jerusalem is twelve miles further on” (p. 155). This very early account seems to indicate that the village on the site of modern Beitin was equated at that time with “Bethaven” (whether rightly or not) and the village at modern el-Bireh with “Bethel.”

The problem with postulating that modern Beitin was “Bethel” is that there is no village or ruins along the road north of Beitin to equate with the “Bethar” in this record.

An account from the Middle Ages is quoted by Meron Benvinisti in The Crusaders in the Holy Land: “ … an anonymous traveler wrote: ‘[LaGrande] Mahomerie was first called Luza and afterwards Bethel,’ identifying Bethel with Mahomeria or al Bira [el-Bireh], two kilometres from Beitin” (p. 318, our emphasis). It could not be clearer that early pilgrims recognized that ancient “Bethel” was located at modern el-Bireh.

Other suggestions for the ancient ruins at Beitin might be “Zemaraim” or “Ophrah.” Ophrah appears in the city lists of both Benjamin and Ephraim (just north of Benjamin). It must have been very close to the border between the two. As for Zemaraim, the late Yohanan Aharoni in Land of the Bible (translated from Hebrew by Rainey) says on page 287 that Zemaraim must be in the vicinity of Ramallah and el-Bireh on the Judean border. Could Beitin be the location?

El-Bireh is not the impressive archaeological site that Beitin is for the simple reason that it has never been excavated. Ancient remains are found there, both at Ras et-Tahuneh and east of the Nablus road in the heart of the village. Surface archaeological surveys in the el-Bireh area, and especially Ras et-Tahuneh, have revealed finds from almost every archaeological period.

Most scholars believe et-Tell is Ai chiefly because Bethel has been located at Beitin and the two are inseparably linked as “twin-cities” in the Bible. However, archaeologically et-Tell cannot possibly be Ai if the Biblical account is taken seriously. It seems unfortunate Rainey is so convinced he is correct that he asserts, “If Bethel is not Beitin, then there is no Historical Geography of the Bible.”

Rainey apparently feels he must “put down” John Bimson and me with ad hominem arguments having absolutely nothing to do with the problems being discussed. He is a fine scholar and has made many valuable contributions to archaeology and historical geography. This kind of argumentation is entirely unnecessary when you really have “the facts.”

BAR Indispensable to Tourist Guides

Both my husband and I are tourist guides and for us BAR has become indispensable.

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How Did the Ancients Make Fire?

In John 21:9, we read:

“When they [the disciples] got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish lying on it, and bread, and Jesus said to them ‘Come, have breakfast. … ’”

What I want to know is how was fire made in those days? What did they use for fire makers—flint and steel, rubbing sticks?

I’ve seen many descriptions of archaeological sites, listing vessels and tools discovered, and hearths and pots and even scraps of food left behind, but I’ve never seen reference to what instrument they used for starting fire.

James F. Strange replies:

We have indications about fire-making in the ancient world. Our best archaeological evidence comes from Egypt, where we have bows, notched boards and the vertical stick with a stone point to spin in the notch with the bow. That is as early as the XIIth Dynasty (early second millennium). You are right that archaeologists seldom report fire-making artifacts.

Second Maccabees 10:3 mentions the making of fire for the rededicated Temple in the second century B.C. by striking stones, so fire-making materials were evidently generally at hand. The Mishnah, the second-century A.D. document of Jewish law, mentions making fire from wood, stone, steel and water. One rubbed the sticks together, struck stones together or struck steel on stone. “Water” refers to the practice of setting a glass of water in the sun to focus sunlight on a combustible, according to the 11th–12th-century A.D. commentator Rashi.

It’s Been Published Twice

In Itzhaq Beit-Arieh’s article in the May/June issue (“The Route Through Sinai—Why the Israelites Fleeing Egypt Went South,” BAR 14:03), my friend “Itzig” included a table showing many proposed locations for Mt. Sinai. He lists my proposal of Serabit el-Khadem and states that this is based on an “unpublished, oral communication.” In fact, my proposal has been published twice:

1. “Is It Possible That Mt. Sinai Is Serabit el-Khadem?” Beth Mitra (Biblical Quarterly) 78, Jerusalem (1979), pp. 278–282 (in Hebrew).

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2. “The Riddle of Mt. Sinai,” in Derekh Eretz, A Nation Living in Its Landscape, ed. I. Zaharoni (Tel Aviv, 1983), pp. 128–131 (in Hebrew).

Using BAR and BR as On-site Guides

I recently returned from a two-week course in Israel for M.A. students, led by Professor Jane Schaberg of the University of Detroit Religious Studies program. We brought with us a small suitcase full of back issues of BAR to use before, during and after our trips to various sites. Especially helpful were the articles on Capernaum, Chorazin, Gamla, Tabgha, Hammath Tiberias, the tombs at the École Biblique, the Garden Tomb and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Shiloh’s work in the City of David, the Burnt House and, of course, the Temple Mount. From Bible Review, we also used articles on the Dead Sea and Dead Sea Scroll research. We could have made things easier by just xeroxing the articles, but the color pictures were too good to leave at home. The diagrams and the clear presentations helped us to understand what we were seeing, and to see more. Thank you for providing us with the best guidebook available.

Peculiar Headrests?

Here is a suggestion that might lead the rather interesting discussion on the peculiar burial headrests in First Temple times (Gabriel Barkay and Amos Kloner, “Jerusalem Tombs from the Days of the First Temple,” BAR 12:02; Othmar Keel,“The Peculiar Headrests for the Dead in First Temple Times,” BAR 13:04; Barkay, “Burial Headrests as a Return to the Womb—A Reevaluation,” BAR 14:02) in another direction.

It seems Professor Keel is mistaken in his notion that the ancient Israelites saw in their burials a return to the womb. But so is Professor Barkay’s contention concerning the omega-shaped “Hathor headrest.”

It seems to me that the whole question has a much simpler, down-to-earth solution that shows that the Israelites in First Temple times had more practical common sense than the scholars.

In many burial excavations from the earliest prehistoric times to very recent finds it has been frequently noted that the head was found some distance from the rest of the body. Researchers have developed elaborate theories about the head having been separated from the body to prevent the spirit of the dead from returning and disturbing the living. In very many locations, around old castles, villages, towns or prehistoric sites all over Europe, from the Alps to Scandinavia, old stories are told about ghosts carrying their heads under their arms.

There seems to be a very simple explanation for these phenomena. Usually the dead were put to rest with the head placed on a pillow of some kind or on a stone. As the relatively few muscles of the neck decayed, the head rolled down from the pillow and came to rest some distance from the body. The ancient Israelites of First Temple times had the good sense to create a retaining support preventing the head from rolling away from the body. The shape of this retaining headrest may well have been—as the whole burial was—patterned after the bed of the living, with the shape created according to the practical purpose. Decorative elements on the headrest could represent the hair of the dead or simply joy in decorating, certainly they had no relation to Hathor or a wish to return to the womb or to omega-shaped cultic symbols.

I should like to hear some reactions. I find your magazine extremely interesting and thought-provoking. Keep up the good work.

Reading the Hebrew Bible Through Christian Eyes

Your magazine is an excellent one and I enjoy the articles and helpful explanations which accompany so many of the pictures and enable me (uninitiated) to find specific things mentioned. Without the explanations “to the right of the man seated,” “near the upper set of stairs,” I’d never find the specific object.

In your 1986 Annual Meeting report (“1986 Annual Meeting,” BAR 13:02), Carl Holladay is quoted commenting on Kraabel’s analysis of God-Fearers. He says Kraabel is “arguing for a larger methodological point” and ends the quote with, “It is against this that Kraabel rightly protests,” referring to interpreting the Old Testament through the eyes of the New Testament or Christian eyes.

If Jesus Himself says that certain acts are in fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies, and if Matthew and Paul and other writers quote passages from the Old Testament which have been fulfilled, why should there be any objection to interpreting the Old Testament from a Christian viewpoint? The Bible stands as a unit and the Old Testament is largely a history of the Jewish people, so it seems to me a natural thing to interpret Jewish history through Christian eyes.

Carl Holladay, Candler School of Theology, Emory University, replies:

The point I wished to make in my response to Professor Kraabel’s paper was that the Old Testament need not be interpreted necessarily through New Testament or Christian eyes. The designation “Old Testament” itself reflects a Christian point of view, which also includes the 27 writings of “New Testament.” This form of distinguishing these two sets of writings suggests, of course, that the former has in some sense been superseded, or fulfilled, by the latter, and thus is incomplete standing alone.

While this Christian point of view is both ancient and well established, it differs markedly from a non-Christian, Jewish point of view, which prefers to speak of the Hebrew Scriptures or Hebrew Bible. It should be remembered that Jews, both prior to the beginning of the Christian Church and continuing to our present time, read these writings in their own right seeing no need necessarily to interpret them in the light of what Jesus did, said and taught, or in light of what Jesus” followers said and taught. While Jews and Christians have seriously debated their respective interpretations and ways of reading these Hebrew Scriptures for centuries, and doubtless will continue to do so, I wished simply to insist that Christians should not assume that our viewpoint is the only way in which to interpret what we call the Old Testament.

You note, of course, that Jesus and the New Testament writers, such as Matthew and Paul, see the Old Testament fulfilled in the New Testament. This is correct, but clearly stands within a Christian way of understanding both testaments. The Bible, by which you presumably mean both the Old and New Testaments, does stand as “a unit” to Christians, but not necessarily to non-Christians, especially Jews. I only wish to suggest that Christians recognize that there are other ways in which persons standing in the Jewish heritage see these documents.