Queries & Comments

010

BAR’s Cover: Yuck

Just a comment on the cover of the January/February issue: Yuck! I keep hiding that issue because of that obnoxious lion’s face. Your layout editor does a good job most of the time, but not this time.

Lust Among the Ruins?

Please address your attention your January/February issue [“1990 Excavation Opportunities,” BAR 16:01], specifically to the picture of Ms. Canalizo [Donna Canalizo, pictured excavating in shorts and a T-shirt, was a volunteer at the Ashkelon excavation.—Ed.].

It is this type of picture, which you print each year at this time with your “excavation opportunities,” that makes me feel that these same opportunities are less for learning something of the Holy Land and archaeology than for the ars mores dissoluti!

Why you do this, I cannot explain; you do it, however, each and every year at this time.

I wish to register my disgust with this type of picture!

It’s all in the mind of the beholder.—Ed.

The Cultic Objects in Industrial Areas

Considering Trude Dothan’s statement (“Ekron of the Philistines, Part I: Where They Came From, How They Settled Down and the Place They Worshiped In,” BAR 16:01) about finding “cultic objects in industrial areas of Iron Age cities, a phenomenon we don’t entirely understand,” perhaps Paul’s experience at Ephesus could illuminate this situation: Acts 19:24 implies that making and selling cultic objects to pilgrims was big business. Perhaps they were made in what you designate as the “industrial areas.” Seems to be the logical deduction.

Sacrificing a Puppy to Solemnize a Peace Treaty

Trude Dothan in “Ekron of the Philistines, Part I,” BAR 16:01, states that a ritually decapitated puppy was found near an ancient kiln in Ekron. Dothan writes, “We have no idea what this signifies.”

One of the Mari letters refers to a religious ritual involving the sacrifice of a puppy. A letter sent by Ibal-Il, an official of the ancient city of Mari, to his master Zimri-Lim, king of Mari, mentions a sacrifice involving a “puppy and lettuce.” Ibal-Il writes:

“I went to Aslakka to ‘kill an ass’ between the Hanu and the Idamaras. A ‘puppy and lettuce’ they brought, but I obeyed my Lord and I did not give the ‘puppy and lettuce.’ I caused the foal of an ass to be slaughtered. I established peace between the Hanu and the Idamaras.” (William F. Albright, translator, in Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, ed. James Pritchard [Princeton Univ. Press], p. 483)

From Ibal-Il’s letter it would appear that the “puppy and lettuce” sacrifice was in some way similar to—but apparently not as efficacious as—the “killing of an ass.” The sacrificing of an ass is a well-known ancient ritual for solemnizing a peace treaty.

Trude Dothan replies:

This is no doubt a subject to be studied. Dog and puppy burials are known in the Greek world. See article by Leslie Preston Day in AJA 88 (1984), pp. 21–32.

A Whetstone on the Bamah?

“Ekron of the Philistines,” BAR 16:01, by Trude Dothan and Seymour Gitin, was extremely informative and well written. I have a suggestion with regard to the iron ingot found atop the bamah in building 350. Could it be a sharpening stone, or whetstone, for the iron knives also found in this area? Iron sharpens iron, as mentioned in Proverbs 27:17.

Trude Dothan replies:

Your suggestion regarding the ingot is very interesting. Our “iron ingot” is unfortunately very deteriorated. It is difficult to define its function.

Questions About Temple Mount Reconstruction

The drawing by Leen Ritmeyer in “Reconstructing Herod’s Temple 012Mount in Jerusalem,” BAR 15:06, shows a trough. What is the significance of the trough?

What is the evidence that the channel was a Byzantine water pipe? There is no drop in elevation for drainage purposes.

What evidence is there that the walls of the Temple Mount were built from the inside? I know of no studies to show this.

Could not the stones for the wall be moved along the wide walls to where the next course was being raised, as suggested in “How Herod Moved Gigantic Blocks to Construct Temple Mount,” BAR 07:03, by Murray Stein. According to Stein, the larger stones were apparently moved as cylinders, three chords were later cut off and the stone placed in position. This could be done from the outside just as easily as from the inside.

Leen Ritmeyer replies:

The “trough” in my drawing is intended to indicate the Tyropoeon Valley. I drew the valley like this in order to show the massive retaining walls that were necessary to support the wide street leading to the plaza. These walls would not have been visible of course. A drawing later in the article gives an idea of the houses/shops that would have lined the street going down to the Lower City.

As to the Byzantine water pipe, a section of a datable ceramic water pipe has been found in situ in the groove cut in the wall. There is no need for a drop in elevation, since the water came from a source higher than the level of the Temple platform and went further down to Byzantine houses that were located near the Double Gate.

As to the walls being built from the inside, this is the only logical solution to the problem. [This is published for the first time in our article for BAR. A scoop for BAR indeed!]

As to moving stones as cylinders, this theory is totally unacceptable because it poses too many problems. First, it would mean a loss of at least 53 percent of building material because a square section must be reduced to a circular one for rolling (as in diagram A in “How Herod Moved Gigantic Blocks to Construct Temple Mount,” BAR 07:03) and then reduced again to a square or rectangle for use in the wall. Second, it would mean doubling the number of work hours. Third, who would be willing and able to stop such a speed-gathering round colossus, weighing 50 to 70 tons or more? I remember outlining these problems to Murray Stein, but he preferred to base his theory on a single stone, which to me looked more like a worn step. In any case, the stone does not have a segmental section, as supposed by Stein.

The Size of the Ritual Bathhouse

In “Reconstructing Herod’s Temple Mount in Jerusalem,” BAR 15:06, the proposed reconstruction of the south end of the Temple Mount has, as No. 15, the ritual bathhouse a rather small area extending only as far as the end of the broad steps. Yet on the cover of that issue, and in earlier issues of BAR, these ritual baths have been shown to cover a much larger area. Please explain this apparent difference.

Leen Ritmeyer replies:

In earlier reconstruction drawings, the ritual bathhouse was indeed drawn larger. Later developments, however, have shown that the area containing mikva’ot was actually much smaller. A drain, which is usually found under Herodian streets, was found, separating the mikva’ot from other Herodian rooms to the east. Hence the two buildings shown in my latest drawing. The building remains on the cover photo of BAR represent a restored wing of an Omayyad palace, which was later built over the Herodian remains.

The Vaults Under the Temple Mount

Leen Ritmeyer’s diagram (the southern wall, “Reconstructing Herod’s Temple Mount in Jerusalem,” BAR 15:06) illustrates vaults beneath the esplanade, but he leaves the reader with the impression that the space between the old Temple platform and the new retaining wall was simply filled with rubble. This is inaccurate.

The Kohanim (priestly class) had specific laws regulating their exposure to the dead. Because of the possibility that the newly constructed Temple Mount area might be over long-forgotten gravesites, an elaborate construction of layered vaults maintained cultic purity. This is mentioned in the Mishnah (Parah 3:3): “Beneath both the Temple Mount and the Courts of the Temple was a hollowed space for fear of any graves down in the depths (kivrey tehom).”

Leen Ritmeyer replies:

I am familiar with this Mishnaic law, which could have been adhered to by building vaults over any tomb to be incorporated 171 the Temple platform extension. These could then be covered. As I understand, a layer of air is 014sufficient for purification. In the drawing on page 48 I was more concerned with explaining the construction of the wall. The fill is represented schematically only. Foundation walls for other buildings such as the Royal Stoa, gateways and porticoes would have been built up from bedrock, and the fill would have been dumped in between these walls. To simplify matters I left them out of the drawing.

Can the Dead Sea Scrolls Undermine Jewish or Christian Elements of Faith?

Norman W. Pinney, Ed.D., in Queries & Comments, BAR 16:01, once again brings up “the rumor that the [Dead Sea] scrolls are being withheld because they contradict elements of faith in the Jewish and Catholic religions.” You reply that “we do know the scholars who control the publication of the texts” and that you trust that they wouldn’t do such a thing.

Why do you give such a weak reply? Dr. Pinney is an adult. We can let him know the simple truth: Both Catholic Christianity and rabbinic Judaism openly admit that there were other forms of both Christianity and Judaism in the first century; therefore, the manuscript that would “contradict elements of faith” in either religion simply couldn’t exist.

Or rather, quite a few of them do exist, and you can find the more famous ones—the Gospel of Thomas,^a for instance—in English translation at your local public library or shopping mall bookstore.

Objects to Ad

In the January/February BAR is an ad for a book entitled Gospel Fictions by Randel Helms. The book states that the four Gospels of the New Testament are just fiction. To discredit the Bible is to lessen whatever impact its moral and ethical teachings have on society. Don’t we have too much immorality, crime and unethical behavior already? Publishing an ad for this book is promoting it, regardless of the statement in very fine print in the lower left corner of the page that states, “Advertising in Biblical Archaeology Review does not necessarily imply editorial endorsement.”

For nearly 2,000 years Christians have been ridiculed, discriminated against, persecuted, imprisoned and killed for their faith. Yet Christianity has not been destroyed. It offers a way to live in peace with one’s neighbors; it gives hope that those who seek to do the will of God can help to make a better world here, and after death the persecuted will find peace, the crippled will be made whole, the blind will see and all illnesses and afflictions will be cured. Hope gives those who truly believe in Christianity the strength to endure.

Humanism and other forms of atheism offer only a “dead end.” Humanism states that there is no God and nothing is either inherently right or wrong, and that the most important thing is gratifying oneself. Humanism is destroying our country by the anarchy and crime it causes, but it won’t completely destroy the Christian religion. The communists have tried for years, bur they too have failed.

The book you object to is a literary critique of the Gospels by a professor of English at Arizona State University.

We are happy to make your views known, 062just as we have published the ad you disagree with. BAR is a marketplace of ideas, where people are free to accept or reject anything or everything. That is how we search for and, hopefully, find the truth; we do not do it by suppressing what we disagree with.—Ed.

Praise from a Distinguished Source

Thank you for a fine magazine which presents useful articles for popular and professional consumption, with precise and estimable technical quality control.

Thank you also for the concern and your crusade regarding the unconscionable delay in making the Dead Sea Scrolls available to scholars. Please keep the heat on.

A special thanks must be proferred you for the superb piece in the January/February issue on Philistine Ekron and its light on the intriguing Sea Peoples (“Ekron of the Philistines,” BAR 16:01, by Trude Dothan and Seymour Gitin).

We don’t usually print letters simply praising us, but we cannot restrain ourselves when it comes unsolicited from such a distinguished source as this.—Ed.

Whose Son Was Sacrificed?

In “Pomegranate Scepters and Incense Stand with Pomegranates Found in Priest’s Grave,” BAR 16:01, Michal Artzy, discussing the phenomenon of child sacrifice, tells us, “King Mesha of Moab did just that—sacrificed his son—as a last resort when besieged by the Israelites (2 Kings 3:27).” In a note, she refers us to an article by Baruch Margalit (“Why King Mesha of Moab Sacrificed His Oldest Son,” BAR 12:06) in which Margalit attempted to demonstrate by means of a twice-emended Ugaritic document that, by sacrificing his own son, Mesha was acting in accordance with an ancient Canaanite practice. Margalit also supposed that the sight of a child being sacrificed triggered a “conditioned reflex” that caused the Israelites to flee in “mass hysteria.” While Margalit’s treatment 067of the Ugaritic text was criticized soundly in a letter by Jack Sasson (Queries & Comments, BAR 13:02), neither Sasson, nor now Artzy, has questioned the strange reading of the Biblical text which has Mesha killing his own heir.

If the Biblical verse in question is read in context with the preceding verse, it is clear that Mesha did no such thing. The following explanation is taken from the commentaries of Rabbi David Kimhi and Don Isaac Abarbanel.

The Biblical text reads, “And the king of Moab saw that the men of war were stronger than he, so he took with him seven hundred swordsmen to break through to the king of Edom, but they were unable. And he took his firstborn who was to reign in his place and brought him as a burnt offering on the wall, and there was a great wrath upon Israel, so they withdrew from him and returned to [their own] land” (2 Kings 3:26–27). Prior to this (2 Kings 3:6–9), we had learned that Jehoram of Israel and Jehoshaphat of Judah were fighting together against Moab, accompanied by the king of Edom, a vassal of Judah.

With the event restored to its context, it is easy to see that the royal heir sacrificed by Mesha was the son of the king of Edom. The “great wrath” was that of the Edomites, who may well have regarded the Israelites (including the Judahites) as responsible for the death of their crown prince. The rebellion of Edom after the death of Jehoshaphat (2 Kings 8:20) may have been a direct result of this.

Further confirmation of this reading may be found in the book of Amos, where Moab is castigated for “burning the bones of the king of Edom to lime” (Amos 2:1).

It is hard to understand why 2 Kings 3:27 is so often read out of context, when doing so leads us to an absurd situation which can only be understood by inventing some mythical psychological reflex.

BAR’s Cover: Yuck

Just a comment on the cover of the January/February issue: Yuck! I keep hiding that issue because of that obnoxious lion’s face. Your layout editor does a good job most of the time, but not this time.