Queries & Comments

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The Cover Spoke Volumes

Your coverage of the unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls in the March/April issue (“Dead Sea Scrolls,” BAR 16:02) was as clever as it was poignantly done. The cover spoke volumes.

Thank you for the wonderful work that you are doing.

Was Professor Strugnell Born This Arrogant?

One wonders whether Harvard University has considered the quality of Professor Strugnell’s editorial supervision of Dead Sea Scroll publication—to say nothing of his near-paranoid responses to criticism? Does this reflect creditably on the school? Was Professor Strugnell born this arrogant, or are such behavioral disabilities preordained to evolve in certain individuals with the acquisition of a modicum of expertise in one’s profession?

Where Fleas Abound

The fleas on your March/April cover were most appropriate. One does not have to drive a horse and buggy to recognize around which end of a horse fleas abound.

Dog in the Manger

Perhaps if he did not act like a dog in the manger, Harvard Professor John Strugnell would be less annoyed by fleas.

Is Agatha Christie Masterminding the Whole Affair?

I took my March/April BAR with me to lunch today and pored over the articles pertaining to the “unpublishing” of the Dead Sea Scrolls (“Dead Sea Scroll Variation on ‘Show and Tell’—It’s Called ‘Tell, But No Show,’” and “Leading Dead Sea Scroll Scholar Denounces Delay,” BAR 16:02). I’ve read the previous articles but somehow today I was struck by one thing. The whole situation sounds very much like an Agatha Christie mystery! Lots of blind alleys, red herrings and scholars whom you can imagine are looking furtively about. As far as I can tell the only thing missing (if this were indeed a Christie mystery) is someone being poisoned. If that tragically takes place, then I will be assured that she is alive somewhere masterminding the entire affair!

More Fleas

I can’t think of a word that hasn’t already been used to describe the procrastination and intentional delay in releasing the Dead Sea Scroll material to the public. Words such as scholarly disgrace, scandalous, outrageous, disgusting and frustrating are all too mild to apply to those credit-seeking, egotistical individuals who are holding the scholarly community hostage. They will certainly receive “credit” for their actions one day, if that is what they are looking for, but it will not be the credit for which they wish to be remembered.

I, too, would like to be an acknowledged flea in the scholarly hide of the editorial team controlling the Dead Sea Scrolls.

For the 14 years I taught Northwest Semitic at the University of California at Berkeley, the non-publication of some key Ugaritic texts was a constant thorn in my side, but that was piddly-dink compared to the outrageous scandal and manifest contempt for the academic community involved with the Qumran material.

I’ll hop on the Qumran dog with enthusiasm—another flea.

You may add me to your official list of fleas. Keep up the pressure!

You may not yet have learned that, no doubt due in no small measure to your own efforts, there appears to have been some softening of the official positions. Ben-Zion Wacholder of Hebrew Union College has received from Israel’s Department of Antiquities a photograph of, and permission to publish, several small fragments of Temple Scroll material that were, presumably at least, previously assigned to others. Several other encouraging things are also happening.

Scholars who agree on nothing else—Morton Smith and I, for example—concur that the management of the publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls is a disgrace to all involved—this century’s single greatest scandal in Jewish studies. Some may explain the monumental failure of the managers by appeal to their sloth or ignorance or venality or incompetence or even habitual drunkenness. But I think arrogance and self-importance form the better explanation. Proof is Joseph Baumgarten’s letter to Philip R. Davies (“Dead Sea Scroll Variation on “Show and Tell”—It’s Called ‘Tell, But No Show,’” BAR 16:02).

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PBS Preparing Documentary on Dead Sea Scroll Delay

I am a member of a graduate-level class studying the history and contents of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Our curriculum includes a review of editorial comments, articles and public letters addressing the issue of scroll publication contained in Biblical Archaeology Review.

After reviewing these, our class expressed an interest in discovering the extent of the response among the religious community at large to the issue of scroll publication. Is it possible to ascertain, from the totality of letters you receive, the level of grass-roots interest in this discussion?

Ordinary lay persons have expressed an enormous interest in the issue, although it is difficult to quantify. This support is reflected not only in the heavy mail BAR receives, but also in the fact that hundreds—perhaps thousands—of secular newspapers, magazines, radio stations, television stations and even television networks have covered the story!. PBS is preparing a major television documentary on the delay in Dead Sea Scroll publication that is scheduled to he shown next February.—Ed.

“Smarty, Smarty, Gave a Party”

The latest chapter in the sordid story of the Dead Sea Scrolls (BAR 16:02) makes one wonder where this scandalous nonsense will end. Are there no pressures that the rest of the academic community can exert on the dogs in the manger? Most of the scroll editors are responsible to presidents or chancellors of universities or other institutions of higher learning. Have the presidents no concern for the reputation of their institutions?

The custodians of the scrolls are playing the same kind of game that the cap-snatcher used to play on the playground at school. The point of the game is to compel the unfortunate victim to run frantically from person to person to recover his property. When he finally catches on and refuses to run, someone will come up and hand him the cap, which he will refuse to touch until they let go of it. The delegates to the Second International Congress of Biblical Archaeology must refuse to allow themselves to be teased, and boycott Joseph Baumgarten.

Why not have everybody file into the hall to hear Baumgarten, and as he rises to come to the podium, everyone gets up and walks out. It will be a case of “Smarty, smarty, gave a party, and no one came but you-know-who.” Deprive him of his triumph. He will read his paper to an empty hall. It will be painful, and may delay things even further, but in the end, it will bring the obstructionists down off their high horses.

On Whom Was BAR Heaping Scorn?

Those who imitate demagogues shouldn’t do it only halfway. Otherwise, they may end up looking foolish. In the opening lines of your attack on Professor Joseph M. Baumgarten (see “Dead Sea Scroll Variation on ‘Show and Tell’—It’s Called ‘Tell, But No Show,’” BAR 16:02) and in the cartoon, you attribute to him the statement: “I’ll describe these Dead Sea Scrolls texts I’ve got here in my hand, but I won’t let you see them!” But you carefully withhold quotation marks from the statement (as opposed to most of the others in the cartoon), and you even reproduce a Baumgarten letter written a mere month or two after he received the fragments in question, promising “to make the texts available as soon as possible to all who wish to study them.” Were you heaping scorn upon someone else?

Moreover, one should note that the texts in question are in the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem, not in Baumgarten’s hand. In his letter, Baumgarten promised to go to Jerusalem in January 1990 to work intensively on the fragments. He did so, and he is still working on them there. One wonders why your article ignored this evidence of energy and responsibility.

It’s true that others have been promising to publish scrolls and have not yet done so; how does that justify such an attack on someone who has so recently been asked to step in?

While a “gadfly” such as BAR is frequently very helpful in this business, this time I really think you went too far.

BAR was critical of Professor Baumgarten not for his failure to publish—after all, he just got the material—but for his refusal to let others see the material. In this, he is like all the other scroll editors, except Professor James C. VanderKam of North Carolina State University, who has agreed to let any scholar see photographs of the texts assigned to him for publication.—Ed.

Scholars Who Want to Distance Themselves from the Bible

Bryant Wood’s article (“Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho? A New Look at the Archaeological Evidence,” BAR 16:02) on the destruction of Jericho was excellent. Mr. Wood seems genuinely puzzled as to how an archaeologist like Kathleen Kenyon could fail to see pottery evidence supporting the Biblical chronology of this event. I would suggest that it was due to a strong, perhaps unconscious desire to keep herself distanced from the Bible and not become associated with Bible fundamentalists, Jewish or Christian.

Unfortunately, we see this same tendency affecting the objectivity of many other scholars, who as Mr. Wood says “have written off the Bible account of the conquest of Canaan as so much folklore and religious rhetoric.” Time will tell.

Will the Bible Prevail?

It is refreshing to read an article in BAR once in a while that shows some respect for the Scriptures. I am referring to “Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho?” BAR 16:02, by Bryant G. Wood. How about more such articles in BAR?

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Many BAR readers believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God; they are convinced it will eventually prevail when it comes to the interpretation of archaeological digs in Israel.

No One Conquered Jericho

Bryant Wood convinced me (“Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho?” BAR 16:02), no one conquered Jericho. The earthquake breeched its walls, a firepot broke or overturned and the place burned. How this made an appearance in the Hebrew Scriptures edited or composed in Babylon, I’m not prepared to say. (I suggest Professor Zohar’s letter in see Queries & Comments, BAR 14:02, has as good an explanation as we’re likely to see.)

Tracing a Destruction Level Is Not So Easy

Anyone who has slogged through a scorpion-infested Middle East dig with brains slowly frying away in the sun is not surprised that Garstang, Kenyon and now Bryant Wood (“Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho?” BAR 16:02) have come up with very different interpretations of Jericho. I well remember squinting at color charts, attempting to identify from among hundreds of faintly different possibilities a little dab of yellowish-grayish-brownish-whitish-tannish-blackish dirt, which rapidly turned to a uniformly nondescript gray as the sun sucked out the last wisps of moisture. But these rather “iffy” guesses were an important basis for drawing the different occupation levels—a confused jumble of construction, occupation, abandonment, resettlement over deteriorated mudbrick and fallen stone, devastation from siege and attack, accidental fires and torched cities, leveling out the mess to start again, sand and silt deposits from the relentless winds, and the effects of swiping stones from past occupations to build new walls and buildings. It’s a miracle that site drawings can even approach accuracy. The ancients had more important things on their minds than to leave neat and tidy occupation layers, which we see only in field archaeology texts.

Kathleen Kenyon deserves some of the archaeological sainthood conferred on her by fellow archaeologists for improvements in methodology, but she was better at “collecting infinite amounts of useless detail” than she was at analysis. A noted archaeologist made the following comment a few years ago about the time he, as a graduate student, had worked under her direction at Jericho:

“Sometimes we were trying to trace charcoal lines from a destruction level or accidental fire for our site drawings. The line sometimes would disappear, and then a few meters away there might be two or three or four charcoal lines, any (or none) of which might be the continuation. Ms. Kenyon would scan the nominations, then imperiously point to the ‘correct’ one. She walked away oblivious to the snickers of the grad students.”

I have long thought that Ms. Kenyon drew mountains of conclusions from the tiny unrepresentative area she actually dug at Jericho.

BAR’s Unforgivable Fault

I am herewith cancelling my new subscription to BAR. From a quick reading of the initial copy, it seems to be a rather well-done magazine, and detailed almost to a fault; such detailed information could be invaluable to any student or Bible teacher.

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However, the magazine contains an unforgivable fault.

In “Ekron of the Philistines, Part II: Olive-Oil Suppliers to the World,” BAR 16:02, explanation is made of the contractions B.C.E. and C.E.; they are described as “the religiously neutral terms used by scholars, corresponding to B.C. and A.D.”

There is no possible way in which I am going to support with my money any organization or publication that cannot bring itself to acknowledge Almighty God and His son, Jesus Christ.

I would remind you of two truths: Jesus said He would deny before God those who denied Him on earth, and also that whoever is responsible for instituting this offensive and reprehensible “neutral” terminology in your magazine will stand before Christ in the judgment.

You should be ashamed!

B.C.E.-C.E.—The Scholarly Alternate

I have been extremely pleased with Biblical Archaeology Review and Bible Review. I always learn something new from each issue. There is one point, however, which I would like to bring to your attention.

I support your policy of letting each author decide whether to use B.C.E., C.E., or B.C., A.D. However, I do not agree with the footnote used to describe the former. A rejection of B.C. and A.D. does not necessarily impart “neutrality” to C.E. and B.C.E. Christian readers can be as offended by these terms as a Jewish reader can be by B.C. and A.D. I therefore think the footnote describing B.C.E. and C.E. should be modified accordingly. Perhaps it would be better to describe them as “scholarly alternates.”

Good suggestion. We’ll adopt it.—Ed.

Color Prejudice

As a regular BAR reader, I am particularly fond of Queries & Comments; it is a pleasure to read a wide range of sometimes conflicting opinions.

Unfortunately, freedom of expression seems to have gone too far. Letters from Kamau Anderson and Arzinia Richardson in Queries & Comments, BAR 16:02, are examples. Both display an unacceptable level of racist prejudice. Richardson attributes Kemet’s (Egypt’s) decline to “miscegenation.” One would have hoped that this hateful word had disappeared from the 014language of civilized people. Both letters aggressively downgrade any cultural contributions of groups other than black Africans. The scientific aspects of the letters were most satisfactorily handled by Frank Yurco in his response.

I am convinced that BAR would never have opened its pages to such racist outbursts had they come from the opposite end of the color spectrum. In the future please refuse to publish racist material irrespective of its bias.

Closing the Nefertiti Debate

I love the Queries & Comments section of each issue of your magazine. It provides “armchair archaeologists” like me (I’m a suburban mother of a four-month-old boy) alternative views to those presented in the articles which form the body of your magazine. In addition, it is an excellent forum for addressing current and pressing issues, such as the publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls or the sale of plundered antiquities.

However, I would like to suggest that the debate over Nefertiti’s race be closed. I want to teach my son to appreciate the diversity of people and cultures, both past and present. To take a woman from a tremendous culture of thousands of years ago and force-fit her into our modern definitions of “black” and “white” is futile and pointless. It propagates the destructive racism that is already too prevalent in our society.

You’re right.—Ed.

Herodian Stones in Damascus Gate

I very much enjoyed the Ritmeyers’ articles on the Temple Mount in the November/December 1989 issue (“Reconstructing Herod’s Temple Mount In Jerusalem,” “A Pilgrim’s Journey,” “Quarrying And Transporting Stones For Herod’s Temple Mount,” and “Reconstructing The Triple Gate,” BAR 15:06).

One question about the present north wall of the Old City: Why are there Herodian stones in the base of the Damascus Gate?

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Leen Ritmeyer replies:

The rectangular stones at the base of the Damascus Gate are all in secondary use. They are identical with those of the Herodian Temple Mount walls, from which they, without any doubt, were taken by Hadrian when he built it as a gateway into Aelia Capitolina in 132 A.D. (See Menahem Magen’s remarks in “Recovering Roman Jerusalem—The Entryway Beneath Damascus Gate,” BAR 14:03.)

It would make an interesting study and research to investigate what happened to the enormous number of stones the Romans pulled down from the buildings of the Temple Mount and its retaining walls when they captured the city in 70 A.D.

The stones found m the Temple Mount excavations represent only a small proportion of the total amount of stones that are missing.

The Spread of Nuraghi

Readers of “Searching for the Phoenicians in Sardinia,” BAR 16:01, by Joan Scheuer, may be interested to learn that the nuraghi [great stone towers] spread right along the Mediterranean up the west coast of Portugal, Brittany, Wales, Scotland and up to Norway, although there is a bigger concentration of them on Sardinia than anywhere else. No one seems to know why.

In Wales and Scotland they are called brocha. Current estimates suggest over 500 of them were built to an almost identical pattern, in a time when travel and communication were difficult and most of the population were illiterate. It is thought that they were fortified dwellings occupying prime sites, easy to defend and difficult to attack. The largest are over 80 feet in diameter at ground level. The great broch at Mousa, Shetland, stands over 40 feet high. The walls are 12 to 15 feet thick at the base, with a labyrinth of staircases and passages. This is remarkable for dry stone walls. The broch builders did not seem to feel the need to dress the stone. A tapering structure is inherently strong, actually enhancing the overall building strength and creating tensions that counter the outward pressures caused by floor and roof. It was the formula for an exceptionally strong building.

Honest Volunteer Disclaims Credit for Finding 2,000-Year-Old Flask

Two letters in the January/February issue (see Queries & Comments, BAR 16:01) ask that “credit be given where credit is due.” David Davis’ letter gave me credit for finding the now-famous flask [a 2,000-year-old flask of oil found in the Judean wilderness—Ed.], but unfortunately I did not have that privilege. The flask was uncovered and removed from its discovery site by Beny Arubas, an archaeology student from Hebrew University. Beny and I were taking turns at digging in the hole in the corner of the cave the morning the flask was found, but he was doing the digging at the time it was located. I was working with the “bucket brigade” taking the debris outside for screening via a shaker table.

There were four other American volunteers working that morning at the dig site. They were: Margaret Thomas, Orange, Texas; Sandra Henderson, Loveland, Colorado; Roy Jones, Fillmore, Calfornia; and Jose Fernandez, Mt. Clemens, Michigan.

I’m sure any of the above would gladly vouch for Beny and settle the matter permanently.

I am surprised that the story got so far off center. I provided Vendyl Jones with prints of my slides taken when the flask was 059found. I also discussed the event several months later with him at a meeting in Tyler, Texas, at the time the flask began to make the news.

Mr. Shanks, I am making this response to provide you with the correct information in the event you get more flak on the subject.

Joseph Patrich replies:

I appreciate the generous impulse which moved Mr. Main to set the record straight, and like every other archaeologist working in Israel I appreciate the assistance of the volunteers that make it possible to excavate as much as we have. However, excavation is the product of many people who all work under the supervision of the archaeologist in charge. It is impossible to mention everyone who finds everything.

BAR in the Philippines

Greetings from the Philippines.

Thanks for the many pleasurable hours of reading and mind-stretching that you have afforded me. I am a minister with the unique privilege of teaching Biblical archaeology to students at our four Bible institutes here in the Philippines. Most of our students are from the “provinces,” which means that their background in history and geography is very thin, and their knowledge of archaeology is practically nonexistent. However, I find them to be absolutely fascinated with this subject and some of the most astute students I have ever had.

I brought with me to the Philippines a set of BARs in BAR binders and have donated them to the library in Manila. The students are just now learning how to use the index to write on various subjects that I have assigned them. I am sure that this is done in many areas of the United States, but over here it is breaking absolutely new ground.