Queries & Comments

014

No Bull; It’s a Calf—At Least in Part

Regarding the “silver calf” featured on the cover of your BAR 17:02 issue and in the article on Ashkelon:

I am not an archaeologist. I am a farmer with 50 years of experience raising cattle. That is not a calf. That is a bull.

The depth of the fore- in relation to the hind-quarters, the thick neck with a definite hump, the length of the horn all show a fully mature animal. In fact, using 20th-century standards, a horn that curved to below the eye would argue for at least a six-year-old animal, but since we do not know the breed, I won’t insist on that age.

Paula Wapnish and Brian Hesse reply:

Mr. Neitzel knows his beef! He is correct on every point. But we want to present the reasons why, on balance, the identification of the statuette as a calf is also supportable.

We are the staff archaeozoologists at Ashkelon and can tell you that from the day the figure was recovered Larry Stager has been most concerned to get a fix on the age because of the Biblical significance of the term ‘egel. Having been raised on a farm he was familiar with cattle of all ages and felt that while the figure was proportionately calflike, some features just didn’t fit.

We decided to go to the experts and got in touch with Dr. Paul Rumph, professor of veterinary anatomy at Auburn University (Alabama). Dr. Rumph circulated a photo of the calf among his colleagues in the large-mammal division and asked them for an estimate of the age. Their consensus was that the representation was that of an animal of about one year of age. A few thought the animal might be less than six months old, while one individual opted for an adolescent approaching adulthood. The rationales they offered were:

Calf: body length-to-leg ratio, high tail set, slender body, high carriage of testicle, lack of penis-sheath development.

Bull: tail length, big neck, form of head, curved horns.

In sum, from the front of the shoulderblade to the back of the hip, it is the figure of a calf; considering just the tail and the neck and head, the features are bull-like.

In truth, perspective is everything. In talking with the archaeologists and art historians who are most used to dealing with animals represented by fuddled features, a conversational theme was the “realism” of the statuette. By contrast, the veterinary scientists immediately characterized it as “so unrealistic” because of the composite of ages the features betrayed.

The “Spanish Inquisition” Returns

The Spanish Inquisition has returned! During a recent Dead Sea Scrolls conference in Madrid, a trial of sorts was held to accuse a certain Polish scholar of issuing a “prepublication” version of a Qumran text which has been in private circulation for several years and which its editors are withholding from us while they amass a monumental commentary on it.

The Dead Sea Scroll editors’ brief was never to publish commentaries but to make the texts available. The text in question has been commented on publicly and discussed at conferences for many years. Dr. Kapera’s “prepublication” has enabled scholars like me to participate on more or less equal terms with those privileged enough to have had a peek at the unpublished text, and who have already been airing their (usually silly) views on its significance.

Perhaps Dr. Kapera should not have done what he did, but then, it should never have become necessary. It is a peccadillo compared with the behavior of the editors and their lackeys who accused him. He has apparently promised to destroy the copies of this text he has in his possession. I hope that other scholars who, like myself, have benefited from his actions in making the text available will join me in giving him some support and in pointing the finger at the real culprits in this shoddy episode.

The Polish scholar Professor Davies refers to, Dr. Zdzislaw J. Kapera, is editor of The Qumran Chronicle, a Polish Journal printed in English. As a supplement to his journal, Dr. Kapera printed a samizdat copy of MMT, an enormously important Qumran text that has been kept secret for over 35 years. The availability of this text in The Qumran Chronicle was announced in the BAR 17:02.^a

We cannot report more fully on the “Spanish Inquisition” at the Madrid conference that Professor Davies refers to because, after being invited, BAR’s editor was disinvited. The alleged reason for the BAR editor’s exclusion was to “preserve the open, free and candid climate of the academic discussion.”^b It was presumably in this climate that the “inquisition” was conducted.

In any event, Dr. Kapera was “prevailed upon” to discontinue distributing the text of MMT. He reports that when he returned from the Maarid conference, he found “a huge pile of letters on my desk. All of them contained a request for subscription to The Qumran Chronicle and specifically for a copy of the Appendix A with 4QMMT.”

In response to these orders, Dr. Kapera has written his potential subscribers that “unfortunately, after the Madrid congress I am no longer able to supply people with a copy. I am very sorry because of that. Nor do I plan to reprint the appendix. I have found another solution, which I hope will be judged satisfactory.”

His new solution is to print “an English paraphrase of the text,” together with several articles about MMT.

Dr. Kapera explained his publication of the text of MMT as “a desperate act.” Kapera was to host a scholarly colloquium in Poland devoted in large part to MMT. Kapera noted that his bibliography of scholarly articles on MMT “contains a dozen names and more than 30 items. However, only a very few scholars were granted the chance to read the text in the original and to quote from it.”

In these circumstances, Dr. Kapera decided to publish a copy of the text that had been anonymously sent to him. At Madrid, he changed his mind.—Ed.

016

Unfortunately, It Ended

You write in your introduction to Lawrence E. Stager’s series on Ashkelon that “What started as one large article grew to two and, now, to three (where it will end, we promise!)” (Inside BAR, BAR 17:03).

Unfortunately for me, your “promise” is to end the most rewarding nonfiction reading opportunity I have ever experienced.

We will print additional letters responding to the Ashkelon series in a future issue.—Ed.

What Did Vatican II Say?

The article “The Church’s Teaching on Supersessionism,” BAR 17:02, on the Catholic church’s rejection of any form of replacement of the Jewish people by the Christian church seems quite biased.

Vatican II recognized with St. Paul that the Jews remain most dear to God because of their forefathers and that God’s call to them remains. It did not say that they are the Chosen People in the same sense and degree as before Christ, as Mr. Fisher seems to say: “Jews remain God’s people today no less than before” (italics added). This, of course, does not mean that Jews are cursed or doomed to damnation. But St. Paul makes clear that Jews who rejected Jesus are temporarily (for 2,000 years now!) rejected from their original privileged role as the special people of God and that gentiles have replaced them. The composite of Jewish Christians (“the remnant”) and gentile converts makes up this special people in continuity with pre-Christian Israel (Romans 9:24, 11:15–24). Vatican II never denied this, nor could it.

Eugene Fisher replies:

Father Treacy correctly notes the tension inherent in the Pauline image of root and branch (Romans 11:15–24), but resolving that tension in favor of the negative pole, as Father Treacy does, is to reduce to a mere problem what is for St. Paul a “mystery.” In Romans 9–11, St. Paul attempts in several ways to present the mystery of God’s continuing election of the Jewish people despite their “unbelief” in Jesus as the Christ. Significantly, the passage as a whole begins with an unqualified affirmation, in the present tense, that to the Jewish people, post-Christum, belong “the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the Law, the worship and the promises” (Romans 9:4); hardly a description of a people “temporarily rejected,” as Father Treacy would have us believe.

Likewise, St. Paul concludes his reflection with an affirmation of the Jewish people as the Chosen People: “In respect to the gospel, they are enemies on your account; but in respect to the election, they are beloved because of the patriarchs. For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:28–29).

Following St. Paul, then, the Second Vatican Council understood the relationship between the Christian church and the Jewish people, from the perspective of God’s salvific plan for all humanity, as a “both/and” rather than as an “either/or.” The council stated, contra all supersessionist theories, that “although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected by God or accursed, as if this followed from sacred scripture.” Christians can and must, the council taught, affirm what is necessary to affirm about Christ without denigrating Jews and Judaism. To do less is to besmirch the good news itself. Salvation in God’s mercy is not after all a “zero-sum” game requiring losers for there to be winners (cf., Romans 11:30–36).

Six-Year-Old Frightens Neighbor with Buzz

Nearly 65 years ago, on mischief night, my mother showed me how to make and use the device you call a “buzz” (“Buzz or Button?” BAR 17:03). Two points you failed to mention, however:

To get started, you hold the ends of the loop loosely and swing the button like a jump rope. Obligingly, and mysteriously, the string becomes twisted. When you pull the ends of the loop tight, the button spins. If you relax and retighten the loop in a suitable rhythm, the momentum of each spin winds it the opposite way and it can be kept spinning for a long time.

Second, and more important, the faint whirring sound that is made by the string and button alone are incidental. The object was to let the spinning button contact a window, to make a rattling sound on the glass, and thus disturb and supposedly frighten the occupants of a house—daring mischief for a six-year-old.

And From a Sixth-Grader

I am a sixth grader from Illinois. I think your magazine is very educational and enjoyable. Someday I would like to become an archaeologist, and your magazine will help me fulfill my dream. I look forward to every issue. Thank you.

Clean Up the Siloam Pool

Congratulations on your good work re the release of the Dead Sea Scrolls! Dare I suggest yet another area badly in need of “campaigning”? I made the mistake (one I promised myself never to repeat) of taking 018pilgrims to the Siloam Pool. Who is responsible for that incredible blight on such a magnificent religious, historical and geographical shrine? Could not the concerned Muslim, Jewish and Christian religious (and scholarly) communities put pressure on those responsible at least to remove the garbage, old tires, wooden crates, broken bottles, etc. from that revered site? I omit reference to the phony pottery and coins pushed on the unwary on the way to the site!

Thank you for your wonderful magazine.

Pollen—How Old?

In “Scientists Examine Remains of Ancient Bathroom,” BAR 17:03 (Jane Cahill, Karl Reinhard, David Tarler and Peter Warnock,) the authors state “Identifiable pollen grains have been found preserved in rocks over 2.2 billion years old.”

I think you have slipped a few decimal points. Pollen came with flowering plants during the Cretaceous period, about 70 million years ago. Your date is before the appearance of multicellular life.

Peter Warnock replies:

Mr. Kirzner is correct that flowering plants did not appear until the Cretaceous period. However, some nonflowering plants (conifers, etc.) also produce pollen. Gymnosperms and other nonflowering pollen- or spore-producing vascular plants have been around for about 400 million years (gymnosperms a bit later, approximately 300 million years). Spores from these plants are used by people studying earlier periods.

The sentence should have read “spores and pollen grains,” but in editing the article for readability and length, “spores” was deleted. Fossil spores have been found in rocks dated as being over 2.2 billion years old.^c

Evolution Only a Theory

As a Christian, I am disturbed. Cahill, Reinhard, Tarler and Warnock casually state, “Identifiable pollen grains have been found preserved in rock over 2.2 billion years old” (“It Had to Happen—Scientists Examine Remains of Ancient Bathroom,” BAR 17:03). Such an unqualified statement comes off sounding as fact, despite the lack of any scientific evidence.

In the same article, the authors state, “pinworm evolution paralleled primate evolution.” Science is the direct or indirect study of repeatable events that lead to predictability. According to Webster, science 020is “knowledge acquired by careful observation, by deduction of the laws which govern changes and conditions and by testing these deductions by experiment.” Thus, anything prehistoric (that is, anything considered to exist before man kept recorded histories) cannot be studied scientifically.

Yes, creation-science is a misnomer because it pairs two contradictory words. However, any statement concerning origins and prehistoric times falls under the categories of philosophy and/or theology—but not science.

Please, let us not forget that evolution is only a theory. Jesus asks us only to have faith. I believe.

God bless you on your fine magazine.

Parapet Mistakenly Omitted?

At age 72 I have few regrets in life. One is that I only discovered BAR this year. Better late than never!

As a retired professional engineer, I am fascinated by the excellent article authored by Ann Killebrew and Steven Fine describing the reconstructed house at Qatzrin (“Qatzrin—Reconstructing Village Life in Talmudic Times,” BAR 17:03). I am curious about the roof surface. The illustrations and photos show wood beams supporting a reed mat. The authors state, “During summer afternoons and evenings, family members often sat on the roof or ate their meals there.” The sketch shows a roof roller. My guess is that tar was mixed with a fine aggregate, sand or clay, to make a primitive “blacktop” which was rolled and compacted to provide a waterproof traffic surface on the roof.

Probably the earliest OSHA-type rule for building safety is found in Deuteronomy 22:8: “When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, so that you do not bring bloodguilt on your house if anyone should fall from it.”

During my professional career I walked on thousands of roofs and I must say I always felt safer behind a parapet. For authenticity, should the roof of Rabbi Abun’s house have a parapet?

Ann Killebrew replies:

The reconstructed roofs in the House of Rabbi Abun at ancient Qatzrin are based on the archaeological evidence from the excavations at Qatzrin and other sites in the area, on architectural surveys of ancient Byzantine and medieval houses (sometimes still standing to the second story) located in the Golan and southern Syria, and on ethnographic observations of traditional Druze village houses in the Golan Heights.

Two different roofing techniques were employed in this region. Both at Qatzrin and other 022contemporaneous sites in the region, basalt stone beams (about 6 feet long) were laid on top of basalt stone corbels to form the ceiling. This technique could be used to roof over fairly narrow spaces or larger rooms which included arches that allowed the 6-foot-long basalt beams to be used for roofing. Several basalt beams were found in the storeroom of the House of Rabbi Abun during the excavations.

The second type of ceiling, spanning larger spaces, consisted of wooden beams over which reeds were laid. Unfortunately, this type of roofing is not preserved in the archaeological record. Our reconstruction of these roofs is based on ethnographic observation and the use of materials which would have been available to the inhabitants of ancient Qatzrin.

On top of both types of roof, a thick layer of compacted earth was laid. The roof was kept in repair by periodically spreading more moistened earth on top of the roof, which was then compacted by rolling with a cylindrical-shaped stone called a roof roller. With time, the roofs accumulated quite a thick layer of compacted earth which effectively kept out water from the interior of the house. I have not observed any additional material, such as tar, for the waterproofing of ancient or traditional roofs in this region.

As to a parapet, the exterior walls of the house could have extended higher than the level of the roof itself and could be considered a “parapet.”

Druze Not Moslems

You identify the Druze as a Moslem sect (“Qatzrin—Reconstructing Village Life in Talmudic Times,” BAR 17:03). The Druze are not a Moslem sect. They are a mysterious sect that does not accept converts. The religion of the sect is kept secret. Somehow some of their holy scriptures fell into the hands of Western scientists; what is known is that the religion is a third Jewish, a third Zoroastrian and a third Shia Islam. Their prophet is Jethro, the Midianite priest who was Moses’ father-in-law.

We slipped.—Ed.

Feminism, the Bastard Child of Historical-Critical Method

BAR seems increasingly to have fallen under the almost all-pervasive pall of the so-called historical-critical method of Biblical interpretation, as well as the benighting influence of feminism, its bastard child. Such ideology is not conducive to either science or Scripture. For Christian, Jew, agnostic or whatever, this kind of science, falsely so called, can only cloud and distort our 024comprehension of life on earth.

Therefore, with gratitude for past articles of note, I request you terminate my subscription.

Read All About It in SJOT

Nowadays postal services are not what they used to be. I only got the BAR 17:02 issue a few days ago. Included in this issue was a review of the session at the SBL Annual Meeting in New Orleans devoted to “Toward a Consensus on the Emergence of Israel in Canaan.” The review, however, hardly does justice to that particular event. At first I was in doubt whether or not to answer the criticism. However, a few explanatory comments have to be made.

I have little to add about my personal ability or inability to express myself in English, although it was the first and only time—after ten or more lectures in the USA—that I have been confronted with such harsh criticism (which may be well-deserved, though). The criticism of Gösta Ahlström’s lecture is more severe. Having been employed by the University of Chicago for 25 years or so, Ahlström seems to have no trouble educating American students—in English. For that reason I wondered whether the editor of the BAR could not understand what was said or chose not to understand us simply because he disliked what was said during the session.

After having read the report from the session over several times, however, I came to the conclusion that since the review by BAR misrepresents most of the lectures it is obvious that Hershel Shanks must have misunderstood what was said. First of all, the editor of the BAR expressly mentions the inscription of Merneptah as being taciturnly dismissed by the panel of speakers, and he implies that we hardly know what to do about this seemingly embarrassing reference to Israel. If Mr. Shanks had actually understood what was said he would have realized that Gösta Ahlström devoted almost all his paper to this inscription, presenting among other things a new translation of the crucial line about Israel being destroyed. Other speakers referred to the Merneptah inscription which is not—as envisaged by Shanks—a major problem to the current trend in the study of early Israelite history.

Shanks asks for a discussion devoted to the identity of the early Israelites: Who were they, and how did they evaluate their own situation? It is maintained by the editor of BAR that if the inhabitants of Early Iron Age Palestine were not Israelites and did not consider themselves Israelites, they would hardly be of interest to modern man. Although I cannot say for certain that the Israelites of the Early Iron Age were Israelites in the Biblical sense of the word, I will refer to my paper in New Orleans. The major part of that paper was devoted to the question of tribal ideology and the mental effects that the breakdown of the political structures of the Late Bronze Age must have had on the local population—in fact the theme considered to be missing by Shanks.

I am sorry if technical problems have caused such misunderstandings. I am, however, able to inform you that all papers will be published before the end of June this year (in SJOT [Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament]), and they will be available at the SBL International Meeting at Rome in July. This should be enough to clear up any misunderstanding that may have arisen.

In this letter I do not wish to make polemical statements. However, I have to make two points clear: (1) The use of the phrase “negative fad” to characterize the trend of scholarship to which I belong could very well turn out to be a boomerang. This expression was formerly used by William F. Albright and his disciples to characterize Albrecht Alt, Martin Noth and the German school of Old Testament study. However, the ironic fact is that the notion of the emergence of early Israelite history held by most Israeli and American scholars today is more or less in concord with the ideas of Alt and Noth. The negative attitudes of yesterday may thus easily become the positive notions of tomorrow. (2) It is often held to be an expression of negative or nihilistic scholarship if you maintain that the Old Testament may contain information that is not as old as it pretends to be. One of the interesting consequences of current research is a renewed and very appropriate interest in early Judaism in the Persian and Hellenistic periods, because it is often acknowledged today that the Old Testament Scriptures were—if not actually written in the post-Exilic period—at least collected in the second half of the first millennium B.C.E. Our attitude is far from being “negative,” although our “positive” interest may perhaps be invested in other issues and problems. And, finally, it must be said that this attitude cannot be termed anti-Semitic, or anti-Jewish, which is the impression left by some critics. To the contrary, this new emphasis will invariably lead to a renewed interest in Judaistic studies among Old Testament scholars, and I believe that most people in our field will agree on the positive consequences of such a reorientation.

075

Anonymous Video Creators

I was pleased to read your enthusiastic review of our Sepphoris film (“Mona Lisa of the Galilee,” Books in Brief, BAR 17:02). My guess is that nowadays more people watch video than read books, and you do a service to your readers by reviewing relevant films when you find them.

A pity, though, that video is still treated as an inferior medium of communication. Imagine my surprise and dismay to discover that your reviewer neglected to mention that there were real people who wrote and created this film—an omission that would never have happened in a book review!

The Sepphoris film was the result of the collaboration of two men: Nissim Mossek of Biblical Productions, who directed and edited it, and me. The text—its order, sequence, logic and content—was my responsibility. Nissim made it into a visual experience, a film you could enjoy watching.

Apparently the collaboration was a success; your reviewer liked the film. But it seems to me that it was improper to review the creation without even a mention of the creators.

Correction

The photo “Eroticism and Infanticide at Ashkelon,” BAR 17:04, identified as a Riley’s Type 2 Gaza wine amphora, is actually a prototype of the Gaza (or Ashkelon) wine amphora, dating from the first century B.C. to the first century A.D. The Riley’s Type 2 amphora does not have twisted handles, but is short and squat, like the pot illustrated. It came into use in the fourth century A.D.

No Bull; It’s a Calf—At Least in Part

Regarding the “silver calf” featured on the cover of your BAR 17:02 issue and in the article on Ashkelon:

I am not an archaeologist. I am a farmer with 50 years of experience raising cattle. That is not a calf. That is a bull.