ReViews

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Jerusalem I: From the Bronze Age to the Maccabees

Graeme Auld and Margreet Steiner

(Macon, GA: Mercer Univ. Press, 1996) 109 pp., $16.95 (paperback)

With Jesus in Jerusalem: His First and Last Days in Judea

Bargil Pixner

(Rosh Pina, Israel: Corazin Publishing, 1996; distributed by CenturyOne, Pasadena, CA) 193 pp., $19.95 (paperback)

Most people planning a trip to Jerusalem wonder which books to take along. In my view, Jerome Murphy-O’Connor’s The Holy Land probably remains the one essential item, with its readable and reliable presentation of the archaeology and history of all the major sites you might visit.¹ For those who really want more, nothing surpasses Dan Bahat’s The Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem, which, though slightly dated, takes you all the way from the fourth millennium B.C.E. to the present, with detailed maps of the changing city and beautiful illustrations on nearly every page.² But its size makes this a tricky item to pack.

In some ways, Graeme Auld and Margreet Steiner’s Jerusalem I: From the Bronze Age to the Maccabees is a condensed version of the first part of Bahat’s atlas. Plus, it is light enough to put in even a very full bag. The volume gives the reader the basics of the history and archaeology of Jerusalem from the Early Bronze Age (c. 3000 B.C.E.) to about 200 B.C.E. (actually slightly before the Maccabees, despite the title). It focuses on the Iron Age (1200–586 B.C.E.), from the time Israel emerged in Canaan until the Babylonian Exile.

Auld and Steiner, like Bahat, begin by orienting readers in the current scholarship on Jerusalem, ensuring that we realize that scholars, in many areas, do not agree about the interpretation of the finds. (Auld and Steiner note, for example, the recent claim by John Rogerson and Philip Davies that the famed Hezekiah Tunnel inscription is an archaizing forgery.)^a The authors offer their own thoughts where relevant, but always with the implicit understanding that these are informed opinions rather than the final word. Auld’s view that a common source lies behind the historical accounts in 1 Samuel through 2 Chronicles is an aid to his and Steiner’s interpretation of the literary data about a number of features in Jerusalem, including Solomon’s Temple and palace. For example, the Book of Kings tells us that wooden doors separated the Holy of Holies from the main hall of the Temple, while Chronicles opts for a heavy curtain; neither may reflect a common source (or historical fact), but may rather be due to differences in how Kings and Chronicles fill in the gaps in their common source. Though I find this approach sound and illuminating, the ability of other readers to agree with Auld and Steiner’s conclusions may depend on how far they accept the view that these books of the Bible are “contentious, tendentious documents of religious politics.”

Commendably, Auld and Steiner do not stick to the magnificent buildings of ancient Jerusalem: They convey a sense of the everyday life of ordinary people in the ancient city. They examine the houses such as the “smith’s workshop” that were built outside and into the fortifications of the city’s southeastern hill (the City of David) from the ninth century B.C.E. onwards. They also note the mysterious cave near the Gihon Spring that contained a bread oven and numerous broken figurines, which the authors interpret, after the work of Steiner and Franken,³ as a “wise (wo)man’s cave.” The remains in this cave may indicate alternative religious practices in the city. One possible explanation lies in the Book of Jeremiah (7:18), which mentions bread- or cake-making in association with the cult of the Queen of Heaven.

Given the brevity of their book, it would be churlish to quibble over things the authors have left out. Auld and Steiner are both reliable and respected scholars who know the periods they discuss extremely well and no doubt keenly felt the constraints of conciseness. This book is accessible and interesting, and I highly recommend it for 057anyone who is contemplating a trip to Jerusalem or who wishes to gain a good sense of the literary and archaeological evidence of this ancient city. The final chapter provides a tour plan for visitors to the city.

Bargil Pixner’s With Jesus in Jerusalem: His First and Last Days in Judea offers a personal, rather than a scholarly or historical, approach to Jerusalem’s archaeology. Although Pixner’s book is much bigger and heavier, it adds nothing to the archaeological and historical information provided in Jerome Murphy-O’Connor’s tour guide or in John Wilkinson’s Jerusalem as Jesus Knew It: Archaeology as Evidence,⁴ which remains very useful, despite some dated sections. With Pixner, however, one undertakes an imaginative and idiosyncratic journey through the stories of Jesus in Jerusalem, with references to certain traditional sites. Fine maps and photographs highlight several points along the way.

Pixner notes that he relies heavily on the apocryphal protoevangelium of James for the early material and on the Gospel of John for the rest, although neither of these documents is generally thought to be the most historical of the extant accounts. And from the very beginning, we find fairly radical assertions unsubstantiated by argument. For example, Pixner thinks it is “likely” that Mary’s mother, Anna, lived in a region near the Bethesda Pool, “which was supervised by Essenes” (one of three dominant Jewish sects at this time). Leaving aside the questions of the historicity of Mary’s mother and where she lived, this statement and many others like it rely on Pixner’s own articles on the Copper Scroll and other archaeological artifacts in which he defines certain regions in and around Jerusalem, including Bethany and the area where Jesus and his disciples ate the Last Supper, as Essene zones.^b Though he resists labeling Jesus an Essene, Pixner thinks that Jesus’ family was “closely connected to the thinking of the Essenes” and that the chronological discrepancies in the gospel accounts of the Passion may occur because Jesus and his followers followed the Essene calendar. The comparative table at the back of the book provides the Essene and non-Essene calendars from the week of the Passion to Pentecost in the year 30 C.E., which will undoubtedly be very interesting to those who find this theory helpful. However, as with many other assertions Pixner makes, the Essene-Jesus link is not one that is widely accepted by New Testament scholars.

Pixner is motivated by a sense of “Jesus the Jew,” situating Jesus in a historical time and place among his people. Pixner also situates himself as a Christian in a post-Holocaust world, living in a predominantly Jewish land. Pixner writes compassionately and at times movingly. Although With Jesus in Jerusalem may not be an essential text to pack in your luggage, many readers will appreciate not only Pixner’s imaginative journey, but also his tender touch with the subject matter.

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Windows to the Past

Robert Deutsch and Michael Heltzer

(Tel Aviv-Jaffa: Archaeological Center, 1997) 93 pp., 80 b&w photos, 48 drawings, $48.00 (hardback)

This book presents a direct challenge to mainline scholars who demonize antiquities dealers (they want to put them out of business) and anathematize collectors (it is unclear what these scholars would have them do with their collections). The volume publishes for the first time almost 50 inscriptions—mostly seals and seal impressions—now in private collections. Most of the artifacts belong to Shlomo Moussaieff of London and Herzliya, Israel.

These seals and seal impressions, dating from the eighth to sixth centuries B.C., are undoubtedly of great importance, but we don’t know where they came from—or how they got to the antiquities market. The assumption is that they were looted. Because of the artifacts’ questionable heritage, no scholar would be allowed to present a paper on them at a meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America or the American Schools of Oriental Research. Nor would articles about them be accepted for publication in the journals of these prestigious scholarly organizations. To do that, scholars say, would be unethical. Yet how can any scholar working in the field of Biblical history, ancient writing, Semitic languages or ancient peoples ignore this exceptionally important material?

The authors of this volume, the third in a privately published series,^c claim that by bringing these treasures to publication they are engaging in “rescue work.” They are, they say, “saving historical information about Israel and the Middle East from being lost.”

Senior author Robert Deutsch is an antiquities dealer turned scholar now completing his doctorate at Tel Aviv University. He has an unusually fine eye for making out difficult-to-read inscriptions. Michael Heltzer is a tenured professor at Haifa University who has nothing to lose by his association with these publications.

Most of the seals are purely aniconic (no images appear on them), with inscriptions written in one, two, three or, in one case, four lines of the Semitic script used before the Babylonian destruction of Solomon’s Temple in 586 B.C. The backs of the seal impressions (lumps of clay called bullae) often bear the imprint of the papyrus document that they once sealed, as well as grooves made by the string that originally tied the papyrus scroll. Occasionally, we may detect a fingerprint left by the person who pressed the seal into the clay, thereby making the document official. Today these fingerprints create a touchingly intimate bond with the person who used the seals nearly 3,000 years ago.

Anyone who had a seal at that time was a VIP. Ordinary mortals did not own seals. Yet some of the seals were coarsely carved and others elegantly, which may reflect varying levels of status within this higher class. The few seals with drawings on them are especially puzzling: Almost all of these iconic seals reflect Egyptian influence, presumably via Phoenician culture. Sphinxes, ankhs (which the authors call the “key of life” symbol), lotus buds, the uraeus, or snake that decorated the pharaoh’s crown, Egyptian-style griffins, two- and four-winged scarabs and even the lioness-headed Egyptian goddess Sekhmet and the double royal crown of Upper and Lower Egypt are here. Yet the names of the people engraved on these seals are Hebrew and often incorporate some form of the name of the Israelite God Yahweh.

Why is the iconography on these Hebrew seals so exclusively Egyptianizing (as scholars like to characterize it), if not simply Egyptian? Deutsch and Heltzer do not address this puzzle. One possible answer is that this was simply the decorative vocabulary of the time. But I don’t believe it. There must be a better answer.

In some interesting parallels, Ammonite, Moabite, Canaanite and Edomite seals contain names that incorporate their gods’ names, just as Israelite names incorporate the name of Yahweh. For example, an Israelite seal in this collection contains the name yh’r, meaning “Yah (Yahweh) is the light.” An Ammonite parallel contains the name milkm’wr, meaning “Milcom is the light.” A Moabite seal features the name kms’r, “Chemosh is the light.” Other seals contain names incorporating the Canaanite deity Baal and others.

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Many names on these seals are familiar from the Bible, although these examples do not refer to the Biblical figures. Examples are Hilkiah, Hosea, Isaiah, Neriah and Saul (on an Ammonite seal!). Other Biblical names, such as Mikneiah (Miqneyahu) (1 Chronicles 15:18), are less familiar.

We can only applaud the publication of these inscriptions. Scholars will ignore them at their peril.

The Building Program of Herod the Great

Duane W. Roller

(Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1998) xvii + 351 pp., 15 maps and plans, 14 genealogical charts, 49 illustrations, $50.00 (hardcover)

Herod the Great, king of Judea from 37 to 4 B.C.E., possessed an architectural imagination unmatched in a monarch until the Roman emperor Hadrian. Throughout Israel, from Banias in the north to Masada in the south, excavators are now revealing his fortresses, temples, palaces and the remarkable harbor he built in Caesarea, which is only one of the cities he founded. Ancient authors, mainly the first-century C.E. historian Flavius Josephus, provide more information, describing his additions to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem as well as the porticoes, arenas and gymnasia he endowed in cities outside Judea.

With The Building Program of Herod the Great, Duane W. Roller attempts to construct a complete picture of Herod’s works based on both literary and archaeological sources. Unfortunately, he leans on the literature and mistreats the archaeology.

Roller states rather than proves his basic hypothesis, that Herod’s building was inspired by Rome and by Romans. He begins by attempting to reconstruct what Herod knew of Roman building, specifically, what he saw on his three visits to Rome. If these chapters detailed what Herod actually saw, they would be valuable. Instead, they merely list projects in Rome that were in varying stages of progress in Herod’s time, from mere promises to cleared building sites, from half-built shells to completed structures. Roller calls this situation “vitality”; an onlooker might have said “chaos.” Diane Favro, in her analysis of Rome’s urban development, has shown that at the time of Herod’s earliest visit, wars and partisan politics had kept Rome’s grandiose building projects stranded for lack of labor, materials, even architects.⁵ But Roller declares the relevance even of unfinished projects to Herod without showing it. Their forms, functions and urban contexts are not adequately discussed, nor are they compared to specific Herodian projects.

To Roller, Herod, as founder of cities, must also have been inspired by Gabinius, a Roman who oversaw Judea from 57–55 B.C.E. Unfortunately, Gabinius’s 060“foundations” are archaeologically evanescent; Roller’s only evidence comes from Josephus, who makes it clear that Gabinius, after suppressing a rebellion in Judea, merely arranged to have certain cities reestablished, and soon after departed for Parthia and Egypt.⁶

While exaggerating possible sources of Roman influence, Roller ignores or denies the burgeoning evidence for local, Eastern and Hellenistic projects that could have inspired Herod’s achievements. Whole chapters are devoted to Herod’s visits to Rome, but there is nothing on his visits to Alexandria, Antioch or other Eastern capitals. Roller also fails to note indigenous influences on Herod’s buildings. For example, the core of Herod’s western palace at Masada has the same floor plan as that of the earlier Hasmonean palaces of Jericho; and Masada’s aqueduct system, like that of all Herod’s fortress-palaces, must have been designed by locals familiar with gathering water from every source in a mountainous desert land, not by imported Roman engineers.⁷

Even Roller’s choice of Roman comparisons for Herod’s buildings is weak. He offers the Villa of the Mysteries at Pompeii as his sole illustration of a precedent to Herod’s palaces, when they have almost nothing in common; closer analogies are not difficult to find.⁸ At one point, he disregards both the archaeological and historical evidence for the sake of an analogy based purely on form: The hilltop palace at Herodion is round, so it must have been a copy of a round building at Rome—Augustus’s mausoleum—so the palace must be Herod’s tomb. This not only ignores the internal structure of both buildings (the one clearly domestic, equipped with a peristyle, dining room and baths, the other a concentric chambered tumulus, made to be heaped with earth) and contradicts the testimony of Josephus (who describes the hilltop structure as a palace),⁹ but requires Roller to postulate a burial and cult ritual for Herod that would have horrified both Romans and Jews, neither of whom dined with their dead.

A catalogue of Herod’s building projects forms the centerpiece of the book, but it seems to have been constructed for the printer’s, rather than the reader’s, convenience. All are piled into a single chapter, never separately listed or paginated. They are divided according to whether they were inside or outside Herod’s kingdom and then listed alphabetically. This should make them simple to find, but Roller alternates between using Greek and Latin spelling (“Kypros” vs. “Caesarea,” for example); a reader ends up chasing each entry through the index. Tellingly enough, each catalogue entry begins with careful and exact citations of what ancient authors said about the project; there follows a cursory archaeological summary, with no footnotes, only a pileup of bibliography at the end. This means that in the larger and more important entries, one cannot find the exact archaeological sources behind the statements.

One needs the footnotes because some of Roller’s statements are highly questionable. At Caesarea especially, current excavations have disproved many of his assertions; he lists but ignores publications that contradict him. For example, Roller denies that the sandstone fragments of the Temple of Rome and Augustus are Herodian because Josephus wrote that the temple was of “white stone” and opts for the conventional but over-specific translation for this term as “marble.” But archaeologists have long noted that Herod’s building projects were universally of white-stuccoed local materials, not marble.¹⁰ He then dates the sandstone architecture to the Severan period (the late second to early third century C.E.), just when the city’s theater was being extensively redecorated in imported marble! There are better ways of reconciling verbal and visual evidence.

Roller’s work can be valuable where it 061depends on written documents, as when he catalogues the people who made up Herod’s court and intellectual circles. But he seems more interested in quarreling with archaeologists than in getting the most out of their finds. An archaeological analysis of Herod’s building program is still badly needed.

Herod was much more than Roller’s obedient Romanizer. When Herod borrowed architecture, he chose what was useful to him from a wider world. The locations of the major fortresses, the basic ashlar building technique, the swimming pools and a great deal of the hydraulic work were Hasmonean. The peristyles, columned dining rooms and urban grid plans, and the inclusion of the king’s palace in the sacred/celebratory core of the city (including the theater and hippodrome), were Hellenistic, inspired by cities such as Alexandria, Antioch, Rhodes and Pergamon. Herod turned to Rome for its advanced engineering, its baths with their ingenious heating apparatus, and its temples placed high on vaulted substructures. He also built his theaters and hippodromes in the Roman fashion, raised out of the landscape, perhaps because the few and narrow exits made it easier to control the people within.¹¹

Primarily, though, Herod’s building program shows us what was uniquely Herod’s: the wily planning, the strategic placement, the skillful combination of techniques to achieve startling effects, the luxury and, most of all, in Josephus’s words, the courage to “triumph over nature.”¹²

Jerusalem I: From the Bronze Age to the Maccabees

Graeme Auld and Margreet Steiner

(Macon, GA: Mercer Univ. Press, 1996) 109 pp., $16.95 (paperback)

With Jesus in Jerusalem: His First and Last Days in Judea