ReViews

058

The Jerusalem Archaeological Park

Ronny Reich, Gideon Avni and Tamar Winter

(Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 1999) 167 pp., $24.00 (available from the IAA, PO Box 586, Jerusalem 91004, Israel)

A new tool has come to the aid of Jerusalem explorers. The Jerusalem Archaeological Park, written by archaeologists long associated with the city and published by the Israel Antiquities Authority, is a practical and user-friendly guidebook. It is devoted to the archaeological remains and historical sites in the areas extending west, south and east of the Old City, now designated an archaeological park. The remains, well preserved and for the most part labeled, form a virtual open museum. Many of the sites were excavated after the 1967 Six-Day War, including the areas south and southwest of the Temple Mount and parts of the City of David. But since the history of scientific exploration in Jerusalem goes back to the middle of the 19th century (to the American scholar Dr. Edward Robinson, who in 1839 identified the “arch” at the southwest corner of the Temple Mount, which is now named after him), the book also pays tribute to the early explorers.

The book consists of six walking tours: The Temple Mount environs, the City of David, the Kidron Valley, the Valley of Hinnom, the east slope of Mount Zion and the west slope of the Mount of Olives. Each walk begins with a map containing numbered sites marked in different colors, according to period. Aerial photographs give a bird’s-eye view of the areas to be explored; additional photos, drawings and site plans appear as one progresses along the plainly marked routes. For the “directionally challenged,” a change in course will say, for example, “turn west (right),” so it is hard to get lost.

The book is written on two levels: An opening paragraph set in bold type gives a concise description of the site, then the text continues to provide additional details. Quotes from the Bible, Josephus and other ancient sources appear occasionally, but this is a book meant for walkers, so the language is matter of fact. (The long 5.5- by 10.5-inch pocketbook format also favors the walker.)

Several chapters on specific topics, such as the walls of Jerusalem, the city’s water supply and the Temple Mount, appear at the end of the book, along with a chronology and other useful information—buses, parking, even the location of an automated teller machine. Biblical allusions, technical words and other puzzling terms are underlined in the text and further explained in an extensive glossary.

The book is handsomely designed and filled with illustrations that even the armchair traveler can enjoy. Since Jerusalem has suffered frequent war and destruction, little is left of her ancient palaces and temples; many sketches suggest what such edifices might have looked like, stimulating the imagination and helping us appreciate the archaeological remains. The country’s material culture never achieved the height of the civilizations surrounding it, such as Egypt or Babylon. What makes archaeology unique in Israel, and especially in Jerusalem, is the association of many sites with Biblical and historical events and the emotions they evoke. Where else but in Jerusalem can a guidebook identify—within one square mile—the remains of a 059gate from the First Temple period (c. 1000–586 B.C.E.); a monumental staircase and gates that led into the Temple precinct and which Jesus would have used; a house in the City of David where a clay seal was found bearing the inscription “Gemariah son of Shaphan” (Shaphan was one of the scribes who served Judah’s King Jehoiakim in the late seventh century B.C.E.; see Jeremiah 36:9–12); and the remains of a palace adjacent to the southern wall of the Temple Mount (built by the Umayyads, who ruled Jerusalem in the early days of Islam [660–750 C.E.]), which sits above a house from the Byzantine period (324–638 C.E.)?

Since no book is flawless, I offer a few suggestions should a second edition be issued. While the book’s purpose is to cover the remains in the Archaeological Park, which it does very well, I wish there was at least a mention of some of the archaeological treasures that lie a stone’s throw away from some of the walks, such as the apse of the Nea Church, the Herodian Quarter and the Cardo. Perhaps, if The Jerusalem Archaeological Park is a big success, another volume will be published to deal with the discoveries in the Jewish Quarter! And while I enjoyed the older illustrations reproduced in the book, it was disappointing that their sources or the names of the artists were not included. Another minor point: While every walk begins with a map, including a scale, it is not easy to calculate the length of the route; a mention of the approximate distance to be covered would have been helpful. And finally—and I say this as someone who has done her share of walking in Jerusalem—a book that contains so much practical information should have mentioned in a word or two the inadvisability of walking alone, rather than with a group, along some of the more isolated routes. This is especially the case for women.

There is no shortage of guidebooks to Jerusalem. William H. Bartlett’s Walks About the City and Environs of Jerusalem, for example, was published in 1844. Reading about archaeological explorations has been popular since Charles W. Wilson reported the results of the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem made in 1864 and 1865, followed in 1871 by The Recovery of Jerusalem, on which he collaborated with his colleague Charles Warren. Ermete Pierotti, who was employed as city engineer by the Turkish governor of Jerusalem, came out with Jerusalem Explored in 1864. Many dozens of guides and books about archaeology have seen the light of day since, but The Jerusalem Archaeological Park is a great addition, as it clearly and intelligently directs the walker to areas only recently prepared to be viewed by visitors. Perhaps the book’s 060greatest contribution is the fact that it is not meant for experts alone, but for anyone who is interested in unraveling Jerusalem’s 5,000-year-old history.

Masada VI, Hebrew Fragments from Masada

Shemaryahu Talmon (with contributions by Carol Newsom and Yigael Yadin)

(Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society/Hebrew University, 1999) 252 pp., $80.00

(available from BAS; call 1–800-221–4644)

In his excavation of the desert/mountain fortress/palace of Masada more than 35 years ago, Yigael Yadin recovered 15 fragmentary Hebrew manuscripts (one may be Aramaic), 13 of which remained unpublished at the time of his death in 1984. They are published here by his Hebrew University colleague Shemaryahu Talmon as the sixth volume of the massive final report of the excavation.^a

The manuscripts were almost all found in and around the Masada synagogue. Seven of them are Biblical scrolls, including Genesis, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Ezekiel and Psalms. The manuscripts date no later than 74 A.D.,^b when the Romans finally snuffed out the last remnant of Jewish resistance and overcame the defenders of Masada. Talmon suggests that some of the manuscripts—those with fragments that have straight edges (rather than the rough edges caused by natural deterioration)—were deliberately torn by Roman soldiers as they “vented their rage on the sacred writings of the defenders.”

These manuscripts raise a number of interesting questions, not the least of which is their relation to the manuscripts found at nearby Qumran. The Masada defenders are confidently asserted by many scholars to have been Zealots, a hotheaded, violent group of Jews who contrasted markedly with the pacifistic isolationist inhabitants of Qumran, commonly thought to be Essenes. However, copies of some of the non-Biblical scrolls from Masada were also found at Qumran (the Joshua Apocryphon and the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice). Other non-Biblical manuscripts from Masada feature terms, idioms and linguistic characteristics typical of the Qumran manuscripts. These identities and similarities are difficult to explain. Was there some relationship between the Masada Zealots and the Qumran Essenes? Or have we somehow misidentified one of the groups? Or is there some other explanation for the similarities? Perhaps, as Yadin himself suggested, some Essenes found refuge at Masada after the Roman destruction of Qumran in 68 A.D.

But despite the striking parallels in the extra-Biblical texts from the two sites, the Biblical manuscripts from Masada and Qumran (where more than 200 Biblical manuscripts were found) are distinctly different. The Biblical manuscripts from Masada are all in the Masoretic tradition (the Masoretic Text, the textus receptus of Judaism). The Qumran Biblical manuscripts, on the other hand, are characterized by pluriformity, with some more closely related to the text preserved in the Greek Septuagint and some to the Samaritan Pentateuch. Based on the Qumran evidence, it has been widely thought that no authoritative Biblical text had yet been decided upon at this time. Does the contemporaneous Masada evidence suggest otherwise? Talmon thinks it does: “The Masada biblical fragments give witness to the existence of a stabilized proto-masoretic textual tradition which had taken root in ‘normative Judaism’ of the time.”

On another matter, the Qumran archive has allowed scholars to trace rabbinic law back to Second Temple times, before the Romans burned Jerusalem in 70 A.D. If rabbinic law existed that early, rabbinic texts can be used cautiously to understand the religious environment of Second Temple Judaism. The Masada manuscripts contain additional evidence in support of this view, since in several respects they conform to later rabbinic law. For example, the rabbinic requirements regarding the required space between words and the prohibition against entwining letters of Biblical scrolls are almost uniformly observed, as is the required width of the top and bottom margins. The Biblical manuscripts are written on skins, also as required, although this is true of almost all the non-Biblical manuscripts as well. Talmon suggests that papyrus was generally used for short notes and for business and family records, replacing the pottery sherds used for this purpose in the First Temple period, while skins (which he calls parchment; it is not quite parchment) were used for most literary documents.

For the sake of completeness, this volume also includes the two previously published Masada manuscripts: The Songs of 062the Sabbath Sacrifice (which Yadin published with Carol Newsom) and the Ben Sira scroll (Yadin’s edition is reprinted here with additional notes by Elisha Qimron and a bibliography by Florentino García Martínez). The volume maintains the high standard set by the previous five volumes of the Masada report and does honor to Yadin’s memory.

Discoveries in the Judaean Desert: Vol. XXVI, Qumran Cave 4—XIX: Serekh Ha-Yahad and Two Related Texts

Philip S. Alexander and Geza Vermes

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) 253 pp., 24 b&w plates, $120.00 (hardback)

Were the Dead Sea Scrolls a sectarian library? True, there are some clearly sectarian scrolls among them, that is, scrolls that reflect a particular view of Judaism that is quite different from what has recently come to be called “common Judaism.” But couldn’t a mainstream Jewish library contain some sectarian texts?

The most clearly sectarian text among the Dead Sea Scrolls is the Community Rule (Serekh ha-Yahad in Hebrew), once named the Manual of Discipline by Millar Burrows, the devout early editor of the intact copy found in Cave 1, because it reminded him of a rulebook in the Methodist Church tradition. The Community Rule is, in a sense, the constitution of a sectarian group, widely believed to be the Essenes. But does that mean that the library, of which the Cave 1 exemplar is only one among 800 documents, is a sectarian library?

This volume of Discoveries in the Judaean Desert answers that question. The answer is that the Community Rule is not one among 800 documents. In addition to the almost complete copy found in Cave 1, at least ten more copies were found in Cave 4.¹ It is much more difficult to argue that so many copies of what the editors of this volume call “a central text of the Qumran sect” would be part of an ancient library that was not associated with the sect.

In this painstakingly careful study of these fragmentary copies, really mere scraps, the editors have gleaned other facts suggesting that this must be a sectarian library. This basic sectarian text—it contains “the key doctrines, practices, institutions, laws and customs of the sect”—was copied at various times from as early as 125 B.C.E. to as late as 50 C.E., a period of 175 years. This was no fly-by-night production. The datings, of course, are based on the paleographic characteristics of the script.

Moreover, the editors have discerned four different recensions of the text. In short, the Community Rule went through the kind of textual development that we have come to expect from a book of the Bible. As they note, the Community Rule “is a composite document, made up of different blocks of material which probably originated at different times and circulated independently before being incorporated into the present text.”

Roughly 70 percent of the intact copy from Cave 1 is found in the ten fragmentary copies from Cave 4 (192 out of 283 lines). But there is more. The editors have noticed parallels between these copies of the Community Rule and other sectarian Dead Sea Scroll texts, especially the so-called Damascus Document. These parallels “show how well integrated the [Community Rule] material is with the Qumran literature.”

Thus, there can be little doubt that the Qumran library is a sectarian library. This, however, is by no means the main point of the volume, which is simply to make available every imaginable detail concerning every 063fragment of every copy—the height of the scroll, the lines per column, the height of the letters, the size of the margins, the size of the gap between columns, spelling conventions, possible reconstructions of missing parts, detailed comments on the letters, words and text that have survived, and on and on.

These fragmentary texts were originally assigned for publication to J.T. Milik. After some 35 years, they were reassigned to Oxford don Geza Vermes and Elisha Qimron of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. But the editors give full credit to Milik for his contribution: He identified, sorted and arranged the fragments. In the words of the editors, Milik “had an uncanny ability to read, identify and locate the Qumran fragments and there is no doubt that his edition, had it ever been completed, would have been important. All subsequent editors stand in his debt.”

For some unexplained reason, Qimron soon dropped out of the project.² He was succeeded by Vermes’s former student and now Oxford colleague Philip Alexander. Together Vermes and Alexander spent four years analyzing these fragmentary copies. Four years is a long time in a scholar’s professional life, but barely a blink of the eye in Qumran time. Qumran scholarship is thus doubly in their debt—both for their promptness and for the quality of their scholarship.