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The Documents from the Bar-Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters: Hebrew, Aramaic and Nabatean-Aramaic Papyri Judean Desert Studies 3

Edited by Yigael Yadin, Jonas C. Greenfield, Ada Yardeni, Baruch A. Levine

(Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society; Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University; Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum, 2002). Text volume: 422 pp.; 92 plates in a separate volume, $132 plus $18 shipping. Available from the Biblical Archaeology Society (1–800-221–4644) for $115 plus $13 shipping.

It was late 1959 and the unflappable, calming secretary of the Israel Exploration Society, Joseph Aviram, was trying to organize the always contentious Israeli archaeological community for a four-part expedition to the Judean Desert. Ancient manuscripts had been coming onto the antiquities market that were rumored to have been found by Bedouin in the so-called Southern Caves, south of Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls had been found. Qumran was in territory then controlled by Jordan. The Southern Caves, however, were in Israel. Israeli archaeologists agreed on one thing: A serious coordinated search should be mounted to explore these caves where additional manuscripts might still be hidden.

Four wadis, deep dry river beds that flow with water once or twice a year, were selected for investigation. Each team would investigate caves overlooking a wadi. The four team leaders were all well-known archaeologists in Israel: Yigael Yadin, former commander of the Haganah, the pre-state army that won Israel’s independence; Yohanan Aharoni, Yadin’s arch-enemy, who would later found the department of archaeology at Tel Aviv University in competition with Hebrew University (where Yadin taught); Pesach Bar-Adon, the self-educated Lothario of the desert; and Nahman Avigad, a mild-mannered, shy but brilliant epigraphical specialist.

First choice of site went to Aharoni because he had already led an expedition to one of the wadis to be explored and could therefore claim more experience in cave exploration than the others. In 1953 Aharoni had led an expedition to Nahal Hever (nahal is the Hebrew equivalent of Arabic wadi), the apparent source of the documents offered back then by the Bedouin. Aharoni’s expedition had found two Roman camps from the period of the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome (the so-called Bar-Kokhba Revolt, 132–135 C.E.) but little else. The rumored source of the new batch of documents was the Wadi Seilal (Nahal Se’elim), so that was the wadi Aharoni naturally chose for his team. Bar-Adon and Avigad quickly made their choices, leaving the remaining unchosen wadi to Yadin—Nahal Hever, the wadi that Aharoni had investigated in 1953 with only minor finds.

All his life Yadin seemed to have mazal, luck. And all his life Aharoni seemed to have none. Nahal Hever proved to be no exception. In the very cave that Aharoni had explored years earlier, Yadin found a trove—or I should say troves—that Aharoni had missed. During two short campaigns—one in March and April 1960 and another in April 1961—Yadin recovered a fragment of the Book of Psalms, a fragment from the Book of Numbers, a cache of documents known as the Babatha archive, glass, coins, mats, textiles, a collection of bronze vessels and incense shovels, a bronze key, beads, cosmetics, perfume flasks, a mirror, a number of skeletons … and a bundle of papyrus documents.^a When Yadin opened and read them, he was 057astounded to see that they were correspondence from the legendary leader of the Second Jewish Revolt, Bar-Kokhba himself! Previously known coins had identified his given name as Shimon (Simon), but the new letters from what soon became known as the Cave of Letters bear the name Shimon bar [son of] Kosiba.

In a touching introduction to the volume under review, Aviram writes:

I cannot conclude this introduction without recollecting the dramatic and historic meeting held at the residence of then President of the State of Israel, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, shortly after the discovery was made. The expedition supervisors each gave an account of the results of their excavations in the Judean Desert caves and presented a summary of the finds. Yadin was the last to speak. At the end of his presentation, a color slide showing part of a document was projected onto the screen and Yadin read aloud the first line of writing: “Shimeon Bar Kosiba, hanasi al Israel (President over Israel).” Turning to our head of state, President Ben-Zvi, he said: “Your Excellency, I am honored to be able to tell you that we have discovered fifteen dispatches written or dictated by the last President of ancient Israel, 1,800 years ago.”

For a moment, the audience seemed to be struck dumb. Then the silence was shattered with spontaneous cries of astonishment and joy. That evening, the national radio interrupted its scheduled program to broadcast news of the discovery. The next day, the newspapers carried banner headlines of the announcement.

Why was a whole nation elated over the discovery of these fragmentary papyri? While the name of Bar-Kokhba had long been treasured in folklore, it was virtually lost to authenticated history. The realization at this meeting that after nearly two thousand years the desert had yielded factual links to the leader of the last attempt of his people to overthrow their Roman masters electrified the nation.

Now, 40 years after they were found, we are presented with the scholarly publication of these letters and other Hebrew, Aramaic and Nabatean-Aramaic documents discovered in the cave. Yadin had, of course, intended to publish most of this material himself. In 1963, he published the non-inscriptional finds from the cave. There he announced that another volume, containing all the inscriptions, would follow. But soon thereafter Yadin was taken up with his excavation of Masada, Herod’s mountain fortress. That took Yadin until 1966. The 1967 Six-Day War soon followed. In the midst of the war, Yadin managed to recover the Temple Scroll, the longest of the Dead Sea Scrolls, from underneath the floor tiles in the Bethlehem home of the antiquities dealer Kando. The Temple Scroll consumed Yadin for a number of years until the magisterial Hebrew edition was published in 1977, followed in 1983 by the English edition, which he closely supervised. In the meantime, he had become embroiled in politics, serving as deputy prime minister from 1977 to 1981. Then in 1984, he suddenly died of a heart attack, leaving behind a vast quantity of unpublished material.

The volume under review marks the end of the long effort by Yadin’s literary executors, chiefly Joseph Aviram, to publish this material. The publication effort includes two volumes of final reports on his excavation of Hazor (delayed in part by the feud between Yadin, who believed there was an Israelite conquest of the site—as does the current excavator Amnon Ben-Tor—and Aharoni, who held an opposing view), six volumes on Yadin’s excavation of Masada (the last soon to come), and two volumes on the inscriptions from the Cave of Letters, of which 058the current volume is the second and last.

It has had its own problems in coming out. Initially, Yadin intended that the renowned Professor H.J. Polotsky would do the Greek papyri and he the others. But, after accepting the assignment, Polotsky eventually withdrew. Nothing much happened until Yadin died. Most of the Greek texts were then assigned to Naphtali Lewis, who published them as Volume 2 in the Cave of Letters series^b (Volume 1 being Yadin’s volume on the non-inscriptional finds). The inscriptions in this Volume 3 were assigned jointly to Joseph Naveh, Jonas Greenfield and Ada Yardeni. Eventually disgruntled, Naveh “withdrew.” Then Greenfield died (the volume is dedicated to him). Baruch Levine was assigned to take his place. Hannah Cotton (this time with Naveh) did two Greek letters. So it’s a veritable crew that is listed on the title page of this book. In addition to four editors (Yadin, Greenfield, Yardeni and Levine), there are research editors, consulting editors and those who made “additional contributions.” Despite his withdrawal, Naveh is given lavish praise in the acknowledgments; his helpful suggestions are noted in the text not as coming from him as an editor but “by private communication.” Thus are tensions papered over.

And it is out—and it is beautiful. This volume includes 28 texts, of which 17 are Bar-Kokhba letters. Obviously these will have the greatest interest for the general reader. The others are legal papyri—deeds, leases, contracts, receipts, guaranties and such.

The letters were found together in a packet. From this, what is missing in some letters can be supplied in others. Since many of them are addressed to Bar-Kokhba’s agents at Ein Gedi, on the shore of the Dead Sea, the packet was probably a file received by officers there from Bar-Kokhba at his camp at Herodion, just south of Bethlehem.

None of the letters is actually signed by Bar-Kokhba. They are written in his name; for example: “From Shim‘on son of Kosiba’ to the men of ‘Ein Gedi.” Occasionally, a letter bears a signature, but it is not Bar-Kokhba’s—it is someone writing in his name. Sometimes the text is in the same handwriting as the signature; sometimes not, indicating the letter was dictated to a scribe. Often the letter is said to be simply from Shim‘on, but it is clear from the context and the fact that the letters were found together in the same packet that the Shim‘on is Bar-Kokhba.

Sometimes Bar-Kokhba’s title is given, nasi al Yisroel, mostly not. Yadin translated this phrase as “President of Israel.” In this volume, it is translated “Premier of Israel.” Nasi is a term used in the Bible, so obviously its meaning here harkens back to that usage. We are told in an appendix devoted to the title that, in the Bible, it connotes someone who is raised up or elevated. It can designate the leader of a tribe. I like the translation “President” better than “Premier,” although both connote the same thing—someone who governs a group. Nasi was the honorific accorded to the Patriarchs of the Jews in Roman Palestine and to the leaders of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish high court of antiquity. In the Dead Sea Scrolls the term implies military prominence. That, too, would seem to apply to Bar-Kokhba.

Bar-Kokhba’s name itself is spelled two ways in the letters: Kosiba’ (with an aleph at the end) and Kosibah (with a heh at the end).

Stranger still, the letters are written in three languages. A few are in Hebrew, but most are in Aramaic, a closely related Semitic language that was the vernacular of the day. Two of them are written in Greek.

The substance of the letters is not of high import; they are the workaday messages of the commander to his troops: Why didn’t you unload the fruit? You are “showing no concern for your brothers.” Frequent threats: “I will exact punishment.” The letters often begin and conclude with a shalom, spelled with a vov in Hebrew, without the vov in Aramaic.

One letter orders delivery to Bar-Kokhba’s camp of the four species needed for observance of the festival of Sukkoth (Tabernacles): palm branch (lulav), citron (etrog), willow and myrtle. One of the Greek letters, too, asks for citrons.

The packet of letters was apparently taken to the Cave of Letters toward the end of the revolt, when the rebels left Ein Gedi to hide from the Romans. Whether it is their skeletons that were found in the cave is not known.

Impressive as the contents is the meticulous care with which the entire team of scholars has prepared this volume, from the collotypes of photographs prepared by Yadin himself to the extraordinary drawings of the letters by Ada Yardeni. I use letters in both senses—missives and the things that alphabets are composed of. Dr. Yardeni has drawn each of the Hebrew and Aramaic letters with extraordinary skill and meticulous care. Some of the letters are well-preserved. Others look like lace. Making sense of these from the pictures boggles the mind.

This book is in the finest tradition of Israeli scholarship and a fitting tribute to its most illustrious archaeologist, Yigael Yadin.

The Documents from the Bar-Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters: Hebrew, Aramaic and Nabatean-Aramaic Papyri Judean Desert Studies 3