Was Mary Magdalene a prostitute? Photo: Private Collection/Bridgeman Art Library/Courtesy of IAP Fine Art.

Was Mary Magdalene a Prostitute?

Was Mary Magdalene a prostitute who repented or simply an influential female follower of Jesus? Mary from Magdala has popularly been saddled with an unfavorable reputation, but how did this notion come about? In From Saint to Sinner, Birger A. Pearson examines how Mary Magdalene’s notoriety emerged in the early Christian tradition. Pearson writes that later interpreters of the Gospels attempted to diminish her “by identifying her with other women mentioned in the Gospels, most notably the unnamed sinful woman who anoints Jesus’ feet with ointment and whose sins he forgives (Luke 7:36–50) and the unnamed woman taken in adultery (John 7:53–8:11).”

Read From Saint to Sinner by Birger A. Pearson as it originally appeared in Bible Review.

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Who was Jezebel? Image: Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth, UK/Bridgeman Art Library.

Who Was Jezebel? How Bad Was She?

Who was Jezebel? For over 2,000 years, Jezebel, Israel’s most accursed queen, has been condemned as a murderer, a temptress and an enemy of God. Who was Jezebel, really? Was she really that bad? In How Bad Was Jezebel? Janet Howe Gaines rereads the Biblical narrative from the vantage point of the Phoenician wife of King Ahab. As Gaines writes, “To attain a more positive assessment of Jezebel’s troubled reign and a deeper understanding of her role, we must evaluate the motives of the Biblical authors who condemn the queen.”

Read Janet Howe Gaines’s article How Bad Was Jezebel? as it originally appeared in Bible Review.

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Rahab the Harlot or just the inkeeper? Image: CCI/The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.

Rahab the Harlot?

As described in the Book of Joshua, Rahab (a heroine nonetheless known as “Rahab the Harlot”) assisted two Israelite spies in escaping down the city wall of Jericho. Was Rahab a Biblical prostitute? While the Biblical text identifies her as a zônāh, a prostitute (Joshua 2:1), Josephus reports that she kept an inn. Anthony J. Frendo critically examines the textual evidence.

Read about Anthony J. Frendo’s conclusions on Rahab the Harlot.

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Who is Lilith? Courtesy of Richard Callner, Latham, NY.

Who Is Lilith?

Fertile mother, wilderness demon, sly seductress—the resilient character Lilith has been recast in many roles. Who is Lilith? As Janet Howe Gaines writes, “In most manifestations of her myth, Lilith represents chaos, seduction and ungodliness. Yet, in her every guise, Lilith has cast a spell on humankind.” Follow Lilith’s journey from Babylonian mythology, through the Bible, to medieval lore and modern literature in Lilith by Janet Howe Gaines.

Read Lilith by Janet Howe Gaines as the article originally appeared in Bible Review.

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Baroque artist Guido Reni depicts the apostle James, son of Zebedee, in his painting Saint James the Greater (c. 1636–1638).

The problem of names surfaced at a Bible study at the St. Paul Union Church in Antalya, Turkey. Pastor Dennis Massaro was discussing the three men named “James” in the New Testament: Two were apostles, and the third was the leader of the Jerusalem church and author of the eponymous letter—the Book of James. Participants in the study came from a range of countries, including the Netherlands, Iran, Mexico, Moldova and Cameroon. When I asked what the name of these men was in their languages, they all said “Jacob.”

When I was teaching a course on the New Testament General Letters (Hebrews through Jude), I began by introducing the Book of Jacob, also known as the Book of James. Students were perplexed until they learned that Jacob is the proper translation of the Greek name Iakōbos. One student wrote later that knowing this “turned my understanding of the writing upside down.” Another observed that “with the name change, the loss of the Jewish lineage occurs.”

So how did the Jewish name Ya’akov become so Gentilized as James? Since the 13th century, the form of the Latin name Iacomus began its use in English. In the 14th century, John Wycliffe made the first Bible translation into English and translated Iakobus as James. (However, in both the Old and New Testaments he arbitrarily used the name Jacob for the patriarch). In all future English translations the name stuck, especially after 1611, when King James I sponsored the translation then called the Authorized Version. Since 1797 it has been called the King James Bible.

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So what is lost by using James instead of Jacob? First, it has created an awkwardness in academic writing. Scholars providing a transliteration of James indicate Iakōbos, which even lay readers know is not the same. Hershel Shanks has noted that the reason Israeli scholars failed to understand the significance of the eponymous ossuary is that they didn’t connect James with Ya’akov.¹

Second, James’s ancestral lineage is lost, as the student noted above. In Matthew’s genealogy, we learn that Joseph’s father was named Jacob (Matthew 1:16) and that his family tree included the patriarch Jacob (Matthew 1:2). James was thus named after his grandfather. As Ben Witherington writes, “It is clear that the family of ‘James’ was proud of its patriarchal heritage.”² So Jacob was the third Jacob in the family.

Third, James’s Jewish cultural background is minimized. Tal Ilan identifies Jacob as the 15th most popular name in Palestine in antiquity, with 18 known persons carrying it.³ Including both the Eastern and Western Diasporas, Jacob was the third most popular Jewish name, with 74 occurrences.

Fourth, the Jewish literary heritage is muddled. The Book of Jacob (i.e., the Book of James) is addressed to “the twelve tribes in the diaspora” (James 1:1) and full of references and allusions to the Torah and Wisdom Literature of the Jewish Bible (Christians’ Old Testament). Scholars consider James the most “Jewish” book in the New Testament. Its genre is considered to be a diaspora letter like Jeremiah 29:1–23 and the apocryphal works The Epistle of Jeremiah, 2 Maccabees 1:1–2:18, and 2 Apocalypse of Baruch 78–86.

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But can such a switch be made practically? Biblical scholars and publishers would need to agree that continued use of “James” is linguistically indefensible and culturally misleading. Most difficult to change would be Bible translations, which are very conservative. To start, a footnote could denote that James is really Jacob. And while we’re at it, let’s rehabilitate Jacob as the name of two of Jesus’ disciples/apostles. These connections, now lost only for English readers, were caught by Greek-speaking audiences as well as modern readers of translations in most other languages. Let’s give Jacob his due.

Mark Wilson is the director of the Asia Minor Research Center in Antalya, Turkey, and is a popular teacher on BAS Travel/Study tours. Mark received his doctorate in Biblical studies from the University of South Africa (Pretoria), where he serves as a research fellow in Biblical archaeology. He is currently Associate Professor Extraordinary of New Testament at Stellenbosch University. He leads field studies in Turkey and the eastern Mediterranean for university, seminary and church groups. He is the author of Biblical Turkey: A Guide to the Jewish and Christian Sites of Asia Minor and Victory through the Lamb: A Guide to Revelation in Plain Language. He is a frequent lecturer at BAS’s Bible Fests.

Notes

1. Hershel Shanks and Ben Witherington III, The Brother of Jesus: The Dramatic Story & Meaning of the First Archaeological Link to Jesus & His Family (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2003), p. 28.
2. Shanks and Witherington III, Brother of Jesus, p. 97.
3. Ṭal Ilan, Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity. Part IV: The Eastern Diaspora 330 BCE–650 CE (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011).

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on April 27, 2017.

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Bible Secrets Revealed, Episode 1: “Lost in Translation”

Jacob in the Bible

Is the “Brother of Jesus” Inscription on the James Ossuary a Forgery?

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What’s in a Name?

Parsing the Divine Name

The Name Game

Why God Has So Many Names

Where Sumerians Know Your Name

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A barefoot T. E. Lawrence grins after his successful occupation of Turkish-controlled Aqaba. Although Lawrence of Arabia’s arduous journey across the Arabian desert (called “God’s Anvil” in the 1962 movie Lawrence of Arabia) has captured the popular imagination, his activities at other Near Eastern sites—as an archaeologist-in-training—remain much less familiar. Photo: Imperial War Museum, London.

Riding a camel and fighting like a Bedouin tribesman, T.E. Lawrence played a leading role as a British adviser to Prince Feisal during the Arab revolt against Turkish rule (1916–1918) and was clearly torn between his pro-British and pro-Arab sympathies. As an adviser to Winston Churchill after the war, Lawrence helped establish Prince Feisal’s family, the Husseins, as rulers in the Middle East. The present King Hussein of Jordan is the beneficiary of Lawrence’s work in helping his grandfather, King Abdullah, solidify control of Transjordan.

Much of Lawrence’s story is fairly well known, thanks not only to the Lean film but to the publicity work of the American journalist Lowell Thomas, who as early as 1919 began telling Lawrence’s story—albeit not always accurately—in slide shows that he presented to millions of people in New York and London. Since Lowell Thomas’s biography, With Lawrence in Arabia (1924), approximately 50 biographers have kept the story current.

But despite all this publicity, it is sometimes forgotten that Thomas Edward Lawrence (1888–1935) was a very competent Middle Eastern archaeologist before the war and that his archaeological activities and Biblical interests helped shape him for the military and political role he later played. Although his pre-war work focused on the Crusaders and on the Hittites, he contributed to the resolution of at least one important issue in Biblical archaeology and touched on several others.

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Indeed, Lawrence derived his earliest interest in the Middle East from his religious training. Lawrence’s family belonged to St. Aldate’s Church in Oxford, an Evangelical congregation headed by one of the leaders of that movement in England, Canon A.M.W. Christopher. The Bible was read in Lawrence’s home in the mornings before he and his four brothers went to school and on Sundays, and he studied the Holy Land during his Sunday school classes. Given this training and his exceptional abilities, it is not surprising that at the age of 16 Lawrence achieved distinction in an examination of religious knowledge.¹

Lawrence’s family was more devout than most—with special reason. His father, originally named Chapman, was the lord of a manor in Ireland. He ran off with the family governess, leaving four daughters and a wife who never divorced him. The father and the governess went to Wales and changed their name to Lawrence, but they could never marry. The governess, Lawrence’s mother, became extremely religious because she felt she had sinned morally. She stated more than once that God hated the sin but loved the sinner, and made sure her five sons received a thorough religious education. Lawrence’s mother and one of his brothers later became missionaries in China.

Lawrence was dispossessed of his rightful inheritance because of his parents’ illicit relationship, which may have given him sympathy for the national movements of various groups who considered themselves dispossessed. It may also have strengthened his steadily developing interest in castles and their lords.

At a relatively early age, Lawrence began studying the Middle Ages, especially the time of the Crusades. When he was only nine, he took up the very British hobby of “brass rubbing,” recording the inscriptions and insignia on medieval tombs by placing a cloth over them and rubbing them with a waxy substance, leaving a black impression on the cloth. He loved medieval artifacts, including books, crypts and clothing. As a teenager, he read Malory’s Morte d’Arthur and other medieval romances.

Learn about famous archaeologists Gertrude Bell and Trude Dothan in Bible History Daily.

Map of Lawrence’s digs.

Lawrence chose the topic of Crusader castles, then a relatively new subject of academic study, for his honors B.A. thesis, and in the summer of 1909 set out to do fieldwork in the Middle East. This involved a 1,100-mile walking tour in broiling heat. During that summer, Lawrence who turned 21 on August 16, 1909, visited no fewer than 36 castles in the area that now comprises Syria, Lebanon and Israel. During this trip, Lawrence, although never as religious as his mother, was nonetheless influenced by Biblical memories. After walking around the Sea of Galilee, he wrote that it inspired him to think of how the area looked in the time of “Our Lord.” He noted that Palestine had once been rich farmland and that “the sooner the Jews farm it all the better: their colonies are bright spots in a desert.”²

Based on this firsthand research, Lawrence’s thesis was so good that his tutor threw a dinner party in his honor and he received a “First,” the rare, highest grade possible at Oxford. The thesis was first published in 1936 and has recently been published again in two different editions. In it, Lawrence advances the controversial idea that except for the newer fortresses of the Templars, the Crusader castles were influenced almost exclusively by Western designs. The prevailing opinion at the time was that the Crusaders had been strongly influenced by Eastern architectural designs. It now appears that Lawrence was extreme in finding only Western influence in Crusader architecture, apart from that of the Templars. It is now generally agreed that all Crusader orders were influenced by both Eastern and Western castle architecture and that they often created their own unique designs. The longer the Crusaders stayed in the East, the more Eastern influence exerted itself on them.³

But this issue is not definitively resolved, and Lawrence’s thesis continues to be respected by experts and is regularly cited in their works. Lawrence has been praised, for instance, for recognizing the superiority of Castle Saone (or Sahyun) to all other Crusader castles in terms of military architecture and for noting in this castle the prevalence of square tower “keeps,” or strongholds, a Western feature that had been overlooked by other scholars.

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After Lawrence’s graduation in 1910, Hogarth used a small scholarship to bring him to the dig that he himself was conducting in Jerablus, Syria. This was the site of Carchemish, the eastern capital of the ancient Hittite empire. The Hittites (and later the neo-Hittites) ruled much of the Middle East from about the 13th through the 9th century B.C.E.^a They are referred to in many places in the Bible: Abraham bought the cave of Machpelah from Ephron the Hittite (Genesis 23) and both David and Solomon enlisted Hittites among their soldiers. David had Uriah the Hittite killed so that he could have Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11). Solomon apparently had Hittite wives and sold chariots and horses to the Hittites (1 Kings 10:29; 11:1). This powerful people was, however, defeated by the Assyrian king Sargon II at Carchemish in 717 B.C.E.

At this dig, Lawrence worked not only with Hogarth but with C. Leonard Woolley, who later discovered Ur of the Chaldees.^b Here Lawrence served as the foreman of a group of local workers. He copied inscriptions, photographed finds, catalogued discoveries, bought antiquities and used his mechanical ingenuity to solve any small problems that would arise. This dig and the subsequent publication of its results, titled Carchemish: Report on the Excavations at Djerabis on Behalf of the British Museum, containing contributions by Lawrence, set the course of future British study of the Hittites.⁴ During the dig, Lawrence played a leading role in salvaging many important objects from a cemetery that was being looted, and recognized that some of the graves were from the later Parthian period (c. 250 B.C.E.—250 C.E.).⁵

Royal processions, carved in relief, cover the walls of a palace complex at Carchemish, which T.E. Lawrence helped uncover on his first archaeological expedition. Sporting a blazer and football shorts (an outfit that later incited the British archaeologist William Flinders Petrie to tease him, “We don’t play cricket here!”), Lawrence served as foreman of a group of local workers. Located on the western bank of the Euphrates, Carchemish lay on an important trade route linking Anatolia and Assyria with the Mediterranean. Settled as early as 4500 B.C.E., the site was conquered by the Hittites, from central Turkey, who controlled northern Syria from the 14th through the mid-12th century B.C.E., when the Hittite empire fell. From about 1000–800 B.C.E., the site became the capital of the Neo-Hittites, an amalgam of different peoples called Hittites by the Assyrians. The continuous occupation of Carchemish after the fall of the Hittite empire suggests that the Neo-Hittites at this site may well have descended from the Hittites. Built by the early-ninth-century B.C.E. Neo-Hittite king Suhis and his wife Watis, the long palace wall depicts a train of chariots following a procession of gods and goddesses. The archaeologists reconstructed the wall while awaiting a digging permit in 1914. Photo: British Museum.

As an apprentice at Carchemish, Lawrence increased his knowledge of archaeology and made worthy contributions of his own. He also took part in covering up a spying expedition—a precursor of things to come.

Dating to about 800 B.C.E., the relief may depict a queen or nursemaid holding a Neo-Hittite prince (and leading a Neo-Hittite pet). The Assyrian king Sargon II destroyed the city in 717 B.C.E (see Isaiah 10:9). Photo: Sonia Halliday.

In those days, a semicasual relationship existed between archaeologists and intelligence officers. While surveying foreign sites, archaeologists could report anything of military interest that they saw. Even the first British survey of the Holy Land, conducted by the young Lord Horatio Kitchener in 1874, mixed archaeological and military purposes.⁶ Kitchener was forced by events occurring elsewhere to leave only three weeks after his arrival. Now, as British Agent in Egypt, Kitchener appreciated the military potential of the new survey of northern Sinai conducted by Newcombe, Woolley and Lawrence.

Woolley and Lawrence moved south from Beersheva, looking at Nabatean and Byzantine ruins, while Newcombe’s survey parties took a closer look at the entire area of the exploration. The dusty town of Beersheva, the administrative center of the area, where the Turkish military governor approved the exploration, was to become General Edmund Allenby’s first conquest in his Palestine campaign during World War I. Newcombe’s military team covertly surveyed Turkish fortifications, the topography and possible lines of supply and communication. Passing small forts along the route from Beersheva to Nitzana, where the Turks had built a larger fortification on the border with British Egypt, Lawrence, his archaeological colleagues and the military survey teams could view much of the Turkish defense system. Lawrence felt that the Turks’ preparations would be useless because fortified positions were of little avail against a mobile enemy in desert country. This idea, learned during the Wilderness of Zin survey, later became the basis of his guerrilla theory. After arriving at Kossaima, Lawrence, his servant Dahoum and Newcombe traveled south, exploring the northern Sinai in a line down to Aqaba, at the head of the Red Sea. Woolley went northeast, exploring what are today called Shivta, Avdat and Kurnub, among other Nabatean and Byzantine ruins.

Working with his mentor Leonard Woolley (who later excavated Ur), T. E. Lawrence helped draw plans of the Nabatean city Shivta that are still used. Prominent traders, merchants and caravan guides, the Nabateans controlled much of the land between the Dead Sea and the Red Sea in the first century C.E. Located in the central Negev desert, Shivta was probably founded during the reign of the Nabatean king Aretas IV (9 B.C.E.–40 C.E.), whose daughter married Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great. The city prospered as the Nabateans began to breed horses and to farm the desert. The church pictured here dates to the Byzantine period (fourth to sixth century C.E.), during which Shivta continued to flourish as an agricultural and, perhaps, a monastic center. Built on a standard basilica plan, the church has two side aisles separated from the central nave by columns, and a tripartite apse at its eastern end. Photo: Werner Braun.

Since Aqaba was outside the Turkish-approved survey area, Lawrence and Dahoum had to evade the Turkish police to explore this town, which would become the site of Lawrence’s most important military victory during World War I. After a daring swim during which they used an improvised raft made of their camel water-tanks, they explored the ruined structure, possibly of Crusader origins, on the Ile de Graye (now also called Jezirat Faroun and the Coral Island), about 250 yards from the Sinai coast and approximately 7 miles south of Aqaba.^c Lawrence was ordered away from Aqaba after this expedition but was able to study the area north of Aqaba on his return journey to Carchemish via Petra, Maan and Damascus.

After the Wilderness of Zin survey, in June 1914, Newcombe sent Lawrence and Woolley along the planned route of the railway that the Germans were building through the mountains near the Carchemish site. Besides seeing the work on the railway with their own eyes, they secured all of the blueprints for it from a disgruntled Italian engineer.⁷

An imposing fortress guards a deserted granite outcrop in the azure waters of the northern Gulf of Aqaba (Eilat). This island of many names—Jezirat Faroun (Pharaoh’s Island), Isle de Graye, Coral Island—lies about 250 yards from the Sinai coast (and about half a mile from the eastern Red Sea coast, in the distance). The fortress, on the island’s northern hill (left), may have been built by the Moslem caliph Saladin in 1170 C.E., after he captured the island from the Crusaders. Some scholars date the ruins of a wall encircling the island to the tenth century B.C.E. and identify a protected inlet on the island’s western shore (visible in the photo) as King Solomon’s harbor, Ezion-Geber (1 Kings 9:26–28). During an archaeological expedition that served as a cover for a British military survey of Turkish defenses in southern Palestine, Lawrence swam out to explore the ruins. His intimate knowledge of the area no doubt aided his later capture of the city Aqaba, about 7 miles north of Jezirat Faroun. Photo: Werner Braun.

When World War I broke out in August 1914, Lawrence and Woolley were in England. They were told to finish their report on the survey quickly, to make the survey appear to have been solely archaeological in intent.⁸ While subscribers to the Palestine Exploration Fund publications received Woolley and Lawrence’s archaeological report, titled The Wilderness of Zin, Newcombe’s detailed maps and photos of the area went to the British military.

The surprising thing is that this rushed book, designed as a cover for a relatively brief spying survey, remains of permanent importance in Biblical studies. It identified the northern Sinai site Ain el-Qudeirat, rather than nearby Ain Kadeis (which had previously been proposed), as the site of Biblical Kadesh-Barnea, where the Hebrews in the Exodus settled and from whence Moses sent men to spy out the land of Canaan (Deuteronomy 1:2, 19, 2:1; Numbers 13:3–21). According to the prefatory note that begins the book, Lawrence was “chiefly responsible” for “most of Chapter IV,” which investigates and discusses his and Woolley’s Kadesh-Barnea finds. But as Lawrence wrote in his introduction, he and Woolley consulted on all aspects of the book, and so it is impossible to assign any particular sentence or idea to one or the other with certainty.

Why have you brought us … to this wretched place?” the Israelites complain when Moses leads them to Kadesh-Barnea, where they will remain 38 years. The desert location, the Israelites protest, is “no place for grain, or figs, or vines, or pomegranates; and there is no water to drink” (Numbers 20:5). After three days of exploring Ain el-Qudeirat, T.E. Lawrence and Leonard Woolley identified this northern Sinai site as biblical Kadesh-Barnea, on the border of Edom. Only the oasis around Ain el-Qudeirat, they determined, had enough water and greenery (contrary to the Israelites’ complaints) to support a large community for a generation. Lawrence and Woolley believed that a fortress at the site (at right) possibly dated to the time of Moses and thus supported their identification of Ain el-Qudeirat as a well-fortified border town. The fortress has since been dated to the Iron Age II (tenth-seventh century B.C.E.); no finds dating to the time of the Exodus have been discovered at Ain el-Qudeirat. Yet, because of the site’s location on two important ancient routes, the abundant water at the oasis and the correspondence with the Biblical geography, Ain el-Qudeirat continues to be accepted as the most likely candidate for Kadesh-Barnea. Photo: Zev Radovan.

The Israeli archaeologist Rudolph Cohen has noted that Lawrence and Woolley were the first to study the remains on the Ain el-Qudeirat tell.^d He bases his identification of the site as Kadesh-Barnea on the reasons given by Lawrence and Woolley in The Wilderness of Zin, and by Woolley in a 1914 article,⁹ even though Cohen’s own excavations uncovered no remains dating earlier than the tenth century B.C.E., the time of King Solomon. In The Wilderness of Zin, Lawrence and Woolley speculate that the tribes of Israel must have numbered some thousands and were possibly “a tribal group keeping to one district and moving a mile or two in this direction or in that as they devoured the pasture.” If so, they reasoned that only in the Kossaima district, which includes the sites of Ain el-Qudeirat, Kossaima, Muweilleh and Ain Kadeis, was there enough water and greenery to support a large tribal group. Moreover, Moses, in writing to the King of Edom, described Kadesh as “a city in the uttermost of thy border” (Numbers 20:16), and Lawrence and Woolley thought that the fortifications at Ain el-Qudeirat—assuming, on the basis of pottery, that they dated from the time of Moses—more nearly fit that description than any other site in the Kossaima area.

Woolley and Lawrence were also the first to identify the rough earthenware pottery now known as “Negev” pottery.

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The Wilderness of Zin also increased our knowledge of the Nabatean and Byzantine sites that dot the desert around Beersheva. The Nabateans were a group of desert dwellers who appear in Greek and Roman sources beginning in the fourth century B.C.E., and whose kingdom in southern Palestine was annexed by the Romans in 106 C.E., when they largely disappeared from history. Marvelous water engineers, desert farmers and traders, they established a chain of cities from Petra (now in Jordan) across the desert to the Mediterranean. Their cities continued to be important even after the passing of Roman rule; the Byzantines who inherited the Eastern Roman Empire fortified them, built churches and continued to rely on these cities as trading centers. They repaired and augmented the Nabateans’ great dams and water systems, adopting their methods of extensive terrace farming. So when Lawrence and Woolley surveyed the area, they saw only the Byzantine layer. Lack of time, and the inability to date pottery precisely, meant that they were unable to probe beneath the surface or date the surface potsherds. Nonetheless, their plan of the Nabatean/Byzantine city of Shivta, about 30 miles south of Beersheva, remains “one of the most precise and comprehensive to date,” according to Arthur Segal of Haifa University.¹⁰ The expedition to Shivta led by H.D. Colt in the 1930s corrected only minor details of their mapping work.

Lawrence and Woolley’s consideration of climatic issues remains especially impressive. Some authorities before World War I claimed that the climate of the Negev and Sinai had changed over the years and that variations in rainfall accounted for fluctuations in the Negev’s population. They even attributed the end of Byzantine rule here to a diminished water supply. Lawrence and Woolley disputed these views. They saw that after rain the water in the Nabatean and Byzantine cisterns rose exactly to the water level of Byzantine times, as indicated by rings around the cisterns’ walls. They also noted a lack of wood in Byzantine buildings, which indicates that in the Byzantine period, as now, there was an absence of trees. They remarked, too, that the Byzantine storehouses that the Bedouin continued to use were still capable of keeping grain good for several years—an especially valuable characteristic in a land of low rainfall and frequent drought. Finally, they pointed to the Byzantine terrace system and to the fact that Byzantine iron ploughs cut deeper than the wooden ones used by the Bedouin, thus keeping seeds farther from the sun and closer to the moisture hidden in the ground. They therefore explained the end of Byzantine dominance as resulting from Arab incursions, and not from a change in the climate.

Forty years later Professor Nelson Glueck came to the same conclusion about the early Negev dwellers, writing that they “succumbed to conquest by arms and not to uncontrollable forces of nature.”¹¹

While finishing work on The Wilderness of Zin, in the fall of 1914, Lawrence took a job with the Geographical Section of the General Staff (the military high command) in London. In December 1914, Lawrence was sent to join Military Intelligence in Cairo. He worked there for two years, until he was sent to advise one of the leaders of the Arab revolt, Prince Feisal, in the field. There followed, until the capture of Damascus by British and Arab forces in late 1918, the adventures for which he remains famous. These included the capture of the city of Aqaba after a long and difficult march through the northern Arabian desert, which took the Turks by surprise, and an extremely dangerous solo trip through Turkish lines to a clandestine meeting with Ali Riza Pasha, the governor of Damascus, who was secretly working with Lawrence and Feisal against the Turks. In addition, Lawrence perfected the hit and run attack and the use of propaganda among civilians—techniques that many other guerrilla commanders all over the world later imitated.

After the war, from 1919 to 1926, Lawrence wrote and rewrote a memoir of his role, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which is now widely regarded as one of the finest British autobiographies of the 20th century. Given his firsthand knowledge of and meditation on the Biblical sites in the Negev and Sinai, as well as his early Biblical training, it is no surprise to find that Lawrence refers to both the Old and the New Testaments at many points in this book. Indeed, some of the most memorable statements in the book derive from the Bible. For instance, the title comes from Proverbs 9:1: “Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars.” In his notes he compares both the book and the Arab revolt to the construction of a house, proceeding from foundations to finished product. But this image of “seven pillars of wisdom” also conjures up a ruined temple lying in the desert, and the Arab revolt did come to nought when France evicted Feisal from Syria in 1920 and took control of the country.¹²

Just as interesting as Lawrence’s use of Biblical phrases are his thoughts on Judaism and Islam, which he at first regarded as too ascetic and abstract to embody real love between God and man. But as he cleansed himself of the dirt of war and politics in a pool in the Wadi Rumm, in modern Jordan, as if in a baptism, he met an old Arab man. This man, whom he names a “new prophet,” declared, “The love is from God; and of God; and towards God.” This statement seemed to overturn all of Lawrence’s theories about the distance between God and man in Judaism and Islam, and to bring those religions closer to his conception of Christianity.

Lawrence also refers to his involvement in the Arab movement, which sometimes pitted him against the interests of his own British commanders and subjected him to very painful physical and mental tests, as a form of crucifixion.

Because of the trust they placed in him, Lawrence was able to play a major role in bringing together Jews and Moslems in the service of peace. In 1919, when he was at the Paris Conference, he served as go-between for Prince Feisal, the leader of Arab nationalism at that time, and Chaim Weizmann, the head of the Zionist movement, when they signed the only treaty between the two movements until the 1978 Camp David accords. Both sides pledged to help one another and to work together. When Feisal was evicted from Syria by the French in 1920, this treaty became void. But that it existed at all was thanks entirely to Lawrence’s persistence and persuasion. To get them to sign it, Lawrence may have even mistranslated a bit to convince each party that the other was being more flexible than was in fact the case. But both Feisal and Weizmann always felt that Lawrence was friendly to their movements and that he had done them a service by bringing them together.

Lawrence clearly possessed many of the seven essential attributes of a good leader stated in Deuteronomy 1:13 and Exodus 18:21: wisdom, understanding, experience, ability, fear of God, trustworthiness and incorruptibility. He was also a fine archaeologist and writer. Undoubtedly, his abiding interest in and knowledge of the Bible formed the impetus for his success in many fields.

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Letter Excerpts

December 20, 1913
Carchemish

“We have had a very good season’s digging this autumn … We found a great gateway, with long walls leading up to it, all lined with great carved slabs of black and white stone … a king and his children: men with drums and trumpets, and men dancing: a goddess at the head of a long procession of priests and priestesses, carrying corn and mirrors and fruit, and gazelles … Then a great base of two lions, holding up on their backs a great statue of a god, sitting on a stone chair, and holding a club: behind him the gateway, with very long inscriptions in Hittite (which of couse we cannot read) … It must be a great temple, or the palace of a king.”
—T.E. Lawrence to Florence Messham, his childhood nurse

February 28, 1914
Hotel d’Angleterre, Damascus, Syria

I got down to Akabah alone and on foot, since my idiot camels went astray … [A Turkish official] forbade [Captain Stewart] Newcombe to map, and me to photograph or archaeologise. I photographed what I could, I archaeologized everywhere. In especial there was an island [Jezirat Faroun], said to be full of meat. The bay of Akaba is full of sharks, hungry sharks (shivers) and the island was half a mile off shore … [Lawrence and his servant Dahoum] splashed off for the island with a couple of planks as paddles … I felt that any intelligent shark would leave me in the cold, but the whole squadron sailed across safely, saw, judged and condemned the ruins as uninteresting, and splashed homewards, very cold and very tired.
—T.E. Lawrence to a friend.

“Lawrence of Arabia as Archaeologist” by Stephen E. Tabachnick originally appeared in Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 1997. It was first republished in Bible History Daily on December 18, 2013.

Notes:

a. See Aharon Kempinski, “Hittites in the Bible—What Does Archaeology Say?” BAR, September/October 1979.

b. See Edward M. Luby, “The Ur-Archaeologist: Leonard Woolley and the Treasures of Mesopotamia,” BAR, March/April 1997.

c. See Alexander Flinder, “Is This Solomon’s Seaport?” BAR, July/August 1989.

d. Rudolph Cohen, “Did I Excavate Kadesh-Barnea?” BAR, May/June 1981.

1. Jeremy Wilson, Lawrence of Arabia: The Authorized Biography of T.E. Lawrence (New York: Atheneum, 1990), p. 27. This is the source for quotations from Lawrence’s letters throughout this article.

2. T.E. Lawrence, The Letters of T.E. Lawrence, ed. David Garnett (London: Cape, 1938), p. 74. This is also the source for quotations from Lawrence’s letters that appear throughout this article.

3. See the discussion of this issue in Stephen E. Tabachnick and Christopher Matheson, Images of Lawrence (London: Cape, 1988), pp. 97–99; see also Denys Pringle’s introduction to Lawrence, Crusader Castles (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), pp. xxi–xl. Another edition of Crusader Castles was published in London by Michael Haag, in 1986.

4. C. Leonard Woolley, Lawrence and P.L.O. Guy, Carchemish: Report on the Excavations at Djerabis on Behalf of the British Museum, 3 vols. (London: British Museum, 1914, 1921, 1952).

5. P.R.S. Moorey, Cemeteries of the First Millennium B.C. at Deve Hüyük, near Carchemish, Salvaged by T.E. Lawrence and C.L. Woolley in 1913, British Archaeological Reports (1980), pp. 3–4.

6. See Neil Asher Silberman, Digging for God and Country: Exploration, Archaeology, and the Secret Struggle for the Holy Land, 1799–1917 (New York: Knopf, 1982), pp. 119–123.

7. Woolley, As I Seem to Remember (London: Allen and Unwin, 1962), p. 93.

8. Woolley and Lawrence, The Wilderness of Zin (London: Palestine Exploration Fund, 1915).

9. Woolley, “The Desert of the Wanderings,” Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement (1914), pp. 65–66.

10. My translation of Arthur Segal, Shivta: Portrait of a Byzantine City in the Negev Desert (in Hebrew), in Shivta 9 (Haifa: University of Haifa Press, 1986).

11. Nelson Glueck, Rivers in the Desert (New York: Farrar, Straus, 1959), p. 12.

12. Lawrence also uses quotations from Matthew 5:39, about turning the other cheek, and 6:24, “service to two masters irked me,” referring to his role with the British and Arabs. See Jeffrey Meyers, The Wounded Spirit: A Study of “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” (London: Martin Brian & O’Keeffe, 1973), p. 148, for an appendix listing 17 Biblical allusions in this masterpiece.

The post Lawrence of Arabia as Archaeologist appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

The Bible in the News

How the Popular Press Relates, Conflates and Updates Sacred Writ

By Leonard Greenspoon

(Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society, 2013), $7.99

 
For more than a dozen years, Leonard J. Greenspoon’s “The Bible in the News” column has been one of the most popular and enjoyed sections of the widely read magazines Bible Review and Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR). For his column, Greenspoon, who is the Philip M. and Ethel Klutznick Chair in Jewish Civilization at Creighton University, scours the world’s newspapers and popular media looking for interesting, entertaining and often surprising references to the Bible and its timeless collection of sayings, characters and fables. Greenspoon’s perceptive eye and insightful commentary are matched by a charming, tongue-in-cheek humor that always brings a sly smile to the reader’s face.

Developed exclusively for eReaders, this book brings together all of Greenspoon’s “The Bible in the News” articles and columns into a single collection, beginning with his August 2000 feature article “Extra! Extra! Philistines in the Newsroom!” until his recent column in the November/December 2012 issue of BAR. This entertaining array of columns, whose topics range from Adam and Eve in pop culture to North American highways and byways numbered 666 (the number of the beast according to Revelation 13:18), has been conveniently arranged into chapters focusing on biblical episodes and passages from both the Old and New Testaments. The book’s final chapter explores general biblical themes and topics that often appear in media reports, from exceptional Bible translations to champagne bottles named for lesser known biblical characters like Rehoboam and Melchizedek. These and many other fascinating stories about the Bible’s vibrant and continued presence in today’s media culture are found in this eBook, The Bible in the News.

Leonard J. Greenspoon is author of BAR’s popular “The Bible in the News” column, and holds the Philip M. and Ethel Klutznick Chair in Jewish Civilization at Creighton University in Omaha. He is editor-in-chief of the Studies in Jewish Civilization series, which is publishing its 24th volume this fall. He also co-authored, with the late Harvey Minkoff, BAS’s free guide to modern Bible translations, The Holy Bible: A Buyer’s Guide.
 

Frank Moore Cross: Conversations with a Bible Scholar

Hershel Shanks, Frank Moore Cross

(Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society, 2013), $9.99

 
Celebrate the life of the late renowned Biblical and archaeological scholar Frank Moore Cross with a comprehensive but readable overview of his broad-ranging scholarship. This collection of five interviews with Cross by Biblical Archaeology Review editor Hershel Shanks brings Cross’s insightful and path-breaking scholarly contributions to a wide, general audience, from his ideas about the origins of Israelite religion to his prominent role in the discovery and study of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Also included are thought-provoking discussions of the origins of the alphabet and the significance of ancient Hebrew seals and inscriptions for understanding the Biblical past. Furthermore, this new electronic edition of Frank Moore Cross: Conversations with a Bible Scholar allows readers to take full advantage of all of the portability and functionality of their eReader devices, including convenient in-text links that jump directly to specific chapters and notes.

Frank Moore Cross, at the young age of 36, was appointed to one of the oldest and most prestigious positions in academia, the Hancock Professorship of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages at Harvard University, a chair he held for 35 years, until his retirement in 1992. His bibliography includes more than 200 scholarly publications. Even more important than their quantity is their often path-breaking quality, as is widely recognized in the profession. His books include Early Hebrew Orthography (with David Noel Freedman), The Ancient Library of Qumran and Modern Biblical Studies and Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic. He served as president of the Society of Biblical Literature, as well as of the American Schools of Oriental Research. He received many awards and honors, including the Percia Schimmel Prize in Archaeology from the Israel Museum, the W.F. Albright Award in Biblical Studies from the Society of Biblical Literature, the Medal of Honor from the University of Madrid, as well as honorary degrees. He passed away in 2012 at the age of 91.
 

Aspects of Monotheism

How God is One

Donald B. Redford, John J. Collins, William G. Dever, P. Kyle McCarter Jr., Jack Meinhardt (editor), Hershel Shanks (editor)

(Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society, 2013), $4.99

 
Stemming from a popular symposium sponsored by the Biblical Archaeology Society and the Smithsonian Institution, Aspects of Monotheism: How God Is One—now available in this convenient eReader edition—presents an exciting, provocative and readily understandable discussion of the origins and evolution of monotheism within Judaism and Christianity. Four distinguished scholars from different fields of study—Donald Redford, William Dever, P. Kyle McCarter and John Collins—tackle broad ranging issues related to how the Israelite god came to be identified with the one universal God of the Judeo-Christian tradition. For example, were the ancient Israelites really the first to worship a single god, or did the Egyptians beat them to the punch? And were the ancient Israelites really monotheists, or was the idea of a single, universal God a late development in Israelite history? And what of Christianity? How are we to understand the divinity of Jesus, alongside his Father? Even more difficult, how are we to understand the Trinity? This book grapples with these intriguing questions and provides some often surprising answers. The new electronic edition of Aspects of Monotheism also allows readers to take full advantage of all of the portability and functionality of their eReader devices, including convenient in-text links that jump directly to specific chapters and notes.

Donald B. Redford is the foremost authority on Akhenaten, often called the world’s first monotheist. Professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies and History at Pennsylvania State University, Redford has been the director of the Akhenaten Temple Project at the University of Pennsylvania since 1972, which led to his production of a film on the project’s findings. Redford’s publications include Egypt, Israel and Canaan in Ancient Times (Princeton Univ. Press, 1992) and Akhenaten: The Heretic King (Princeton Univ. Press, 1984). He is also editor-in-chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt (Oxford Univ. Press, 2001) and has written a libretto for an opera, Ra.

William G. Dever is a Near Eastern archaeologist specializing in the Bible. He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1966 and went on to serve as director of the American Schools of Oriental Research in Jerusalem from 1971 to 1975. In 1975, he joined the faculty of the University of Arizona, Tucson as professor of Near Eastern archaeology and anthropology. Professor Dever retired from the University of Arizona in 2002 and currently divides his time between his home in Cyprus and Lycoming College in Pennsylvania, where he is Distinguished Visiting Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology.

P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., is the William Foxwell Albright Professor of Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies in the Near Eastern Studies Department at The Johns Hopkins University. A past president of the American Schools of Oriental Research, he is the author of commentaries on 1 and 2 Samuel in the Anchor Bible Series. His other writings include contributions to the Oxford Companion to the Bible, Harper’s Study Bible and Harper’s Bible Commentary.

John J. Collins is the Holmes Professor of Old Testament at Yale Divinity School. He has served as president of the Catholic Biblical Association and as editor of the Journal of Biblical Literature. He is also a member of the expanded team of Dead Sea Scrolls editors. His publications include a commentary on Daniel (Fortress Press, 1993), The Scepter and the Star: The Messiahs of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Doubleday, 1995), Apocalypticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Routledge, 1997) and Seers, Sibyls and Sages in Hellenistic-Roman Judaism (Brill, 1997).
 

The Rise of Ancient Israel

Hershel Shanks (editor), William G. Dever, Baruch Halpern, P. Kyle McCarter, Jr.

(Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society, 2013), $4.99

 
The Rise of Ancient Israel, now available in this convenient eReader edition, is an accessible and engaging overview of one of biblical archaeology’s most critical and hotly debated subjects—the emergence of biblical Israel on the historical stage. Based on a 1991 Smithsonian Institution symposium organized by the Biblical Archaeology Society, this handsomely illustrated book brings together four authoritative and insightful lectures from world renowned scholars that carefully consider the archaeological and historical evidence for ancient Israel’s origins. Furthermore, the new electronic edition of The Rise of Ancient Israelallows readers to take full advantage of all of the portability and functionality of their eReader devices, including convenient in-text links that jump directly to specific chapters and notes.

In the book’s introduction, moderator Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review, not only defines the broad range of issues involved in tackling Israel’s beginnings, but also provides the basic information needed to appreciate the scholarly debates. William Dever, America’s preeminent Biblical archaeologist, then assesses the archaeological evidence that is usually associated with the Israelite settlement in Canaan beginning in about 1200 B.C.E. The often controversial views presented by Dever are followed by brief responses from leading scholars who study Israelite origins, including Israel Finkelstein, Norman Gottwald and Adam Zertal. In the book’s final chapters, Baruch Halpern, a senior professor of Jewish studies and biblical history at Penn State University, describes how the Book of Exodus may preserve authentic historical memories of Israel’s emergence in Egypt, while famed biblical scholar P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., discusses the fascinating and perhaps unexpected origins of Israelite religion. The book concludes with an informal but revealing panel discussion spurred by questions from Shanks and the symposium audience.

Author, moderator and editor Hershel Shanks is editor of Biblical Archaeology Review. He is also the editor and author of many books, including Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls (Random House, 1992) and Jerusalem: An Archaeological Biography (Random House, 1995).

William G. Dever is a Near Eastern archaeologist specializing in the Bible. He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1966 and went on to serve as director of the American Schools of Oriental Research in Jerusalem from 1971 to 1975. In 1975, he joined the faculty of the University of Arizona, Tuscon as professor of Near Eastern archaeology and anthropology. Professor Dever retired from the University of Arizona in 2002 and currently divides his time between his home in Cyprus and Lycoming College in Pennsylvania, where he is Distinguished Visiting Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology. Dever is perhaps best known in archaeological circles as the excavator of Gezer.

Baruch Halpern is a professor of ancient history and holds the Chaiken Family Chair in Jewish studies at Pennsylvania State University. A co-director of excavations at Megiddo, his several books include David’s Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King (Eerdmans, 2001).

P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., is the William F. Albright Professor of Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Maryland. He taught at the University of Virginia from 1974 to 1985 and has held visiting professorships at Harvard University and Dartmouth College. A former president of the American Schools of Oriental Research, McCarter wrote the commentaries on 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel in the Anchor Bible series. His many other writings include Ancient Inscriptions: Voices from the Biblical World (Biblical Archaeology Society, l996). Most recently, he has written and contributed to several important articles on the paleography of the newly discovered Tel Zayit abecedary.
 

Feminist Approaches to the Bible

Hershel Shanks (Editor), Phyllis Trible, Tikva Frymer-Kensky, Pamela J. Milne, Jane Schaberg

(Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society, 2013), $4.99

 
This book, developed from a popular symposium sponsored by the Biblical Archaeology Society and the Smithsonian Institution, invites readers to ask how modern notions of gender equality can be reconciled with the largely patriarchal world in which the Bible was written and understood. Four outstanding scholars—Phyllis Trible, Tikva Frymer-Kensky, Pamela J. Milne and Jane Schaberg—examine the stories of a number of prominent women in the Bible, including Eve, Miriam and Mary Magdalene, to highlight the various ways feminists have approached the biblical text and its traditional interpretation by men. They ask how these stories reflect the concerns of women, and in what ways women are treated, described and given voice by the biblical writers. In addition, they look at the lives of the Bible’s women from a modern perspective and, in so doing, ask how modern, 21st-century readers should relate to the text. Can this inherently patriarchal document be reclaimed as source of spiritual inspiration for modern women, as argued by Trible and others? Or, as viewed by Milne, has the Bible been so distorted by patriarchal tradition that feminists simply have no choice but to reject it all together? Readers will critically grapple with these and other tough questions in Feminist Approaches to the Bible.

Now available in this convenient eReader edition, Feminist Approaches to the Bible allows readers to take full advantage of all of the portability and functionality of their eReader devices, including convenient in-text links that jump directly to specific chapters and notes.

Hershel Shanks, moderator and editor, is editor of Biblical Archaeology Review. He is also the editor and author of many books, including Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls (Random House, 1992) and Jerusalem: An Archaeological Biography (Random House, 1995).

Phyllis Trible is University Professor in the School of Divinity at Wake Forest University. She is the author of God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Fortress Press, 1978), Texts of Terror: Literary Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (Fortress Press, 1984) and Rhetorical Criticism: Context, Method, and The Book of Jonah (Fortress Press, 1994).

Tikva Frymer-Kensky was professor of Hebrew Bible at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago and director of biblical studies at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia. Her publications include In the Wake of the Goddesses (Free Press, 1992) and The Judicial Ordeal in the Ancient Near East (Styx, 1995). She passed away in August 2006.

Pamela J. Milne is professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Windsor, Ontario, and the author of an introduction and annotation for the Book of Daniel in The NRSV: Harper’s Study Edition (HarperCollins, 1993) and “The Patriarchal Stamp of Scripture” (Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 1989).

Jane Schaberg was professor of religious and women’s studies at the University of Detroit-Mercy, where she had taught since 1977. A specialist in the New Testament, Schaberg was the author of The Illegitimacy of Jesus: A Feminist Theological Interpretation of the New Testament Infancy Narratives (Crossroad, 1990) and “The Gospel of Luke” in The Women’s Bible Commentary (Westminster/ John Knox Press, 1992). She passed away in April 2012.
 

The Search for Jesus

Modern Scholarship Looks at the Gospels

Stephen J. Patterson; Marcus J. Borg; John Dominic Crossan, Hershel Shanks (editor)

(Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society, 2013), $4.99

 
This engaging and accessible book, developed from a popular symposium sponsored by the Biblical Archaeology Society and the Smithsonian Institution and now available in this convenient eReader edition, presents scholarly discussions on the birth, life and death of the historical Jesus. Top New Testament and historical Jesus scholars Stephen Patterson, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan give their views on who Jesus was, what he said and how the Jesus of history differs from the Jesus of faith. Included are detailed explorations of the historical and archaeological evidence for Jesus outside the Bible, as well as investigations into the various methods scholars use to dissect the Gospels for evidence of what Jesus may have actually said and done. Along the way, readers will follow Patterson, Borg and Crossan through the thickets of ancient texts, theology, archaeology, anthropology, the Nag Hammadi codices and even the Dead Sea Scrolls as they reveal what modern scholarship has learned about the historical Jesus, the first-century man the Gospels tell us was born in Bethlehem, preached in Galilee and was crucified in Jerusalem. The new electronic edition of The Search for Jesus also allows readers to take full advantage of all of the portability and functionality of their eReader devices, including convenient in-text links that jump directly to specific chapters and notes.

Hershel Shanks, moderator and editor, is editor of Biblical Archaeology Review. He is also the editor and author of many books, including Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls (Random House, 1992) and Jerusalem: An Archaeological Biography (Random House, 1995).

Stephen J. Patterson is George H. Atkinson Professor of Religious and Ethical Studies at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. Patterson is a former contributing editor of Bible Review and the author of numerous books, including Beyond the Passion: Rethinking the Death and Life of Jesus (Fortress Press, 2004). His research focuses on the historical Jesus, Christian origins and the Gospel of Thomas.

Marcus J. Borg is Hundere Distinguished Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University, past chair of the Historical Jesus Section of the Society of Biblical Literature and a Fellow of the Jesus Seminar. He is the author of several books, including: Conflict, Holiness and Politics in the Teachings of Jesus (Edwin Mellen, 1984); Jesus: A New Vision (1987) and Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time (1994), both published by HarperSanFrancisco; and Jesus in Contemporary Scholarship (Trinity Press International, 1994).

John Dominic Crossan is professor emeritus of religious studies at DePaul University in Chicago. He is a founder of Semeia: An Experimental Journal for Biblical Criticism and was general editor from 1980 to 1986. He was also a founder and co-director (with Robert W. Funk) of the Westar Institute Jesus Seminar from 1985 to 1993. He has written more than 25 books on the historical Jesus in the last 35 years, including The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (1991), Excavating Jesus (with archaeologist Jonathan L. Reed in 2001) and In Search of Paul (2004), all published by Harper San Francisco.

The post Biblical Archaeology Books on the Go appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

How does the Bible portray its villains?

Eminent scholars explore textual accounts and archaeological evidence of some not-so-nice notables from the Old and New Testaments: from a ruthless Assyrian king to a confused Judean governor, and from Roman executioners to a betraying friend.

Lectures:

BART D. EHRMAN
Who Killed Jesus? Pontius Pilate & the Jews

CRAIG EVANS
The Art and Archaeology of Execution in the Roman World

DAVID USSISHKIN
Sennacherib’s Attack on Lachish: What We Have Learned from Archaeology

MARVIN MEYER
The Gospel of Judas: What It Has Taught Us Thus Far

Digging into the Gospels:
Texts and Archaeology Behind Christianity’s Foundational Stories

Let’s get digging!

Modern-day archaeological excavations and their artifacts continue to illuminate and challenge our understanding of the ancient Biblical world. Learn from leading experts about the cities of the Gospels, archaeology’s impact on faith and what we can learn from canonical and noncanonical texts.

Lectures:

JAMES H. CHARLESWORTH
Does the Gospel of John Accurately Describe Jerusalem Before 70 CE?

MARK GOODACRE
A Giant Jesus and A Walking, Talking Cross: Exploring the Gospel of Peter

RAMI ARAV
Twenty-Five Years of Excavations at Bethsaida: How Bethsaida Has Helped Shape Biblical Research

AARON GALE
tudying Stones and Scripture: Archaeology, Judaism and Christian Origins

MARK WILSON
Who’s Buried in Philip’s Tomb?

MARK GOODACRE
Paul’s Letters: Women, Men and the End

The post Two Brand New BAS Lecture Series appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

For more on the James Ossuary trial, visit the Bible History Daily James Ossuary Forgery Trial Resources Guide.

After a trial of more than five years with 138 witnesses, more than 400 exhibits and a trial transcript of 12,000 pages, Judge Aharon Farkash of the Jerusalem District Court has cleared the defendants of all forgery charges. His opinion in the case, handed down on March 14, is 474 pages long.

The defendants Oded Golan and Robert Deutsch were acquitted of all forgery charges.

The most famous of the objects charged to be forgeries is an inscription on an ossuary or bone box that reads “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.” It received its first publication in BAR–on October 21, 2002. The next day it was on the front page of almost every newspaper in the world, including the New York Times and Washington Post.

A second allegedly forged inscription is engraved on a little ivory pomegranate for which the Israel Museum paid $550,000. If authentic, it may be the only relic surviving from Solomon’s Temple. That too received its first English announcement in BAR.

The forgery charges included allegations of forged inscriptions on the James Ossuary, the Jehoash tablet and the ivory pomegranate.

The indictment also charges several other inscriptions to be forgeries, including the “Three Shekels” ostracon and the “Widow’s Plea” ostracon (writings on pottery sherds), sold by Deutsch to famous, colorful, wealthy collector Shlomo Moussaieff.

The judge cleared the defendants of all charges of forgery.

As Matthew Kalman, the only journalist to cover the trial on a daily basis, wrote last fall: “The criminal, scholarly and scientific implications of [the judge’s] verdict are immense…An acquittal would be a severe setback for the Israel Antiquities Authority…It would also be an acute embarrassment for the isotope experts at the Israel Geological Survey and professor Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University.”

When the indictment was filed in 2004, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) claimed the defendants were part of large forgery conspiracy. This is just “the tip of the iceberg,” charged IAA director Shuka Dorfman. Among the IAA’s suspects were even leading academic writing experts Andre Lemaire of the Sorbonne and Ada Yardeni of the Hebrew University. (The government’s chief witness in the case, Tel Aviv University Professor Yuval Goren claimed that I too played a “pivotal role” in the forgery conspiracy. My participation, he asserted, was “evident.”)

Perhaps most damaged by the judge’s decision is deputy IAA director Uzi Dahari who chaired the IAA committee that found the ossuary inscription and the Yehoash inscription to be forgeries. He led a bevy of scholars by the nose to accept an allegedly unanimous committee decision finding that the two inscriptions were forgeries. (See below.) At a BAR-organized forum, Dr. Dahari accused me of being the “catalyst for a series of forgeries.” He continued: “Mr. Shanks, you are playing with fire when you continually publish finds of this nature.” He referred to “solid proofs” that these two inscriptions were forgeries.*

Let’s consider the evidence regarding the three objects with inscriptions that have received the most attention.

The first is the ossuary inscribed “James, the son of Joseph, the brother of Jesus.” All agree that the ossuary itself is authentic and ancient. The question is whether the inscription is forged—or more specifically whether the phrase “brother of Jesus” was added in recent times to an ancient inscription “James, son of Joseph.”

The inscription reading “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” on the James Ossuary is the most well-known piece of the case. Paleographic analyses and the existence of ancient patina suggest that the inscription is authentic.

What is even more significant is that no paleographer of any repute has even suggested that this inscription might be a forgery. There is no other side paleographically.

Scientifically, however, there is. Professor Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University found what he called “James Bond” covering the inscription in order to hide evidence of forgery. The James Bond was, he said, a mixture of ground-up limestone and hot water that formed a fake patina. But it turned out there was no way to make the mixture Goren hypothesized stick to the surface of the ossuary without the addition of an acid, traces of which would be found—and it wasn’t there. This so-call James Bond could be removed with a toothpick; it was hardly “bonded.” Goren even admitted that his “James Bond” could be the result of cleaning the ossuary (something dealers customarily do to make inscriptions stand out).

More important, after treatment, original ancient patina could be seen in several letters of the inscription, including one of the letters of the word “Jesus.” Before the trial, Goren had denied that there was any ancient patina in the inscription. When he was presented on cross-examination with new pictures taken by one of the defendant’s experts, Professor Goren became flummoxed and asked for a recess to allow him time to examine the box itself, rather than the pictures. He returned the next day and admitted in court that there was indeed original ancient patina in some of the letters. However, he sought to explain this, suggesting that the forger had incorporated ancient scratches with naturally formed patina as strokes of the forged letters of the inscription. (If anyone believes that, I have a bridge I’d like to sell them—very cheaply.)

Actually, this original ancient patina had been observed much earlier by Orna Cohen, one of the members of the Israel Antiquities Authority committee that examined the ossuary before the trial, but no one paid any attention to this; the IAA knew where it wanted to go.

There are other, simpler reasons why I believe that the inscription is not a forgery. Oded Golan has owned the ossuary since the late 1970s; he proved this with old photographs authenticated by an ex-FBI agent as using paper no longer used at a later date. And Golan never tried to sell the ossuary or publicize the inscription. He claims, quite believably, that he didn’t even know the New Testament mentions James as the brother of Jesus, or as he put it, “I never realized God could have a brother.” Even more understandably, he had no idea Ya’acov (on the ossuary and Jacob to any Israeli) was translated as James in English New Testaments.

The prosecution claims it found forgers’ tools in Golan’s apartment. Golan claims they were used in restoring antiquities from his collection, not for making forgeries. None of these tools, however, could be used to engrave the inscription on this ossuary. Even if he is a forger, that doesn’t mean everything in his vast collection is a forgery.

The second item alleged to be a forgery is a little ivory pomegranate inscribed “[Belonging] to the House (Temple) of [Yahwe]h; holy to the priests.” If it is authentic, it is probably the head of a small priestly scepter from Solomon’s Temple. We have other ivory scepters like this with rods still in them but without inscriptions. There is a hole in the bottom of this pomegranate for a rod to be inserted. Although the indictment alleges the inscription is a forgery, it was not included in the individual counts, so the judge did not deal with it in his opinion.

This ivory pomegranate, possibly from a small priestly scepter from Solomon’s Temple, was not included in the individual counts, so the judge did not deal with it in his opinion.

Again, like the ossuary inscription, no one seriously questions the paleography of this inscription. The question is again scientific—but simpler this time. As indicated above, only part of the inscription has survived. Some of the pomegranate containing the inscription was broken off in antiquity. The question is whether any of the surviving letters go into this ancient break; that is, when part of the pomegranate was broken off in ancient times, was the inscription already there? If so, the inscription is authentic.

A group of us got together at the Israel Museum to examine the pomegranate under a microscope to see whether any of the letters of the inscription went into the ancient break. If it did, the inscription was there before the break and was therefore ancient. If it stopped before the break, a forger was afraid to complete the letter for fear of breaking off more of the pomegranate. If a letter goes into the break it forms a little “v” on the side of the break, where part of the pomegranate had broken off long ago.

The group that gathered at the Israel Museum included Yuval Goren, who led the “forgery” claque, as well as two other pro-forgery scholars (and wonderful human beings and my friends), Professors Shmuel Ahituv and Aaron Demsky. Others included Andre Lemaire and me. Ahituv took charge of organizing the meeting once it was agreed to. I urged Ahituv to allow Ada Yardeni to attend the meeting, but he adamantly refused.

In the end, it all came down to a single letter—a heh. Does it go into the ancient break, thereby indicating it pre-existed the break? Is the little “v” there on the side of the pomegranate where part of it had broken off? Both from our visual inspection and from the microscope photographs, it is clear that the heh does go into the ancient break. The little “v” is there. So the letter was there in ancient times before the break occurred.

Each side published its report of the meeting in the Israel Exploration Journal (IEJ). But the report by Goren, Ahituv and Demsky arguing for forgery entirely fails to mention the heh that goes into the break, even though Lemaire heavily relies on this in his report. I wrote a letter for publication to IEJ, of which Ahituv was then editor, noting this glaring omission in their published report. I was told by return mail that IEJ does not print letters to the editor. (But this is not true. There are indeed examples of such letters.)

Now, whenever I see my friends Shmuel Ahituv and Aaron Demsky, I simply say to them, “What about the heh, Shmulik?” “What about the heh, Aharon?” They respond that they are through with this matter and don’t want to discuss it. Maybe some reader will be successful in eliciting a response from them that addresses this question.

The third artifact discussed here is a 15-line inscription on a black stone plaque, the text of which parallels a similar biblical description of repairs to Solomon’s Temple by King Yehoash in the 9th century B.C.E. If authentic, it could well have hung in Solomon’s Temple.

When this inscription first surfaced Yuval Goren quickly opined that it was a forgery because the black stone on which the inscription was carved was not native to Israel and probably came from “the Troodos Massif in Cyprus.” This was soon shown to be absurd. The plaque is made of simple arkosic sandstone, very common in Israel near the Dead Sea, as well as in Sinai.

The 15 line Yehoash Inscription parallels a similar biblical description of repairs to Solomon’s Temple by King Yehoash in the 9th century B.C.E.

Because serious scholars rely on the philological infirmities of the inscription to declare it a forgery, I cannot confidently say they are wrong and that the inscription is authentic. But I do tend to think so. Here’s why.

The scientific evidence strongly points in this direction. The plaque had a deep crack running through four lines of the inscription. After the police confiscated the plaque, it (accidentally) broke in two along the crack. The crack could then be seen from the side. Part of the crack had ancient patina in it, proving that the crack was ancient. Would a forger choose to work with a stone that had a crack in it, where a slip of his engraving tool might break the stone in two, ruining all his careful work? Hardly. But even if he decided to take the chance, how did he manage to engrave four lines across the ancient crack?

In addition, the patina on the inscription contains minute globules of gold. Was the plaque once plated with gold? These gold globules are so small (one or two millionths of a meter) that they are not available on the market. They can be created, however, in an intense fire such as might have occurred in the conflagration that accompanied the destruction of the Temple—the First Temple in the 6th century B.C.E. or the Second Temple in 70 C.E. All this is explained in a peer-reviewed journal, the Journal of Archaeological Science, authored by five experts from Israel and the United States who defend the authenticity of the inscription.

BAR editor Hershel Shanks has argued for years that the allegations of forgery against Golan and Deutsch are not backed by sufficient evidence. The March 14 verdict supports Shanks’s position.

Despite all that I have said, the inscriptions I have discussed will be considered forgeries in the public mind for at least a generation—never mind the acquittal of the defendants and the evidence of authenticity. The reason is that these inscriptions have been declared forgeries, supposedly unanimously, by two committees of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).

The fact is that these committees chaired by IAA deputy director Uzi Dahari were set-ups. The IAA knew where it wanted to go—and it got there. It enlisted Yuval Goren to lead a pack of scholars who “went along.” Father Joseph Fitzmyer, probably the world’s leading expert on ancient Aramaic (the language of the Jesus inscription) provides the details. The committees included people who had previously said the inscriptions were probably forgeries, but not anyone on the other side. So, for example, Andre Lemaire was not included. Neither were the geologists from the Geological Survey of Israel who had found the inscriptions authentic. Many of the IAA committee members conceded that their expertise was not in areas that would allow them to opine on authenticity, but the IAA treated their demurrers as votes for forgery. The demurrers were treated as “yes” votes when the IAA announced the “unanimous” decision of their committee.

The IAA tried “to give the impression that the committees were unanimous, and it’s not unanimous at all,” Fitzmyer said.**

Worse yet, committee members sometimes based their “yes” vote on Yuval Goren’s scientific evidence, not on their own expertise. For example, highly respected archaeologist Ronny Reich had reported to the committee that “in my opinion [the Jesus inscription is] authentic.” In the end, however, he said he was “forced” to change his mind as a result of Yuval Goren’s geological expertise. He was not the only committee member to base his vote on the basis of someone else’s expertise, not his own.

Since the ivory pomegranate was in its collections, the Israel Museum sent an observer to the committee that judged the pomegranate inscription. This observer was counted as a “yes” vote. The committee report published in IEJ listed her as an author, although she had never seen the report. One final telling point: The IEJ report lists all the members of the committee as authors. Normally in such a situation, they would be listed in alphabetical order, as they are in this case—all except one. Yuval Goren leads all the rest.

The judge’s decision doesn’t mean that the inscriptions are authentic. It only means that the prosecution failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they are forgeries. But at least the discussion can now proceed on a more academic basis. And perhaps the IAA has learned some lessons that can be applied in the future.

Notes

* “Dahari: J’Accuse, Mr. Shanks,” Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 2005.

** “Fitzmyer Calls for Ossuary Restudy,” Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 2004.

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