“After the conclusion of the treaty they left with their families and chattels, not fewer than two hundred and forty thousand people, and crossed the desert into Syria. Fearing the Assyrians, who dominated over Asia at that time, they built a city in the country which we now call Judea. It was large enough to contain this great number of men and was called Jerusalem.”
–Josephus, Against Apion 1.73.7, quoting Manetho’s Aegyptiaca

Excavations at Tel Habuwa, thought to be ancient Tjaru, reveal evidence of the expulsion of the Hyksos by Ahmose I at the end of the Second Intermediate Period.

In the Second Intermediate Period (18th–16th centuries B.C.E.), towards the end of the Middle Bronze Age, the West Asian (Canaanite) Hyksos controlled Lower (Northern) Egypt. In the 16th century, Ahmose I overthrew the Hyksos and initiated the XVIII dynasty and the New Kingdom of Egypt.

Archaeological discoveries at Tel Habuwa (also known as Tell el-Habua or Tell-Huba), a site associated with ancient Tjaru (Tharo), shed light on Ahmose’s campaign. A daybook entry in the famous Rhind Mathematical Papyrus notes that Ahmose seized control of Tjaru before laying siege the Hyksos at their capital in Avaris.

Excavations at the site, located two miles east of the Suez Canal, have uncovered evidence of battle wounds on skeletons discovered in two-story administrative structures dating to the Hyksos and New Kingdom occupations. The site showed evidence of burned buildings, as well as massive New Kingdom grain silos that would have been able to feed a large number of Egyptian troops. After Ahmose took the city and defeated the Hyksos, he expanded the town and built several nearby forts to protect Egypt’s eastern border. Tjaru was first discovered in 2003, but until now, the excavation only uncovered the New Kingdom military fort and silos. This new discovery confirms a decisive moment in the expulsion of the Hyksos previously known from textual sources.

Tomb painting from Beni Hasan, Egypt. A figure named Abisha and identified by the title Hyksos leads brightly garbed Semitic clansmen into Egypt to conduct trade. Dating to about 1890 B.C.E., the painting is preserved on the wall of a tomb carved into cliffs overlooking the Nile at Beni Hasan, about halfway between Cairo and Luxor. In the early second millennium B.C.E., numerous Asiatics infiltrated Egypt, some of whom eventually gained control over Lower Egypt for about a century and a half. The governing class of these people became known as the Hyksos, which means “Rulers of Foreign Lands.”

The Hyksos are well known from ancient texts, and their expulsion was recorded in later ancient Egyptian historical narratives. The third-century B.C.E. Egyptian historian Manetho–whose semi-accurate histories stand out as valuable resources for cataloging Egyptian kingship–wrote of the Hyksos’ violent entry into Egypt from the north, and the founding of their monumental capital at Avaris, a city associated with the famous excavations at Tell ed-Dab’a. After the Hyksos were expelled from Egypt, Manetho reports that they wandered the desert before establishing the city of Jerusalem.

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While Josephus cites Manetho’s history associating the Israelites with the Hyksos, many modern scholars see problems with Manetho’s conflation of the expulsion of the Hyksos and the Biblical narrative. Manetho lived many centuries after these events took place, and he may have combined two different narratives, wittingly or unwittingly, when associating the Hyksos and Israelites. Ahmose’s defeat of the Hyksos occurred centuries before the traditional date of the Exodus. In addition, the basic premise of the Hyksos and Exodus histories differ: the Hyksos were expelled rulers of Egypt, not slaves, and they were forced out, not pursued.

Learn more about the fortress excavated at Tel Habuwa—the largest discovered to date in Egypt.

The expulsion of the Hyksos may not have been a single event, and many still read Manetho’s texts on the Hyksos expulsion as a record of the Israelites’ Exodus. After the Hyksos were defeated by Ahmose, some Hyksos people likely remained in Egypt, perhaps as a subjugated class. The Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut (1489–1469 B.C.E.) recorded the banishment of a group of Asiatics from Avaris, the former Hyksos capital. While this second expulsion would still have been centuries before the traditional date of the Exodus, there may exist parallels between these events and the Exodus narrative, or the earlier Biblical accounts of Abraham, Sarah and Lot’s own expulsion from Egypt in Genesis 12:19.

Watch full-length lecture videos by top Exodus scholars, including Hyksos capital excavator Manfred Bietak, online for free.

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published in March 2013.

Related reading in Bible History Daily

Reinterpreting the Tempest Stela

Severed Hands: Trophies of War in New Kingdom Egypt

The Exodus: Fact or Fiction?

Who Were the Minoans?

The Last Days of Hattusa

Bronze Age Collapse: Pollen Study Highlights Late Bronze Age Drought

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library

Out of Egypt

“Look on My Works”

An Ancient Israelite House in Egypt?

Jacob in History

The post The Expulsion of the Hyksos appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

The Book of Judith’s truly remarkable heroine, Judith, introduced as a devout, shapely, beautiful and wealthy widow (Judith 8:4, 7), exhibits characteristics showing her the equal of Israel’s finest warriors. Indeed her beheading of Holofernes, the invading Assyrian general—in his own tent, with his own sword, and surrounded by his own heretofore victorious army, no less!—marks her as a political savior in Israel on a par with David. To read part one, click here.
 

Judith: A Remarkable Heroine, Part 2

Cristofano Allori’s representation of Judith carrying the head of Holofernes. Palazzo Pitti, Florence.

2. Judith and her maid. A silent, anonymous maid shadows Judith throughout her adventure and shares equally in it. Serving as an inclusion (Judith 8:10, 16:23), the maid summons the magistrates to Judith’s home and receives emancipation just before Judith dies at age 105. The maid, it seems, also is beautiful, for the awestruck Assyrians marvel, “Who can despise these people when they have women like this among them?” (Judith 10:19) (italics added). The maid cares for the physical needs of her mistress—her food and clothing—and acts as chaperone and attendant, necessary qualifications adding to the mystique and credibility of a great lady claiming she flees in distress from her doomed countrymen to the Assyrians because the Hebrews “are about to be devoured” (Judith 10:12).

The text hints at a deep bond between Judith and her maid and the deep faith they share. Both are members of the covenant community; the maid observes Judith’s lifestyle of prayer and fasting. Although the text does not indicate that the maid knew Judith’s complete plan or was asked to accompany her, I think that Judith’s character indicates she would not order someone to come with her on what could be a death mission. I believe she asked her maid, and the maid, meeting her eyes and with her head held high, nodded yes. I believe they prayed together. In modern terms, both were enemy agents bent on the destruction of Israel’s foe. Both are heroines.

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3. Judith’s heritage. Judith is introduced with a lineage virtually unparalleled in the Biblical text (Judith 8:1–2). A descendant of Simeon, her genealogy includes 16 progenitors and doesn’t even make it back to Simeon! The genealogy, a significant textual marker, establishes her as a formidable literary character. In an interesting psychological insight, her prayer for help with her plan to save Israel and assassinate Holofernes, the besieging Assyrian general, begins with a remembrance of Dinah’s shame (Genesis 34:2; Judith 9:2–4). Judith, by her upcoming valor and good deed, expresses determination to erase this early, but still remembered, defamation.

Her covenant heritage combines prayer and action. She calls on God to break the world-renowned pride of the Assyrians “by the hand of a woman” (Judith 9:10), thus causing them ongoing, international shame. She calls on God, in his anger, to bring down the strength of the Assyrians (Judith 9:8). She demands that God demonstrate throughout the world that “there is no other who protects the people of Israel but you alone” (Judith 9:14). She beseeches God to grant her, a widow, the strength she needs and to hear her prayer (Judith 9:9, 12). She asks that “my deceitful words bring wound and bruise on those who have planned cruel things” against the covenant people (Judith 9:13). Then, with Holofernes’ neck exposed for the deadly blow, she prays for strength to accomplish her plan and speedily slashes through his neck with two blows (Judith 13:5, 7–8; 16:9).

4. Judith’s theology. Judith ranks along with Deborah (Judges 5), the wife of Manoa (Judges 13:23), Hannah (1 Samuel 2:1–10), Naomi (Ruth 1:20-21) and Abigail (1 Samuel 23–31) as theologians in the Old Testament, in the sense that they all comment on God’s character and actions. However, in terms of verbosity, she exceeds them all. She credits God for the victory over the Assyrians and the killing of Holofernes (Judith 16:5–6). Her theology includes possession and shows her leadership. In her closing prayer, she sings of my territory, my young men, my infants, my children, and my maidens (Judith 16:4) (italics added).

Her song, containing many distinctively feminine insights, details her preparation for war—how she anointed her face with perfume and fixed her hair. Judith’s song speaks of her sandals, her renowned beauty, that fetching tiara and the deliberate action of putting on a linen gown, knowing it would beguile her intended prey, Holofernes (Judith 16:7–8). These were her weapons, as important and deadly as Sisera’s 900 chariots in Deborah’s war (Judges 4:3). Judith triumphantly proclaims “the Persians shuddered at her audacity and the Medes were daunted by her daring” (Judith 16:10).

Her song lauds the kind of upset the Biblical text loves: that of the underdog winning against the mighty, proud foe; of the enemy cowering in fear and screaming and running; of mere boys slaying seasoned Assyrian warriors (Judith 16:11–12).

BAS Library Member Exclusive Content: For more on Judith, read Carey A Moore’s “Judith: The Case of the Pious Killer” as it appeared in Bible Review, February 1990.

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Judith receives—and accepts—accolades usually reserved for God. Joakim, the high priest, and the Israelite Council (yet again, men who come to Judith rather than her going to them) arrive from Jerusalem. With one voice they call Judith the glory of Jerusalem, the great pride of Israel, and the boast of the nation (Judith 15:9). The people concur with Amen (Judith 15:10).

5. Judith as prophetess. Although the text does not call her by the appositive prophetess, her words and actions raise the possibility that she indeed is a prophetess. The first indication is when she asserts to Uzziah and the Bethulian magistrates that “I am about to do something that will go down through all generations of our descendants.” (Judith 8:32). She does. Consider these other instances: At the start of her adventure, she (and her maid) are blessed by Uzziah. Uzziah asks God’s favor on the mission and charges Judith to fulfill her plans “so that the Israelites may glory and Jerusalem may be exulted!” (Judith 10:8). Judith responds that she “will go out and accomplish the things you have just said to me” (Judith 10:9). She does.

While a “guest” of the Assyrians, she accepts the invitation to attend a banquet in Holofernes’ tent with this double-meaning response and a pun on the word lord: “Who am I to refuse my lord? Whatever pleases him I will do at once” (Judith 12:14). She does—but for her lord. She proclaims that the banquet “will be a joy to me until the day of my death” (Judith 12:14). It is. While Holofernes ogles her and thinks of how he intends the night to progress, Judith encourages his fantasies by agreeing that “today is the greatest day of my whole life” (Judith 12:18). It is. Clearly, Judith’s adventure progresses according to the plan she devised and prayed about.

Back in Bethulia, she tells her townspeople that once the Assyrians find Holofernes’ headless corpse, “panic will come over them, and they will flee before you” at the advance of the Bethulians who will cut the enemy down “in their tracks” (Judith 14:3-4). As usual, Judith is right.

6. Judith and her countrywomen. Judith relates well to other women. They express no hint of jealousy toward her beauty, wealth, piety, and accomplishments; indeed, they arguably identify with her. She inspires them. They sing her praises and dance in her honor (Judith 15:12). Judith and the women crown themselves with garlands (Judith 15:13). Judith then leads the women first, with the men following, in a celebratory victory dance, just as Miriam the prophetess led the women after the victory at the Sea of Reeds (Exodus 15:20-21). In both stories, a mighty foe bent on the destruction of God’s covenant people, falls. A heroine knows no greater honor.

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on August 1, 2012.

Click here to read part one of Judith: A Remarkable Heroine.

Robin Gallaher Branch is professor of Biblical studies at Victory University (formerly Crichton College) in Memphis, Tennessee, and Extraordinary Associate Professor in the Faculty of Theology at North-West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa. She received her Ph.D. in Hebrew Studies from the University of Texas in Austin in 2000. She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for the 2002–2003 academic year to the Faculty of Theology at North-West University. Her most recent book is Jereboam’s Wife: The Enduring Contributions of the Old Testament’s Least-Known Women (Hendrickson, 2009).

Related reading in Bible History Daily:

Tabitha in the Bible by Robin Gallaher Branch

Anna in the Bible by Robin Gallaher Branch

Lydia and Tabitha in the Bible: Women Leaders in the Early Christian Church

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Israel’s Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective: Text, Archaeology, Culture and Geoscience

Edited by Thomas E. Levy, Thomas Schneider and William H.C. Propp
(Cham: Springer, 2015), 584 pp., $129 (hardback)
Reviewed by Judith M. Hadley

As its subtitle suggests, this book examines many issues concerning the Exodus from a variety of multidisciplinary perspectives. It consists of 43 essays, each by a different author or group of authors. Many of the names of the 60 contributors will be familiar to BAR readers—Manfred Bietak, William Dever, Israel Finkelstein, Lawrence Geraty, Baruch Halpern, James Hoffmeier, Thomas Levy, Nadav Na’aman and William Propp, to name a few.

The articles are based on papers presented at an interdisciplinary conference at the University of California, San Diego, in 2013 by an international group of scholars and experts in diverse fields, who were addressing their peers. When referencing ancient texts, these experts frequently use the original languages in the relevant scripts (e.g., in the Hebrew alphabet); sometimes they include a transliteration, but often they do not even provide an English translation of the text. As the book contains a lot of technical language and analysis, probably only a third of the articles would be of interest to most BAR readers.

The scholars include archaeologists, Egyptologists, Biblical scholars, computer scientists, geoscientists and other experts. Topics include the historicity of the Exodus, Egyptian and Near Eastern parallels to the Exodus story, archaeological fieldwork on emergent Israel, the formation of Biblical literature, the cultural memory of the Exodus in ancient Israel and ancient topography—among others. Due to the wide scope of offerings, the articles are arranged in nine parts.

Each article begins with a brief abstract, and most of the articles are extensively referenced, with lengthy bibliographies. The perspectives are as varied as the scholars themselves, with some on the conservative side, others more critical and some very scientifically detailed. For example, an article on the technical side—“Inspired by a Tsunami?”—has a section on tsunami modeling with wave propagation/flow simulation that sets out a series of mathematical equations used to create computerized tsunami models in an attempt to explain possible tsunamis and their effects in ancient times.

For anyone interested in an in-depth analysis of the Exodus from varied scientific positions and religious approaches, this could be a valuable book. For the non-specialist, its value would be more limited, but this is where the abstracts (summaries) could be useful. While not generally giving away the conclusions of the articles, the abstracts are easily accessible to a wider audience, as they lack the detailed analysis and more technical language used in the articles themselves. Additionally, about half of the articles have a clearly marked conclusion, which usually is helpful in explaining the gist of the article.

All in all, this is a thorough, stimulating and up-to-date volume.

Judith M. Hadley is Associate Professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. She is an archaeologist, Biblical scholar and author of The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah: Evidence for a Hebrew Goddess (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000).

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“The closest parallel to the Book of Exodus in the ancient West is Homer’s Odyssey. Both are stories of migration—of identity suspended until the protagonist—Odysseus or Israel—reaches a home. Neither account records events of the sort that are likely to have left marks in the archaeological record, or even in contemporaneous monuments… But the Exodus is not the story of an individual; it is the story of a nation. It is the historical myth of an entire people, a focal point for national identity.”
–Baruch Halpern, “The Exodus from Egypt: Myth or Reality?” The Rise of Ancient Israel, 1991.

The Exodus sits at the heart of Israelite religion, literature and identity, and aspects of the narrative helped shape traditions in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Yet challenging textual and archaeological evidence has led some scholars to question whether the Biblical narrative reflects a single historical event or if it should be read, as Ronald Hendel wrote in Bible Review, as “conflation of history and memory—a mixture of historical truth and fiction, composed of ‘authentic’ historical details, folklore motifs, ethnic self-fashioning, ideological claims and narrative imagination.”

An international conference hosted by Calit2’s Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego addressed some of the most challenging issues in Exodus scholarship. According to the Out of Egypt: Israel’s Exodus Between Text and Memory, History and Imagination website, the conference “brought together more than 40 of the world’s leading archaeologists, Biblical scholars, Egyptologists, historians and geo-scientists. In tandem, the Qualcomm Institute staged an exhibition, EX3: Exodus, Cyber-Archaeology and the Future … as an experiment in trans-disciplinary research, team science, and scholarly communication using technologies developed for the museum of the future.”

Watch the conference’s full-length lectures online for free on Bible History Daily, courtesy of conference host Thomas E. Levy, distinguished professor and Norma Kershaw Chair in the Archaeology of Ancient Israel and Neighboring Lands at UCSD. For more on research at UCSD, visit the Levantine and Cyber-Archaeology Lab.

Lectures

Watch the opening remarks at the bottom of this page, and click on lecture titles in the list below to watch.

Egyptology & Exodus

*Keynote Lecture* On the Historicity of the Exodus: What Egyptology Can Contribute Today in Assessing the Sojourn in Egypt. Manfred Bietak, director emeritus, Institute of Egyptology, University of Vienna. Keynote introduction: Thomas Schneider.

Out of Egypt: Did Israel’s Exodus Include Tales? Susan Hollis, State University of New York.

The Ark of the Covenant and Egyptian Sacred Barks: A Comparative Study. Scott Noegel, University of Washington (video unavailable).

Traditions Regarding a Great Going Forth from North-East Africa: Date and Reliability. Antoine Hirsch, Canadian Institute in Egypt on behalf of Donald Redford, Pennsylvania State University.

The ‘Image’ of the Pharaoh in Judahite and Israelite Society According to the Glyptic Evidence, Stefan Münger, University of Bern.

FREE ebook: Ancient Israel in Egypt and the Exodus.

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Archaeology & History

*Keynote Lecture* The Wilderness Itineraries: Who, How and When Did Biblical Authors Know About the Southern Deserts? Israel Finkelstein, Tel Aviv University.

Dates for the Exodus I Have Known, Lawrence T. Geraty, La Sierra University.

Egyptian Text Parallels to the Exodus: The Egyptology Literature, Brad C. Sparks, Archaeological Research Group.

Can Archaeological Correlates for the Mnemo-Narratives of Exodus Be Found? Aren Maeir, Bar-Ilan University.

The Emergence of Israel in Retrospect, Robert Mullins, Azusa Pacific University.

The Emergence of Iron Age Israel: The Question of “Origins,” Avraham Faust, Bar-Ilan University and Harvard University.

Geography & Exodus

Har Karkom: Archaeological Discoveries on a Holy Mountain in the Desert of Exodus, Emmanuel Anati, University of Lecce.

Which Way Out of Egypt? Physical Geography Constraints on the Exodus Itinerary, Stephen Moshier, Wheaton College.

Egyptology, Egyptologists and the Exodus, James Hoffmeier, Trinity International University.

Text & Memory

*Keynote Lecture* Exodus and Memory: Remembering the Origin of Israel and Monotheism, Jan Assmann, University of Konstanz.

The Exodus and the Bible: What Was Known, What Was Remembered, What Was Forgotten, William Dever, University of Arizona and Lycoming College.

The Exodus Based on the Sources Themselves, Richard Friedman, University of Georgia.

The Omerta on the Exodus, Baruch Halpern, University of Georgia.

The Exodus Account in Recent Pentateuchal Interpretation, Konrad Schmid, University of Zurich.

Sources of Judicial Power in the Moses Story, Stephen Russell, Princeton Theological Seminary.

History & Memory

Hero and Villain: Outline of the Exodus Pharaoh in Artapanus, Caterina Moro, University of Rome Sapienza.

Leaving Home: Jewish-Hellenistic Authors on the Exodus, Rene Bloch, University of Bern.

Exodus in the Quran, Babak Rahimi, University of California, San Diego.

From Liberation to Expulsion: The Exodus in the Earliest Jewish-Pagan Polemic, Pieter van der Horst, University of Utrecht (delivered in his absence by Kathleen Bennallack).

The Despoliation of Egypt: From Stealing Treasures to Saving Texts, Joel Allen, Dakota Wesleyan University.

In Search of Israel’s Insider Status: A Re-Evaluation of Israel’s Origins, Brendon Benz, William Jewell College.

What Was the Exodus? William Propp, University of California, San Diego.

FREE ebook: Ancient Israel in Egypt and the Exodus.

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Myth & History

*Keynote Lecture* The Exodus as Cultural Memory: Poetics, Politics, and the Past, Ronald Hendel, UC Berkeley.

Outside of Egypt: Joseph, Moses, and the Idea of Pastoralism Across Distance, Daniel Fleming, New York University (video unavailable).

Moses the Magician, Gary Rendsburg, Rutgers University.

The Revelation of the Divine Name to Moses, Thomas Römer, University of Lausanne.

The Exodus Narrative Between History and Literary Fiction, Christoph Berner, Universität Göttingen.

Mythic Dimensions of the Exodus Tradition, Bernard Batto, DePauw University.

Exodus and Exodus Traditions After the Linguistic Turn in History, Garrett Galvin, Fransciscan School of Theology and Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, and University of San Diego.

Science & History

“The First Memory of Things”: Isaac Newton on Exodus and the Chronology of the Egyptian Empire, Mordechai Feingold, California Institute of Technology.

How Calculations Invaded the Deep Past, Jed Buchwald, California Institute of Technology.

Times of Darkness: Extreme Events, Long-Term Environmental Change, Mythology and History, John Grattan, Aberystwyth University.

Radiocarbon-Based Chronology for Egypt Over the Periods Relevant to the Exodus Tradition, Michael Dee, University of Oxford (co-authors C. Bronk Ramsey, T. Higham).

The Thera Theories: Science and the Modern Reception History of the Exodus, Mark Harris, University of Edinburgh.

Exodus: A Geophysical Perspective, Steven Ward, University of California, Santa Cruz.

Inspired by a Tsunami? Computer Simulations of Potential (Tsunamigenic) Scenarios Related to the Exodus Narrative, Amos Salamon, Geological Survey of Israel (with co-authors S. Ward, F. McCoy, T. Levy).

Exhibition

EX3: Exodus, Cyber-Archaeology and the Future. Thomas E. Levy, UCSD.

Opening Remarks Video

Exodus Welcome and Introductions, Thomas Levy, Conference Chair; Jeff Elman, Dean, Division of Social Sciences, UCSD; Ramesh Rao, Director, Qualcomm Institute; Pradeep K. Khosla, Chancellor, UC San Diego

Welcome, Seth Lerer, Dean, Division of Arts + Humanities, UCSD

Closing Remarks

Out of Egypt Conference: Summation, Thomas Schneider, University of British Columbia.

Closing, Thomas Levy, University of California, San Diego.

Lecture videos courtesy of conference host Thomas E. Levy, distinguished professor and Norma Kershaw Chair in the Archaeology of Ancient Israel and Neighboring Lands at UCSD. All videos originally published on the Out of Egypt: Israel’s Exodus Between Text and Memory, History and Imagination website, which features additional Exodus research and more information on the UCSD conference. For more on research at UCSD, visit the Levantine and Cyber-Archaeology Lab.

^{A version of this post originally appeared on BHD on March 11, 2014.}

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Trinity International University scholar James Hoffmeier delivered the lecture “Egyptology, Egyptologists and the Exodus” at the recent Out of Egypt: Israel’s Exodus Between Text and Memory, History and Imagination conference hosted by Calit2’s Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego. Watch the full lecture video below or click here for more information on the conference, including dozens of additional video lectures.

Lecture video courtesy of conference host Thomas E. Levy, distinguished professor and Norma Kershaw Chair in the Archaeology of Ancient Israel and Neighboring Lands at UCSD. All videos originally published on the Out of Egypt: Israel’s Exodus Between Text and Memory, History and Imagination website, which features additional Exodus research and more information on the UCSD conference.
 

 
In the FREE eBook Ancient Israel in Egypt and the Exodus, top scholars discuss the historical Israelites in Egypt and archaeological evidence for and against the historicity of the Exodus.

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Leonard Greenspoon

I don’t mind sharing the fact that over the years I have been a patient of one or more psychologists. They asked me questions I answered them to the best of my ability. It was, we might say, in the moment.

Although others may question the value of such procedures, I do not. But what about other circumstances when, for example, the questioner is alive (and presumably well) but the “patient” is long dead or a literary figure? When I first heard that researchers were subjecting Biblical figures to some forms of psychological analysis, I was skeptical. Having looked further into the matter, I am now more doubtful than ever that this is a serious enterprise. I say this as a Biblical scholar, not as a student of psychology.

In my most recent “Bible in the News Column” (BAR, March-April 2013), I briefly mention a spate of news reports on one such incident. These articles, from a variety of publications in February 2001, carry titles such as “Oh No Delilah, Samson Was a Psycho,” “Samson ‘Suffered Antisocial Disorder’” and “Strongman Samson Was a Head Case, Shrink Says.” All of these accounts report that, in the opinion of Dr. Eric Alschuler and his colleagues from the University of California Medical School at San Diego, Biblical Samson exhibited six of the seven clinically recognized behaviors for a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder (also known as ASPD).

For a flesh-and-blood patient today, three out of seven would be enough to confirm this diagnosis, which would lead even casual readers of the newspaper to conclude that it must really have been all in Samson’s head (inside that is, rather than on top, where his hair either grew—or it didn’t). Specifically, he showed no remorse, was deceitful, impulsive, irritable and displayed reckless disregard for his own safety and the safety of others. Finally, his choice of weapon—the jawbone of an ass—fits the criterion of cruelty to animals. If I’m counting correctly, that’s indeed six out of seven. I’m sure that if I knew the seventh criterion for diagnosing ASPD, I could find some passage to indict Samson on that charge as well.

Samson does not have to shoulder all of the blame, we are assured. Since, as one medical researcher observes, a whole chapter in Judges is devoted to Samson’s mother being warned by angels not to drink while she is pregnant, we can surmise that recklessness and a disregard for others may have run in the family.

For more than a dozen years, Leonard J. Greenspoon’s “The Bible in the News” column has been one of the most popular sections of Bible Review and Biblical Archaeology Review. A new volume, 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.

Read more here >>

In my BAR article, I modestly suggest that this psychoanalysis-at-a-great-distance should be characterized, in large measure, as cruelty to serious readers of the Biblical text. To which I might add reckless disregard for millennia of careful textual exegesis on the part of literally hundreds of Biblical scholars applying approaches from the historical-critical to the synchronic. Perforce, these medical researches take the Biblical text just as it is and take no account of historical, literary or textual concerns. I only hope they are more fully prepared in their interpretation of medical data.

Although that “news” created quite a stir in the popular press, it was not, as I recall, based on a full-fledged article in a well-known medical journal. A much more recent article (September 1, 2012) has all of the credentials (medical ones, that is) that you could expect. It has a formal, somewhat forbidding title: “The Role of Psychotic Disorders in Religious History Considered.” It is published in what is certainly a major publication in its field, The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, and is written by three well-credentialed authors (three M.D.’s and one Ph.D.), all of whom are associated with Harvard Medical School (among other prestigious institutions).

The article runs more than sixteen pages, is lavishly illustrated (especially for a journal article) and is backed up by an even one hundred footnotes/references. They are nothing if not bold, analyzing as they do Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Paul (whom they refer to as St. Paul) “from a behavioral, neurologic and neuropsychiatric perspective.” To cut to the chase, they conclude that these individuals, whom they characterize as “some of civilization’s most significant religious figures,” “may have had psychotic symptoms that contributed inspiration for their revelations.”

The authors gracefully acknowledge that “the sources relied upon to derive information [namely the Biblical texts] about our subjects are not medical records.” Moreover, “retrospective diagnosis may also be asserted to be a transgression of medical principles, since a medical opinion is rendered on a patient who was never seen or examined.”

All well and good, I suppose. But how about the transgression of a basic rule of research? Those working in a field that is not their own take the time to learn from those in the field they are entering. Of references to Biblical interpretation, I count only three among the one hundred cited: James K. Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt: The Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition, Richard E. Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible? and Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (in its fifth edition).

Now, this is by no means a shabby trio of authorities, but when we actually look to see how each is used, the word “superficial” seems tailor-made just for this circumstance. Friedman and Ehrman appear in adjoining footnotes to the same sentence (not a citation style that I’m familiar with) in support of this general observation: “We [the article’s authors] recognize an important limitation inasmuch as we approach these source documents as most likely being composites of the perspectives and beliefs of authors, most of whom would not have personally known our subjects.” Not only do we not need to read Friedman and Ehrman to gain this insight, but it is not clear, at least to me, how, or if, this principle is actually applied by these medical practitioners.

The religion section of most bookstores includes an amazing array of Bibles. In our free eBook The Holy Bible: A Buyer’s Guide, prominent Biblical scholars Leonard Greenspoon and Harvey Minkoff expertly guide you through 21 different Bible translations (or versions) and address their content, text, style and religious orientation.

The authors draw this supposedly edifying conclusion from Hoffmeier: “The story of Moses in the Bible is thought to have its setting sometime between 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE.” These authors do not always read the text literally, since, for example, they consider the possibility that some accounts of blindness may be metaphorical, but even in these circumstances, they fail to avail themselves of historical or literary studies of antiquity that could buttress (or counter) their arguments. And they contend that prominent Biblical characters did not suffer from an ailment, physical or mental, unless it is explicitly mentioned in the text. So, Abraham’s “generally good state of health is indicated by a purported lifespan of 175 years without mentioned infirmity.”

Enough said! I am, as should be clear, unimpressed by this sort of intellectual imperialism on the part of medical doctors. At best, they are dabblers in Biblical studies. At worse, they can mislead the unwary. But instead of simply complaining, maybe I should take the offensive. Let’s see: How about my offering cures for various ailments of today based on variant readings in the Septuagint? Or suggesting novel ways of interpreting x-rays based on new approaches to the Targums? Or shall we go with an evaluative classification of medical professionals based on their ability to recite the Bible in accordance with the original (no second editions, please!) of the King James Version?

Leonard J. Greenspoon is 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.

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American minister and folk artist Edward Hicks depicts an Eden-like Peaceable Kingdom, based on the vision of Isaiah. Art Resource, NY

But does this beloved image of the Peaceable Kingdom contain a mistranslation? ^*
For years many scholars suspected that it did. Given the parallelism of the phrases, one would expect a verb instead of “the fatling.” With the discovery of the Isaiah Scroll among the Dead Sea Scrolls, those scholars were given persuasive new support. The Isaiah Scroll contains a slight change in the Hebrew letters at this point in the text, yielding “will feed”: “the calf and the young lion will feed together.”
This is just one of numerous variations from the traditional text of the Hebrew Bible contained in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In some cases the traditional text is clearly superior, but in others the version in the scrolls is better.

Thanks to the scrolls, more and more textual problems in the Hebrew Bible are being resolved. The notes in newer Bible translations list variant readings from the scrolls, and in some cases, the translations incorporate these readings in the text as the preferred reading. No one has ever seriously suggested that the Dead Sea Scrolls contain anything like an eleventh commandment; but the scrolls do help clarify numerous difficult phrases in the Hebrew Bible, and for textual scholars that is more than enough.

Before we list other examples of how the Dead Sea Scrolls influenced—or altered—Bible translations, we need to understand how ambiguities crept into the text of the Hebrew Bible in the first place. And we must also familiarize ourselves with the ancient versions of the Hebrew Bible on which modern translations rely (for good reason scholars call these ancient versions “witnesses” to the biblical text).

Hebrew is remarkably compact: Almost all words consist of consonantal roots that convey their basic meaning. L-M-D, for example, means “learning,” B-Q-R means “examining,” and K-T-B, “writing.” Particular patterns of vowels and consonants narrow the meaning; me-a-e added to a root means “one who,” while a-a means “he did.” Thus, meLaMeD is “one who teaches,” meBaQeR is “one who examines,” LaMaD is “he learned,” and KaTaB is “he wrote.”

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These vowels are crucial for the meaning. However, ancient Hebrew writing recorded no vowels, only consonants. (Vowel marks were not added to Hebrew writing until the sixth or seventh century C.E.) Consonants alone were usually enough to distinguish between possible meanings. LMDT means “you (singular) learned,” while LMDTM means “you (plural) learned.” Often, however, the absence of vowels in written Hebrew leads to ambiguity. The word NSTM, which appears in Zechariah 14:5, could be parsed as the root STM with the prefix N, in which case it would mean “(it) was filled up.” But it could just as plausibly be read as NS with the suffix TM, which means “you (plural) fled.” The Jerusalem Bible translation opts for the former reading and translates the passage in Zechariah as “And the Vale of Hinnom will be filled up…it will be blocked as it was by the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah.” The King James Version, however, reads “And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains…like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah.” Fleeing citizens in one text, a filled up valley in another. How much difference one word makes!

To eliminate, or at least reduce, such ambiguities, a convention arose among Hebrew scribes. They began to insert certain consonants, to be used as vowels, as aids to reading; these are called matres lectionis, literally, “mothers of reading.” LMD (lamad, “he learned”) became visually distinct from LMDH (lamda, “she learned”) and LMDW (lamdu, “they learned”). Such expanded spellings are called plene, or “full,” orthography (spelling); the more rudimentary spellings are called defectivus, or “defective,” orthography.

Plene orthography did not catch on all at once; some scribes were using full spellings as early the first century B.C.E., while even today in Israel their usage has not been standardized. One Dead Sea Scroll that testifies to the older scribal tradition contains Deuteronomy 24:14. The traditional Hebrew text contains the full spelling SKYR (sakir), meaning “workman”; most translations give “You should not oppress a workman.” But this manuscript, called 1QDeutb, contains the “defective” form SKR (sakar), which can also mean “wages”; following this scroll, the New English Bible renders the passage as “You shall not keep back the wages of a man.”
So far we have discussed “micro” issues—variations in spelling and the like. But there is a much larger factor that contributes to the differences we find in modern Bible translations: the variations in the textual traditions behind the text of the Hebrew Bible.

Straddling two animals, Jesus rides into Jerusalem (the opening act in the drama of his final week) as depicted by the Italian Renaissance painter Pietro Lorenzetti. Scala/Art Resource, NY

The Samaritan Bible is limited to the Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses. The most striking difference between the Samaritan Bible and the Jewish Bible is that the Samaritan Bible considers Mt. Gerizim, not Jerusalem, as God’s holy place on earth.

Samaritan origins can be traced to events following the conquest of the northern kingdom of Israel by Assyria in 722 B.C.E. Many of the inhabitants were exiled, and other conquered peoples were resettled in the lands of the northern kingdom, including Samaria. To the people of the ancient Near East, every land was thought to be protected by its local god, and the people who had been forcibly resettled in Samaria naturally added worship of the Jewish God to their religious practices. The southern kingdom of Judah, too, was to suffer dispersal, at the hands of the Babylonians in 587 B.C.E., and when those exiles returned, the people of Samaria asked to assist in rebuilding the Jerusalem Temple. But the leaders of the returning exiles, Ezra and Nehemiah, rebuffed them for having watered down their religious practices and for having intermarried with the neighboring, resettled peoples. That, at least, is the story as found in the Jewish Bible.

The Samaritans, not surprisingly, tell a different tale. They explain their name as deriving from the word shomerim, (guardians) because they were the guardians of the true religion of Israel. According to their Chronicles, they are the descendants of Joseph’s sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, and have continuously inhabited their ancestral land. Though the Samaritans had offered to help their coreligionists who were returning from the Exile, they were rejected, mistreated and finally attacked by the Hasmonean king John Hyrcanus in 128 B.C.E. Their temple, located on Mt. Gerizim, rather than in Jerusalem, was destroyed.

The world of Biblical scholarship is never static. Research into the ancient cultures from which the Biblical texts arose is continually shedding light on how to interpret and understand these ancient writings, events and peoples. In the BAS Lecture Series DVD Texts and Contexts, Biblical scholars James Hoffmeier, Steve Mason, James Charlesworth, Ben Witherington III and Bart D. Ehrman give new meaning to familiar texts and historical questions as they explore the latest in literary interpretation.

Though the two versions outlined here assign the roles of hero and villain differently, both agree that by the second century B.C.E. the Samaritans had separated from normative—or, to use the more modern, scholarly term, common—Judaism.

The development of the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible took a different path. It began in the wake of the Babylonian attack on Judah in the sixth century B.C.E., when some Jews fled to Egypt. Then, two and a half centuries later, Egypt, too, was conquered, by Alexander the Great. Alexander established cities organized on the Greek model in an attempt to unify his empire through a shared culture. The great metropolis of Alexandria attracted many Jews who adopted Greek as their language but who retained the religion of their forebears. By the third century B.C.E., their grasp of Hebrew was so tenuous that they needed a Greek translation of their sacred scriptures.

According to legend, in 270 B.C.E. Ptolemy II Philadelphus invited 72 scholars from Jerusalem to translate the Bible into Greek—hence the name Septuagint, from Interpretatio Septuaginta Seniorum (The Translation of the Seventy Elders).^a When Christianity spread to the Hellenized world, the Septuagint became incorporated into Christian Bibles as the Old Testament.

A glum Zechariah exhibits unexplained dismay in a portrait by Jan Provost Scala/Art Resource, NY

One common error, called a homoeoteleuton, occurs when a scribe omits a phrase when his eye jumps from one word in the text he is copying to another appearance of the same word (or a similar one) a little farther in the text. That’s what seems to have happened in the Masoretic version of 1 Samuel 14:41: “Saul then said to the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Show Thummim.’” Apparently the Masoretic scribe’s eye skipped from one occurrence of the word “Israel” to the next and he missed all the words in between, as shown by the fuller text preserved in the Septuagint: “Saul said to the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Why have you not answered your servant today? Lord God of Israel, if this guilt lies in me or in my son Jonathan, let the lot be Urim; if it lies in your people Israel, let it be Thummim.’”

Some changes were made deliberately. Jewish tradition speaks of tikkun sopherim, scribal emendation, of disrespectful or misleading phrases. In 1 Kings 21:10, 13, for example, the euphemism “bless God” has replaced the unacceptable “curse God.”

Sometimes variations in the Septuagint indicate a misunderstanding of Hebrew poetic technique. The Masoretic version of Zechariah 9:9 reads “Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion; shout, daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, your king is coming to you; he is just and triumphant, humble and riding on an ass, upon the foal of an ass.” In this passage, each key word is reinforced by a synonym or a parallel: rejoice//shout, Zion//Jerusalem, just and triumphant//humble and riding. But the translators of the Septuagint apparently missed the parallelism between ass//foal of an ass and instead pictured two animals—an ass and a foal. This misunderstanding becomes significant because the verse is used as a prooftext in Matthew 21:2–7, which describes Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. Jesus sends two disciples to fetch an ass and a foal “to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet”; Matthew then quotes the passage in Zechariah and adds that the disciples did indeed bring Jesus an ass and a foal. The textual misunderstanding carried over into Christian art; some scenes of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem show him straddling two animals!

Filling a gap in the bible. The Dead Sea Scroll fragment shown here helps explain an otherwise perplexing account in the Hebrew Bible. The traditional text of 1 Samuel 11 begins with the abrupt announcement that Nahash the Ammonite besieged the city of Jabesh-gilead. Nahash has not previously appeared in the story, and he is not identified, as we would expect, as king of the Ammonites. Worse yet, there is no hint of why he would attack Jabesh-gilead. The Dead Sea Scroll version, however, preserves two sentences missing from the traditional Hebrew text. Israel Antiquities Authority

What do the Dead Sea Scrolls tell us about the three major textual traditions? In the majority of cases (about 60 percent of the biblical scroll manuscripts), the scrolls follow the Masoretic text. About 5 percent of the biblical scrolls follow the Septuagint version; another 5 percent match the Samaritan text; 20 percent belong to a tradition unique to the Dead Sea Scrolls; and 10 percent are “nonaligned.” The key point is that the readings in the scrolls show that many variations in the biblical text are of long standing, and are not simply errors in later transmission.

Just because a text is old, however, does not mean it is better. Ancient editors may have tried to correct difficult texts. Psalm 145 is an alphabetical acrostic: The first line begins with aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and so on through the alphabet—except that in the Masoretic text there is no line for nun(N). But the Septuagint versin does have a line beginning with nun-and a Dead Sea Scroll of the Psalms has the line as well. That would seem to clinch the case for the line’s originality. But scholars point out that the line uses one name for God-Elohim-while the rest of the psalm employs the personal name Yahweh. So the line may be a later addition after all, despite being found in both the Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Dead Sea Scrolls have filled one large gap in the Bible. First Samuel 11:1 begins jarringly with the notice that “Nahash the Ammomite came and besieged Jabesh-gilead.” The announcement is abrupt—Nahash has not been previously mentioned, and we would expect him to be identified as Nahash, king of the Ammonites. Even worse, the text gives no reason for the attack. But a Dead Sea Scroll text of Samuel contains two preceding sentences, which contain the expected “Nahash, king of the Ammonites” and a description of how seven thousand of his enemies had found refuge in Jabesh-gilead, making his attack understandable. Most Bible scholars accept these verses as authentic. The New Revised Standard Version includes them in its text of 1 Samuel, and other translations cite them in a note.

The Dead Sea Scroll version of 1 Samuel contains many other readings that have been adopted by modern translations. By one count, the New Revised Standard Version of 1 Samuel incorporates 110 alternatives to the Masoretic text; the New English Bible uses 160; and the New American Bible, 230.

The evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls must be used carefully, however. Large portions of Samuel, Isaiah and Jeremiah are represented in the scrolls, but other biblical books appear only in small fragments. They may not be biblical texts at all, but rather paraphrases from commentaries or prayers.

Even large chunks of text present problems. The Psalms Scroll contains a selection of psalms, mostly from the last third of the Psalter. James A. Sanders, who edited the Psalms Scroll for publication, maintains that differences in content and order between the Psalms Scroll and the traditional text prove that alternative psalters existed as late as the first century C.E. But other scholars counter that the differences prove that the Psalms Scroll was a prayer book, not a biblical text.

The Dead Sea Scrolls have already made their mark on modern Bible translations. Even when they do not settle textual questions once and for all, the scrolls prove that the Septuagint and the Samaritan Bible have ancient pedigrees and may preserve accurate readings. Bible translators now have an important new body of evidence to help them decide how best to settle problems in the text—evidence not available to earlier generations of scholars. William Foxwell Albright’s exclamation when the scrolls were discovered—he called the Isaiah Scroll “the greatest manuscript discovery of modern times!”—has been proved true many times over.

Notes:

A professor of linguistics at Hunter College in New York City, Harvey Minkoff is the author and editor of nine books, including Visions and Revisions (Prentice-Hall, 1990) and Approaches to the Bible: The Best of Bible Review, vols. 1 and 2 (Biblical Archaeology Society, 1995).

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The soft gray stone Egyptian scarab was used as a stamp seal to close and sign documents. It is less than one inch long, and features an imprinted image of a duck along with the name of the sun god Amon-Ra in hieroglyphics. The April find date nearly missed Passover, the holiday commemorating the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt. While it remains a highly debated subject, some scholars have posited a 13th century B.C.E. date for the Exodus;* the recently excavated scarab serves as a reminder of the relations and conflicts between the Hebrews and Egyptians during the era.

Israeli archaeologists working at the City of David excavations in Jerusalem recently uncovered a rare 13th century B.C.E. Egyptian scarab.

* For more information on the archaeology of the Exodus, see Hoffmeier, James K. “Out of Egypt.” Biblical Archaeology Review, Jan/Feb 2007.

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