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Archaeology is quickly moving into a new era. While archaeologists aren’t ready to forgo their trowels just yet, the introduction of a new 21st-century toolkit has already transformed the field. Every excavation uses archaeological technology differently. Some select dig sites based on satellite imagery, while others save technology for post-excavation visualizations. As burgeoning digitization technologies enter the day-to-day of archaeological fieldwork, the Biblical Archaeology Society Archaeological Technology Scholar’s Study will be your one-stop guide into the future of the past.  

Resources on technology in archaeology

Read more about each of these articles below.

• Cyber-Archaeology in the Holy Land — The Future of the Past (full free eBook).

• Practical Uses for Photogrammetry on Archaeological Excavations

• GIS in Archaeology

• Archaeological Views: New Eyeballs on Ancient Texts

• Try the Latest Technology for Yourself

• Video: 3-D Digging at Çatalhöyük
 

Cyber-Archaeology has led to the development of new recording techniques, analytical methods, visualization tools and data-sharing structures. The FREE Biblical Archaeology Society eBook Cyber-Archaeology in the Holy Land — The Future of the Past is the authoritative guide for archaeologists wanting to learn more about a diverse and integrated toolkit—including GPS, Light Detection and Ranging Laser Scanning, unmanned aerial drones, 3D artifact scans, CAVE visualization environments and collaborative online databases. Written by pioneering researchers from the University of California, San Diego’s Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology, the FREE eBook Cyber-Archaeology in the Holy Land — The Future of the Past is a must-read guide.

While new digital technologies are produced every day, archaeological photography is still the cornerstone of site visualization and analysis. How do archaeologists make accurate measurements, create site plans, compare stratigraphy and digitize image data out of straightforward digital photographs? In the article “Practical Uses for Photogrammetry on Archaeological Excavations,” Adam Prins and Matthew J. Adams of the Jezreel Valley Regional Project provide an intelligible and illustrated step-by-step guide to a process known as photogrammetry. Learn how excavators combine total station survey data, traditional archaeological photography and geospatial rectification to create comprehensible images of sites and stratigraphy.
 

Not a BAS Library member yet? Sign up today.  

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are quickly changing the way archaeologists record where excavated artifacts are found on their digs. These spatial databases combine information collected from maps, GPS (Global Positioning Systems), site plans, photos and notes into a single geographic search engine that can easily retrieve anything that has been recorded about a particular artifact or feature from a site. Learn about this common archaeological mapping technology in Glenn J. Corbett’s Bible History Daily exclusive “GIS in Archaeology.”

The study of ancient texts—especially those that tell us most about the cultures from which the Bible emerged—is on the edge of a revolution. Dramatic new imaging technologies are just now becoming available that allow us to see and reclaim the readings of ancient documents in a manner never before possible. In an archaeological views column, University of Southern California Hebrew Bible Professor Bruce Zuckerman describes how Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) allows for unprecedented control of how an image is displayed, especially in terms of the play of light so crucial to bringing out hidden details that are often the key to proper interpretation. In a Bible History Daily web-exclusive feature, readers can see the power of RTI imaging for themselves. Enjoy videos that show RT images in action. Learn more about how and why RTI works. Plus, download a free RTI viewer and some sample RTI images so you can—quite literally—get the picture.

Stay tuned for forthcoming publications in the BAS technology section. We’ll be updating the page with presentations on new technologies, slideshows and much more!

Archaeological technology in the news

3-D Printing the Ancient World

Digitizing Israel’s Scientific Archive

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In “Samson in the Synagogue” in the January/February 2013 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Jodi Magness presents the recent mosaic discoveries from Huqoq, including a mysterious depiction of two female faces flanking a Hebrew (or Aramaic) inscription. In this online exclusive, read a translation and analysis of the inscription by David Amit of the Israel Antiquities Authority along with a discussion of who these women may have been by University of Louisville’s Karen Britt.

Read a Bible History Daily introduction to “Samson in the Synagogue”

Read David Amit’s “Mosaic Inscription from a Synagogue at Horvat Huqoq.”

Read Karen Britt’s “The Huqoq Synagogue Mosaics.”

Read Jodi Magness’s “Samson in the Synagogue” in the BAS Library.

Alan Millard

In a recent Biblical Views column “Critical Biblical Scholarship—What’s the Use?”, Ronald Hendel claims, “There’s no good reason to be hostile toward good scholarship.”*

No one would disagree, but that begs the question, “What is good scholarship?” It is honest and balanced; it examines sources and evidence carefully and it weighs them disinterestedly. Critical scholars are, by definition, judging their subjects, and they rely upon certain standards to judge by.

What are those standards? Usually they are current ways of thinking, sometimes unconsciously adopted, and processes common in other scholarly disciplines (e.g., Classical studies, anthropology). They depend upon the consistency, logical arrangement and precision that scholars have come to expect from serious modern Western compositions.

The results of some two centuries of Biblical criticism have usually been negative. That is to say, they generally imply that the Biblical books are not what they claim to be—for the most part, their contents do not reflect events or attitudes of the periods they purport to describe. “A Biblical narrative reflects the historical context of its writing rather than the more distant past of its referent,” pronounces Thomas L. Thompson.1 So little, if any, of the Pentateuch comes from the hand of Moses; David and Solomon, assuming they existed, were minor rulers of a small area around Jerusalem; any oracles prophets may have uttered were adapted, expanded and edited centuries after they were spoken. Consequently, the Hebrew Bible is viewed as propaganda for a Judaism that arose in the Persian period or later; it has lost its claim to be an authoritative divine revelation.

Two simple examples illustrate the process of critical scholarship. In 1975, John van Seters published Abraham in History and Tradition,2 a book that has heavily influenced all studies of the Patriarchs since. He argued that there is no basis for the opinions of W. F. Albright and others who wrote that the biography of Abraham in Genesis describes life in the Middle Bronze Age (the early second millennium B.C.). Among the many reasons he gave was the rarity of references to tents in documents from that period, while the next millennium offered more (page 14). He does not explain why he prefers a later date for the Genesis narratives simply based on the rarity of references; the earlier alternative is simply ignored. Today we have more sources from the earlier period.3

The second example concerns Sennacherib’s attack on King Hezekiah’s Judah. Some Hebrew Bible scholars have used various textual sources (e.g., Psalm 48) to trace a belief in “the inviolability of Zion” to the late in the seventh century B.C. in Judah. This theological theorizing led to a conception of Assyria’s failure to capture Jerusalem long after the events of 701 B.C., created to hide the fact that Hezekiah had actually surrendered to Sennacherib at Lachish to be allowed to keep his throne. This theory was promulgated despite the fact that the Assyrian emperor does not claim to have taken Jerusalem or to have met Hezekiah. His factual account tells of tribute sent to him at Nineveh at a later date, not one paid in Judah. This modern theory is founded on rewriting and contradicting the ancient reports.4

Few “critical” Biblical scholars are prepared to say that their studies lead them to accept that a Biblical book is what it says it is, or properly reflects what it claims to relate. The apparent contradictions in many of these studies are a major reason for questioning the results of Biblical criticism.

Critical scholarship often adopts a skeptical stance: Nothing in the Biblical text can be accepted without support from an independent source. A prime case in recent years concerns King David. Thomas Thompson stated, “The Bible’s stories about Saul, David and Solomon aren’t about history at all.”5 When a broken Aramaic inscription was unearthed at Tel Dan in 1993 mentioning the “house of David,” he and others used every means they could to avoid the conclusion that such an expression would refer to a dynasty founded by the man named David, though this would be a logical conclusion if taken from comparable ancient texts. As the phrase stands in the stele fragments in parallel with “king of Israel” and parts of Hebrew personal names, identifying the “David” with any other figure, real or imaginary, is surely far-fetched. This argument remains only because of the presupposition that David was not a historical figure.

Again, as noted, scholars commonly assert that writers in the late seventh and later centuries B.C. (the supposed lifetime(s) of author(s) of the Books of Samuel) could not know about earlier centuries.

Ronald Hendel

By then, “Iron I realities have already disappeared, even from the collective memory,” according to Israeli archaeologist Israel Finkelstein. Therefore the description of Goliath’s armor in 1 Samuel 17 has to be assessed in light of the military equipment of the seventh century. Finkelstein asserts that “as an assemblage, the description perfectly fits the armament of Greek hoplites …,” although he admits that the hoplites did not wear scale armor as Goliath did. To overcome the discrepancy, he supposes that Assyrian elements were mixed into the description, or that some hoplites adopted Near Eastern scale armor. Furthermore, as the descriptions and depictions of Greek hoplites never include shieldbearers, he suggests that they, too, may be an Assyrian element, for they appear on some Assyrian reliefs. While Finkelstein properly explores ancient contexts, he does not consider that the Hebrew historian may have received information about “Iron I realities” from older sources. If this is taken into consideration, as good of a case can be made for setting Goliath’s armor in an 11th-century context as a seventh-century one.6

Skeptical authors skew Biblical scholarship by failing to allow for alternative opinions, and thereby mislead their readers.

Any ancient document deserves to be treated with respect. Each one is a survivor from the past, so to belittle or deny its testimony risks minimizing or losing its contribution to our knowledge of history. Critical study, it can hardly be contested, should put as much effort into examining the reality of a document’s claims as it does into refuting them. Biblical texts need to be read against the contexts they presuppose. Therefore, a “respectful” attitude should primarily attempt to discover whether the Biblical content reliably mirrors its time, relying upon whatever could be drawn from the ancient sources.

If that produces clear corroboration of the Hebrew text, then it should be accepted. There have been many cases where that has happened. In the 19th century, experts were bewildered by Biblical and Greek references to an Assyrian king Pul, whose name does not appear in the cuneiform inscriptions. He was later identified as King Tiglath-Pileser (III).7

Even if a “respectful” attitude does no more than show that a statement is compatible with its context, it establishes that the statement may accurately reflect the situation. As such, it should only be counted as imaginary or fictional if an indubitable case were brought against it. For example, in light of the usage of gold in antiquity, commentators should not dismiss King Solomon’s lavish decoration of the Temple as easily as many have done in the past.** If a book dates to a time long after the events it relates, it does not necessarily deny the reality of its narrative.

Biblical scholars, whether critical, skeptical or respectful, should recognize that alternatives may exist and need to take care not to express their conclusions as certainties when there is room for doubt. The Bible is a legacy from antiquity. Biblical scholars should be aware that whatever conclusions they may reach, the text will outlast them!

To read additional author’s responses to readers’ queries click here.

Alan Millard is Emeritus Rankin Professor of Hebrew and Ancient Semitic Languages at the University of Liverpool and author of Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire, Reading and Writing in the Time of Jesus and Treasures from Bible Times, among others.

Notes

* See Ronald S. Hendel, “Critical Biblical Scholarship—What’s the Use?” BAR, July/August 2012, 22, 62.

** See Alan Millard, “Does the Bible Exaggerate King Solomon’s Golden Wealth?” BAR, May/June 1989, pp. 20-29, 31, 34.

1. Thomas L. Thompson, The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel (New York: Basic Books, 1999), pp. 66, 67.

2. John van Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1975), p. 14.

3. See M. M. Homan, To Your Tents, O Israel! The Terminology, Function, Form, and Symbolism of Tents in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East (Leiden: Brill, 2002), p. 43.

4. See Alan Millard, “Sennacherib’s Attack on Jerusalem.” Tyndale Bulletin 36 (1985), pp. 61–77.

5. Thomas L. Thompson, The Mythic Past, p. 206.

6. See Alan Millard, “The Armor of Goliath,” in D. Schloen, ed., Exploring the Longue Durée: Essays in Honor of Lawrence E. Stager (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2008), pp. 337-343; Philip J. King, “David Defeats Goliath,” in Sidnie White Crawford et al., eds., “Up to the Gates of Ekron.” Essays on the Archaeology and History of the Eastern Mediterranean in Honor of Seymour Gitin (Jerusalem: W. F. Albright Institute and Israel Exploration Society, 2007), pp. 350–357; Jeffrey R. Zorn, “Reconsidering Goliath: An Iron Age I Chariot Warrior,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 210 (2010), pp. 1-22.

7. Steven W. Holloway, “The Quest for Sargon, Pul and Tiglath-Pileser in the Nineteenth Century,” in Mark W. Chavalas and K. Lawson Younger, eds., Mesopotamia and the Bible (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), pp. 68-87, see 73-79.

Biblical Scholarship—Critical, Skeptical or Respectful?

Emeritus professor of Hebrew and Ancient Semitic Languages Alan Millard critiques Ronald S. Hendel’s Biblical
Views column “Critical Biblical Scholarship—What’s the Use?” (July/August 2012).

A menorah from the Library of Celsus at Ephesus.

Samuel Fishman
Bethesda, Maryland

Mark R. Fairchild responds:

The menorah is the most distinctive image that identifies a Jewish presence in ancient Anatolia (today’s Turkey). These are most commonly etched upon the lintels of synagogues or on sarcophagi or displayed on mosaic floors. In addition to the one on the steps of the Celsus Library in Ephesus, others are found, for example, at Nicaea, where the menorah is in secondary use, framing a fountain under a church. This was likely a part of a synagogue at Nicaea. At the well-known synagogue in Sardis, a menorah can be seen in situ in the courtyard.* This is hard to see, except after a rain when the inscription is accentuated. Workers at Priene discovered three menorahs at the synagogue (two still in situ).** Another menorah was found with the discovery of the synagogue at Andriake, although this has been removed and is now in the museum at Antalya. Other menorahs can be seen at the bouleuterion at Aphrodisias*** and in the necropolis of Hierapolis.

All of these are in western Anatolia. Much less has been discovered in central and eastern Anatolia. Yet literary and epigraphic evidence indicates a strong Jewish presence throughout ancient Anatolia. Aside from the menorahs and two synagogues found at Çatiören and Korykos, there is little to be seen in the east. In my recent trip to Cilicia I photographed six menorahs on sarcophagi at Korykos and another two that are possible menorahs (they are too weather-beaten be sure). I also saw what appears to be a second menorah at Çatiören. Graffiti in an underground granery at Kabacam shows ships and perhaps another menorah. Central and eastern Turkey have not been well explored, and I’m sure there is a lot more to be found.

* Crawford, John S. “Multiculturalism at Sardis.” Biblical Archaeology Review, Sep/Oct 1996, 38-42, 44-47, 70.

** “BAR Helps Shed Light on Priene” sidebar to Joey Corbett, “New Synagogue Excavations in Israel and Beyond,” Biblical Archaeology Review July/August 2011.

*** Angelos Chaniotis, “Godfearers in the City of Love,” Biblical Archaeology Review May/June 2010.

Is Gezer of Gaza Referred to in the Sheshonq Inscription?

On the second paragraph on page 50 of the July/August 2012 of BAR(“Did Pharaoh Sheshonq Attack Jerusalem?”), it is mentioned that a site name “begins with G … It is probably Gaza.” The interpretation that it is Gaza is not possible. The city called in English “Gaza” is an incorrect transliteration of the Hebrew Biblical city by the name of Azza (חזע), mentioned in Genesis 10:19, Deuteronomy 2:23, Joshua 10:41, Judges 16:21, 1 Samuel 6:17, 1 Kings 5:4, 2 Kings 8:18, Jeremiah 25:20, 47:1,5, Amos 1:6-7, Zephaniah 2:4 and other Biblical books (JPS).

On the other hand the name Gezer (ר ז ג) appears in the Bible in Joshua 10:33 and 12:12 as having a king, and in it says that Pharaoh conquered Gezer, burned it and the people and then gave it as a dowry for his daughter who married King Solomon.

Dahlia Perahia
San Jose, California

Yigal Levin responds:

The Hebrew letter ayin originally represented two sounds: the guttural sound that is used today (by speakers of Hebrew who pronounce their ayins correctly, and not as if they were alephs), and a deeper sound, which is somewhere between an R and a G. In English this second sound is usually represented as “gh.” We know this because some Semitic writing systems differentiated between the two. In the ancient world, Ugaritic had different letters for each, and Arabic still does to this today—ayin and ghayin. In the 22-letter alphabet used by Canaanite, Hebrew, Aramaic and other languages, the two sounds were represented by the letter that we call ayin, but the second sound was eventually forgotten. The name of the city of Gaza begins with the second kind, and in Arabic it is still called “Ghaza” to this day. The reason that it is called “Gaza” in English (and in other languages) is because when the Bible was translated into Greek (the Septuagint), the “gh” was still being pronounced. This is also why “Sedom and Amorah” are “Sodom and Gomorrah” in English.

So when I wrote that the “G” visible in the name-ring could have referred to Gaza, I really meant Ghaza. Gezer might be represented in the next name-ring. However the Pharaoh who conquered Gezer and gave it to Solomon could not have been Shishak, since he only invaded the land of Israel five years after Solomon’s death.

Calvin and Inerrancy

In his Biblical Views column (“Critical Biblical Scholarship—What’s the Use?” July/August 2012), Ronald S. Hendel states that “Calvin did not think that the Bible is inerrant.”

In an article on this very topic, Dr. Roger Nicole quotes Calvin’s commentary on 2 Timothy 3:16:
“This is the principle that distinguishes our religion from all others, that we know that God has spoken to us and are fully convinced that the prophets did not speak of themselves, but as organs of the Holy Spirit uttered only that which they had been commissioned from heaven to declare. All those who wish to profit from the Scriptures must first accept this as a settled principle, that the Law and the prophets are not teachings handled on at the pleasure of men or produced by men’s minds as their source, but are dictated by the Holy Spirit. If anyone object and ask how this can be known, my reply is that it is by the revelation of the same Spirit both to learners and teachers that God is made known as its Author. Moses and the prophets did not utter rashly and at random what we have received from them, but, speaking by God’s impulse, they boldly and fearlessly testified the truth that it was the mouth of the Lord that spoke through them. The same Spirit who made Moses and the prophets so sure of their vocation now also bears witnesses to our hearts that He has made use of them as ministers by whom to teach us … This is the meaning of the first clause, that we owe to the Scripture the same reverence as we owe to God, since it has its only source in Him and has nothing of human origin mixed with it.”1

I agree with most of Dr. Hendel’s article. Even those of us who believe in Biblical inerrancy understand the need to guarantee as much as possible the integrity and accuracy of the texts, since we don’t have the autographs.

Thomas S. Fortner
Burleson, Texas

1 “John Calvin and Inerrancy,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 25, no. 4 (1982), pp. 425-442).

Ronald S. Hendel responds:

Mr. Fortner is correct that Calvin emphasized the principle that in the Bible “God has spoken to us.” But Calvin also emphasized that God accommodated his message to the limited intellect of humans and their often incorrect ideas about the world. This is how Calvin can also speak of Scripture as conforming to “the capacity of the vulgar” and including “rudiments suitable to children” (comments on Genesis 2:8 and 3:1). The basic idea is that God knows how things really are, but when he spoke to Israelite authors (Moses, prophets, etc.), he “simplified” some aspects of his message in order to accommodate them to the worldview of antiquity. In some peripheral aspects of his speech, God traded truth for comprehensibility (a trait of any good teacher). For Calvin, therefore, the Bible is inspired but not inerrant. The relationship between these two categories is important to understand Biblical theology of the Reformers.

We All Live with Uncertainty—Even Hendel

I was a bit surprised by Dr. Hendel’s disparagement of Alan Plantinga. After having read Dr. Plantinga’s Warrented Christian Belief several times, a book of over 500 pages and the last of a trilogy of philosophical treatments, Dr. Hendel’s offense and response seem small and narrow. I’m not trying to take sides or protect Plantinga, but I found his work complex, deep, insightful and coming from a philosophical perspective, which means he uses the critical methodology of philosophy. Plantinga does call attention to the limitations and conflicted conclusions of historical Biblical criticism. Whether one agrees or not with Plantinga, there are practicing Biblical critics who share his critical view that the paucity of historical data calls for extreme caution in drawing hardcore scientific conclusions. We all live with the uncertainties of life despite having the light of scientific epistemology and methodology. This milieu is bound to cause clashes. It would be exciting to hear Drs. Hendel and Plantinga in a friendly conversation about the issues raised in the article rather than in the once-removed offering we have.

Jim Kutz
Arlington, Washington

Ronald S. Hendel responds:

I agree that Plantinga is a distinguished philosopher. What surprised me in reading his book was that he holds Biblical scholarship to a different standard than philosophical scholarship. He follows the normal procedures of critical scholarship in philosophy—evaluating evidence, arguments, probabilities, and making logically warranted proposals—but when he turns to Biblical scholarship he leaves critical epistemology behind and uses a particular evangelical revision of Calvin’s theology as his standard. This changes the rules in the middle of the game. (And, as I pointed out in my column, it misrepresents Calvin.) This is why I registered my dismay at Plantinga’s dismissal of modern Biblical scholarship. There are many deep and complicated issues involved here, as you rightly observe. My point is that a simple rejection of historical Biblical scholarship (including its procedures and epistemology) simply doesn’t work.

Critical Biblical Scholarship—A Response

In “Critical Biblical Scholarship—What’s the Use?” in the July/ August 2012 issue of BAR, Ronald Hendel wrote, “There’s no good reason to be hostile toward good scholarship.” In a web-exclusive response, Biblical scholar Alan Millard asks, “What is good scholarship?” Millard examines the merits and flaws of critical, skeptical and respectful scholarship to suggest that all must leave room for alternate opinions.

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In a landmark article in the March/April 2010 issue of BAR, Orly Goldwasser, professor of Egyptology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, explained how the very first alphabet, from which all other alphabets developed, was invented by illiterate Canaanite miners in the turquoise mines of Serabit el-Khadem in the Sinai peninsula. Inspired by Egyptian pictorial hieroglyphs and a desire to articulate their own thoughts in writing, these Canaanites created 22 alphabetic acrophonetic signs scratched into the rock that could express their entire language.

But Goldwasser did not convince everyone. Anson Rainey, emeritus professor of Ancient Near Eastern Cultures and Semitic Languages at Tel Aviv University, promptly responded to the article with his doubts that this watershed moment in human culture had been brought about by illiterate miners. In his letter Rainey argues that the alphabet was surely created by “highly sophisticated Northwest Semites”; who inscribed countless papyrus sheets that have not survived.

Join us below to read Rainey’s critique and Goldwasser’s thorough rebuttal about who really invented the alphabet.

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In the May/June 2012 BAR, epigrapher Christopher A. Rollston’s “What’s the Oldest Hebrew Inscription?” considered four contenders as candidates for the oldest Hebrew inscription: the Qeiyafa Ostracon, the Gezer Calendar, the Tel Zayit Abecedary and the Izbet Sartah Abecedary. Rollston asks: Is the script really Hebrew? Is the language Hebrew? Should the inscription be read right-to-left like modern Hebrew or left-to-right? How old is it? Where did it come from? Rollston concludes by stating that the earliest Old Hebrew inscriptions come from periods that postdate the inscriptions from Qeiyafa, Gezer, Tel Zayit and Izbet Sartah. Rollston’s thoughtful discussion was met by dissenting responses from distinguished archaeological and Biblical scholars, including Yosef Garfinkel, the director of excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa, and Aaron Demsky, a professor of Biblical history and the founder of the Project for the Study of Jewish Names at Bar-Ilan University.

Yosef Garfinkel’s “Christopher Rollston’s Methodology of Caution,” which appears in the September/October 2012 BAR, critiques Rollston’s approach for rejecting associations with the Hebrew language without proposing viable alternatives. He discusses the importance of the Qeiyafa Ostracon and other inscriptions for their understanding of the language used by local populations, arguing that archaeological evidence forms the basis of cultural associations, instead of pure textual analysis. His discussion serves as an indictment against both academic speculation and over-cautious reasoning, promoting the idea that the language in all four inscriptions can serve as a useful tool in understanding the early phase of Hebrew language in the Iron Age.

Read Yosef Garfinkel’s “Christopher Rollston’s Methodology of Caution”

After we went to press on the September/October 2012 BAR, we received a communication from the distinguished senior Israeli epigrapher Aaron Demsky, also disagreeing with Professor Chrstopher Rollston’s conclusion rejecting all four candidates for the oldest Hebrew inscription. Professor Demsky argues that two of the four contenders are Hebrew inscriptions – the Gezer Calendar and the Izbet Sartah Abecedary. The latter is older and therefore deserves the honor of the oldest Hebrew Inscription. Professor Demsky’s web-exclusive analysis is a must-read for students and others grappling with the question of what makes a Hebrew inscription.

Read Demsky’s “What’s the Oldest Hebrew Inscription? –A Reply to Christopher Rollston”

Read Christopher Rollston’s “What’s the Oldest Hebrew Inscription?” as it appeared in Biblical Archaeology Review, May/Jun 2012, 32-40, 66, 68 or read a summary of the article as it appeared in Bible History Daily.

Read Yosef Garfinkel’s “Christopher Rollston’s Methodology of Caution”

Read Demsky’s “What’s the Oldest Hebrew Inscription? –A Reply to Christopher Rollston”
 

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Yosef Garfinkel’s “The Birth and Death of Biblical Minimalism” in the May/June 2011 Biblical Archaeology Review created quite a stir. Garfinkel controversially critiques Biblical minimalism as “profoundly undermined by an archaeological discovery.” Citing the major archaeological discoveries of recent decades and his own excavation site, Khirbet Qeiyafa, he argues that David and Solomon ruled over a well-organized and fully urbanized Judahite state in the tenth century B.C.E. In doing so, he rejectes some of the essential tenets of Biblical minimalism and the Low Chronology.

As would be expected, proponents of Biblical minimalism were upset by Garfinkel’s article, noting that their research was far from dead. The prominent Welsh minimalist Philip Davies published a response on the Bible and Interpretation Web site (included here). In it, he accuses Garfinkel of “misrepresent[ing]” what minimalism is, of being a “careless and overblown writer” and “unable to distinguish truth from fact.”

Yosef Garfinkel recently responded to Davies with a clarification of his points. He focuses on a discussion of the mythological paradigm, the Low Chronology paradigm and the ethnic identification of Khirbet Qeiyafa. The reply is far from a concession: it presents data on the groundbreaking excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa that point to the existence of to an organized state in the early Judahite Kingdom. Finally, he continues his charges against Biblical minimalism, suggesting that the minimalist school of the 1980s meant “minimalism in knowledge and limited intellectual horizons.”

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READING THE LABELS. Pompeii was well known for its production and trade of garum, a fish sauce considered a delicacy of the ancient Roman diet. Whole amphorae made for garum were also recovered from the site (pictured above). Because garum was made from all kinds of fish (including shellfish and fish without scales), kosher law prevented Jews from consuming most garum. Evidence of kosher garum (called garum castum or garum muria) suggests that there were enough Jews living in Pompeii to create a market for the special variety of kosher garum.

The eruption of Mt. Vesuvius destroyed the opulent vacation destinations of Roman elites in August 79 C.E.—almost exactly nine years after Roman troops destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem. In the July/August 2010 issue of BAR, Hershel Shanks asks whether the ancients drew a link between these two events—perhaps understanding the volcanic eruption as God’s revenge on the Romans for the destruction of his Temple. In his article “The Destruction of Pompeii—God’s Revenge?” Shanks also examines some of the evidence for a Jewish presence at Pompeii.

One of the most intriguing, though by no means conclusive, clues comes from ceramic jars labeled garum castum, or “pure” garum. Garum, was a sauce—a popular Roman delicacy—that was made from various types of fish and marine life. According to the dietary laws of kashrut, Jews are not supposed to eat fish without scales (including shellfish). The ancient Roman naturalist and author Pliny the Elder, who perished in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, suggested that there was a special type of garum made at Pompeii for Jews, which would presumably be considered kosher. Was this garum castum the kosher fish sauce?

Some scholars have argued that this “pure” garum may not have been intended for Jews at all, but rather for the followers of other Greco-Roman mystery religions that observed dietary restrictions or purity laws. In this letter (see below) to BAR editor Hershel Shanks, Classics professor Robert I. Curtis of the University of Georgia clarifies and expands on his own interpretation of the garum jars and what they might suggest about the Jewish population at Pompeii.

Professor Curtis’s letter to Hershel Shanks about garum castum follows below.

Letter from Robert Curtis to Hershel Shanks:
Garum Castum and the Jews

by Robert Curtis

I read the discussion by Hannah Cotton on the garum inscription (titulus pictus), recorded as No. 826 in Masada II (pp. 166–67), in which, citing me and Frey, she concludes that “it seems that the garum castum was not, after all, intended for Jews” (p. 166). While not going into detail (I can if you wish), she has apparently misinterpreted what I had written. Perhaps I wasn’t very clear. In any case, seven years later, she seems to have changed her mind. In her Journal of Roman Archaeology article (9[1996]: 223–38) she concludes that “these labels might not [my emphasis] have been specifically for Jews, but for people who practiced abstinence in general” (p. 237). This statement is in line with what I wrote in 1991. She goes on two paragraphs later in the same article to state, “And if we are right to assume [my emphasis] that the allec was kosher, then it is very plausible that Masada II, no. 826 contained kosher garum.” As I read her most recent pronouncement, her view now coincides with mine and yours as I read them in the abstract that you sent to me. A more recent article on this amphora will be of interest to you, though it doesn’t add anything to the question at hand: Piotr Berdowski, “Garum of Herod the Great (a Latin-Greek Inscription on the Amphora from Masada,” Analecta Archaeologica Ressoviensia 1(2006): 239–57.

Pliny’s reference (HN 31.44) to a special garum makes two points: (1) the garum was made from fish without scales (quod fit piscibus squama carentibus); and (2) the garum was special to two specific groups: Jews (or, sacris Iudaeis) and those devoted to sex abstinence (or, castimoniarum superstitioni). Pliny is, of course, in error in suggesting that Jews would eat fish without scales in any form. So, is he wrong to include Jews as the target group for garum made from fish without scales or does he err when he says that the special garum for Jews was made from fish without scales? If the former, then there is nothing to discuss, since this garum would not be special to Jews, indeed, just the opposite. If the latter, and everyone makes this assumption, then the special garum was actually a fish sauce made of fish with scales and so explicitly permitted to Jews. Working under the latter assumption, then, the question at hand is whether this special garum that Pliny describes is the same as the product held in vessels found in Pompeii that possessed labels indicating their contents as either garum castum or allec casta? In other words were they kosher fish sauces? Also, could they have been destined for a clientele other than Jews?

Vessels containing garum castum and allec casta found in Pompeii bore a label that identified not just garum but a special garum, one that was castum (“pure”). Purity here is not a reference to an unadulterated or unmixed product (many garums did contain more than one fish or additive or, if not, were labeled with the name of the specific fish used) but one that is morally or spiritually pure. As such, it no doubt was intended for a particular clientele and was labeled so for easy and unambiguous identification. Evidence for a Jewish population in Pompeii seems to me to be conclusive, although it is not possible to say how large that presence was. This also holds for the presence of cult followers of various mystery religions, including those that practiced sex abstinence and food restrictions, such as Isis, Apis, Magna Mater, and Attis. These come immediately to mind, since Pliny’s use of superstitioni strongly implies a cult outside of or on the fringes of Graeco-Roman religion. As with the Jewish population, however, we do not know how plentiful these groups were in Campania. All we can say is that Jews and worshippers of Isis, Apis, Magna Mater, and Attis resided contemporaneously in Campanian towns in the first century A. D. The ancient sources on the cult practices of these pagan mystery cults are not very forthcoming and the information that we do have is primarily from authors hostile to them. So, 100% certainty on matters regarding fasting and abstinence is impossible.

Ancient fasting and abstinence took on a variety of forms. In general, they fell into two broad groups: abstinence from all food for a fixed period and abstinence from a particular food or foods either all of the time or for a fixed period. The first group included especially Christian ascetics and does not concern us here. The second group would include philosophers and medical writers, such as Hippocrates, Galen, etc., whose “lifetime” restrictions on certain foods were made not in the context of religion but of health (especially dietetics). The Jewish attitude toward fish without scales, on the other hand, is also clearly of the second group (i.e., abstinence from a specific food all the time) but is religiously motivated. I am not aware that followers of Isis, Magna Mater, etc. exercised restrictions of this kind. They did, however, have abstinences of particular foods for limited periods of time, usually during recurring festivals. In regard to Isis and Magna Mater (and, presumably, Attis, her consort), we know that they abstained at times from foods made of grain. But in regard to the pagan mystery cults Pliny’s comment involved those who practiced dietary restrictions in conjunction with sexual abstinence.

The worship of Magna Mater and Attis involved a strong element of sexuality, but, during the March festival, as preliminary to the main event, devotees (not just priests) entered upon a nine-day period of fasting and abstinence that included denial of bread, wine, certain fowl and fruits, pork, and fish. In addition, they also refrained from sex. Consequently, worshippers of Magna Mater, at least in the month of March, combined fish and sex among their list of abstinences. But, Pliny speaks only of a restricted kind of fish (i.e. “fish without scales”, forgetting for a second that he is in error here). There is no such specification in the cult of Magna Mater of which I am aware. They presumably avoided fish of all kinds (with and without scales) during the nine-day period. Although worshippers of Isis did practice sexual abstinence in preparation for Isiac ceremonies, I have yet to find the same combination of sex and fish exclusions.

Jews would have had a high stake in knowing the ingredients of the fish sauce, because their abstention focuses specifically on the kind or kinds of fish used to produce the garum. Recognizing a sauce as castum, therefore, takes on more importance for them. Fish sauce producers, if they cared at all about catering to a specific clientele, even a small one, could, I think, have directed a specific product to them. So, since the restriction on scaleless fish is a stringent one, placing the adjective castum or casta on a fish sauce vessel would be critical for the Jewish customer. But, Pliny’s remark does not use the adjective castum to modify the garum; he merely indicates that there was a special garum for Jews because of the type of fish used. So the connection of the specific adjective castum with Jews is not certain. It remains possible that another adjective was used on vessels to attract Jewish consumers, or even that a totally different method was used to assure the Jews of the product’s acceptability (e.g., methods cited in the Talmud).

In sum, while I think that Pliny’s comments do refer to the existence of a kosher garum and that garum castum sold in Pompeii was most likely that product, doubts remain. Because of the uncertainty in our knowledge of pagan mystery cults and because Pliny’s reference cannot be corroborated in Greek, Latin, or Jewish sources, I am still not able to state unequivocally that the expression garum castum was meant exclusively for Jews.

Robert I. Curtis is emeritus professor of Classics at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia. His research specialties include Roman history, Pompeii and Herculaneum, and food technology.

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Introduction

After BAR editor Hershel Shanks criticized recent unsightly repairs to the Temple Mount walls in Jerusalem in his September/October 2010 First Person, archaeological architect Leen Ritmeyer wrote a letter in our January/February 2011 issue to explain how the improper use of cement in the repairs was causing some of the problems on the Temple Mount. This view is now echoed by Edward D. Johnson, the chief conservator of the Archaeological Architectural Field School run by USAID in Luxor, Egypt, who condemns the use of cement in archaeological restorations and explains the dangerous and devastating problems it can cause.

Re: Leen Ritmeyer’s criticism of the use of cement in repairing the bulges in the Temple Mount wall. The problems with the use of cement for such repairs are even worse than he describes.

Being both an archaeologist and archaeological conservator whose practice emphasizes built heritage and having worked in many places around the world, principally in Egypt, for the last 22 years, I have repeatedly seen cement used on archaeological sites and structures with effects ranging from mildly damaging to completely disastrous. Simply put, cement has no place in the care and conservation of any archaeological site or structure. This is a basic principle of archaeological conservation that I have emphasized continually in my teaching of the subject, most recently in the Archaeological Architectural Field School run by USAID in Luxor, Egypt, where I was assistant director and chief conservator.

Cement damages ancient materials and structures in several ways, all of which work together to accelerate deterioration.

Cement in bulk has a different coefficient of expansion than ancient building materials, which are principally limestone and sandstone. Under warm, sunny conditions it will expand at about twice the rate of the original materials. When used on ancient structures, if put under ancient stone, or used to attach it to an underlying substrate, its expansion will tend to lift that stone off the surface to which it is attached, causing that surface to buckle, detach and slough off.

Cement is also loaded with soluble salts. These will leach out of the cement over time. They will migrate into the pores of the ancient building material, where they will be deposited by evaporation, forming salt crystals. Subsequent exposure to, or absorption of, moisture from the air will cause these crystals to dissolve and reform. This cycle of dissolution and recrystallization exerts immense pressure on the pores of the stone, causing their disruption and destruction. This leads to powdering, spalling off of decorated surfaces, and if not checked, complete disassociation of the stone into sand or powder which can cause larger structural failures in a monument.

Finally, cement is unsightly and always visually clashes with original stones and their patina of age as is dramatically revealed in the pictures in BAR.

Edward D. Johnson
Archaeologist/Archaeological Conservator
La Canada, California

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After 24 years, we can now present a clear answer to a question raised in the pages of BAR. In the July/August 1987 issue, BAR editor Hershel Shanks considered two burial caves from the First Temple period, located on the property of the École Biblique et Archeologique Francaise in Jerusalem, and asked “Have the Tombs of the Kings of Judah Been Found?” In the following response, Fr. Riccardo Lufrani, professor of topography of Jerusalem and southern Levant at the École Biblique, endeavors to finally answer Shanks’s question.

• Fr. Riccardo Lufrani’s Response