Queries & Comments

More Queries and Comments Winter 2025

Unpublished Excavations

YOUR SPRING ISSUE was a fitting tribute to BAR on its 50th anniversary and to the vision, initiative, and drive of your founding editor, Hershel Shanks. Among his numerous achievements, you have rightly listed Bible Review and Archaeology Odyssey, as well as BAR, and the liberation of the Dead Sea Scrolls from the stranglehold of the Dominican Fathers. However, you omitted his denunciation of the scourge and scandal of unpublished excavations.

One of Hershel’s unsung causes was the need to publish archaeological fieldwork promptly and fully. He was responsible for the publication in 1996 and 1999 of two reports on the subject, both titled Archaeology’s Publication Problem. These volumes were followed by a memorable conference in Nicosia, Cyprus, in November 1999, on The Problem of Unpublished Excavations, whose proceedings were published in Nicosia in 2000.

A case in point, the article “A Decade of Discoveries in Biblical Jerusalem” in the Spring issue is based largely on unpublished or incompletely published finds. Without disputing the claims or arguments presented, where is the final scientific report, for instance, on the fortifications built to protect the Gihon Spring, “dated to the Middle Bronze Age (c. 2000–1550 BCE) based on their style and the pottery found within construction fills” (p. 48)?

Robert Stuart Merrillees
Mailly Le Château, France

From Cover to Cover

I DO NOT RECALL who gave me my first copy of BAR, but I know I read it from cover to cover. I must admit BAR has improved my preaching and raised no few questions.

Rev. Jimmy Galloway
Leicester, North Carolina

Doubting the Doubts about John

WITH ALL DUE RESPECT, as interesting as the Spring 2025 article “Nails or Knots” by Jeffrey P. Arroyo García was, the author’s questioning of the Gospel of John’s unique “Doubting Thomas” account is “creative weaving” indeed! His premise that John concocted his account hangs (sorry, bad pun) on possibilities, such as that the method of crucifixion “may not” or “might have” changed, based on the descriptor changing from “hanging” to “nailed” in the mid-first century, or on the notion that John “appears to be re-writing” Luke 24:39, and that Luke 23:39 and Acts 5:30 “in fact … seems to imply ropes.” The truth is, as the author himself admits, the words used for hanging do not “imply how the victim was fastened to the cross.” Yet the author insinuates that John conjured up his story (a lie to make it believable?) and that he wrote based on other sources, including “likely the other Gospels”—a mystifying assertion given that the author states earlier that the Synoptics are “conspicuously silent” on the matter. The truth is, John didn’t need other sources. He was there at the cross (John 19:35). He was there when Thomas rejected the other disciples’ testimony of seeing Jesus’s hands and feet (Luke 24:40) and demanded to see the marks of the nails! John unequivocally states that his testimony is true (John 19:35; 21:24). Seems to me that somebody needs to heed the words of the Lord to Thomas, “Stop doubting and believe!” (John 20:27).

Les Paulsen
Tyendinaga Township, Ontario, Canada

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