No title

OF 0/ •S ca 1 9 Biblical ) Archaeo Volume 46 Number 1 Winter 1983 S"-rs ,C II .X :.41• v t 'G ---, ..... ...

Author: American Schools of Oriental Research

6 downloads 1244 Views 16MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!

Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

OF 0/ •S ca

1

9

Biblical )

Archaeo Volume 46 Number 1

Winter 1983

S"-rs

,C

II .X

:.41•

v

t

'G

---,

.....

Thomas-

The

~

,

...

_

)JA 1?,, ( 5-)• .... !._

....

•

Fourth Synoptic Davies Stevan by

Gospel

F. E. Peters: Hellenism and the Near East William Hallo: The First Purim

An

Invitation

ProspectiveAuthors

to

The editors of Biblical Archaeologist are soliciting article proposals for four new departments: "Enigmatic Bible Passages," "BA Guide to Artifacts," "BA Portrait," and "The Museum Trail."The first three have been inaugurated in this issue; we will introduce "The Museum Trail" in an upcoming issue. Our goal is for each of these columns to appear in every issue of BA. To achieve that goal, we need to have a steady flow of ideas, proposals, and manuscripts coming in to our mailbox here in Durham. The descriptions and guidelines furnished below are designed to give prospective authors a good idea of what we're looking for. We welcome your suggestions and comments on these new departments-and on any and all aspects of BA.

II ... ~L~? 2.:=164, %.fit......-, -. .,?

4

. 4

I-" 6'" I

y

""

.o t,,i.

....

b4

Iv. **.t.o,

-.4

do"

184

&0

'w'w .-otw

ENIGMATIC BIBLE

If you wish to do an article for "Enigmatic Bible Passages,"please dropus a line. Tell us which verse or passageyou've selected. Sum up your proposedtreatment in a paragraphor two. We'llreply promptly to let you know whether the topic is suitable for BA.

PASSAGES

This departmentwill consist of one or, preferably,a pair of 750-2000 word essays, ideally one for Old Testament and one for New Testament. The author of each essay will discuss a biblical verse/passage/pericopethat displaysone or more featureslikely to interest our readers. The passagemay be one that has proved notoriously difficult for commentators down the centuries to interpret.Or,it might recount an incident, belief, practice, or ritual that seems bizarre,even incomprehensible, to us today.Weare particularlyinterested in units on which modern archaeological,epigraphic,or manuscript discoveries have shed exciting new light. It is imperative that each essay in this series be gearedto the readerwho lacks a knowledge of ancient languagesand scripts. The author should not attempt to elaboratethe passage'stheological message to modern believers. Rather,he/she should emphasize noteworthy insights that have been achieved through the use of the historicalcritical method and/or archaeology.(Itwould be equally worthwhile, however,to treat a knotty passagethat has consistently resisted the best efforts of historical-critical methodology and stoutly refuses to yield up its meaning to scholars.)Weare hoping to play up the "detective work"aspect of good scholarship whenever possible. It is unnecessary to use any kind of formal referencesciting scholarly literature.If you like, you may note up to six sources as "Suggestionsfor FurtherReading."

BA

PORTRAIT

This departmentwill comprise a brief biographical treatment of one of the deceased modern giants of Near Easternstudies - archaeology,exploration, historiography,biblical studies, intertestamental studies, Assyriology, Egyptology,Hittitology, Semitics, etc.-together with one or two illustrations. The projectedlength of each essay is 10002000 words. Scholarswho were in some way pioneers or exemplars areprime candidatesfor the "BAPortrait." Profiles of 19th- and early 20th-century scholars are especially desirable.And we encourageauthors to select interesting, colorful charactersas their subjects. "BAPortrait"should be written in a lively style and with a humanistic orientation. Explain why the person'swork was/is significant, but also tell the readersomething about the human being behind the eminent scholar.A sprightly anecdote or well-chosen quote drawnfrom a work by one of the individual's contemporaries,for example, often says more than many pages of straightforward biographicaldetail. Again, only deceased figures will be profiledin the "BAPortrait."Weplan to use the ASORNewsletter to salute our active peers.

(continued on inside back cover)

0S

OF 0

() Biblical, Winter

1983

Page19 6

THOMAS-THE FOURTH SYNOPTIC GOSPEL

chaeoo

Page43

33

54

41

A CYCLEOF JESUS'SPARABLES StevanDavies

19

THE FIRSTPURIM

30

43

William W Hallo A prominentAssyriologist looks at the Book of Estherand the Jewish holiday whose origins areboundup with it.

ENIGMATICBIBLE PASSAGES

It's the Little Things that Count (Mark 14:17-21; Luke 4:1-13;

Matthew 18:10-14) Paul J. Achtemeier How a little wordcan make a big differencein biblical interpretation.

HELLENISMAND THE NEAR EAST

E E. Peters What was Hellenism, and how did it leave its mark on the Near East? An impressionistic portraitof a fascinatinghistorical phenomenon.

HOW DID THE GOSPELOF THOMAS GET ITS NAME? BarryHoberman

15

,st

Page41

StevanDavies The fourcanonical gospels are Matthew,Mark,Luke,and John,but the four synoptics areMatthew, Mark,Luke,and Thomas. Author Davies explains why.

10

Volume

49

57

George Smith (1840-1876): Pioneer Assyriologist BarryHoberman GeorgeSmith was nervous,eccentric, foolhardy--and a genius.

Animal bones and teeth may not be the stuff of archaeologicalromance, but they help archaeologistsreconstruct the lifestyles of prehistoricand ancient societies.

CODEX SINAITICUS:AN HISTORICALOBSERVATION

MIDDLEBRONZE AGE A EARTHWORKS: CONTEMPORARYENGINEERINGEVALUATION

DEPARTMENTS 2 3 4 63

BA GUIDE TO ARTIFACTS RichardH. Meadow

1

Ernest Pennells Wedon'tneed to posit visits from ancient astronautsto account forthe impressively sophisticatedaccomplishments of ancient engineers.

EXPLORINGTHEMEDITERRANEANBACKGROUNDOF EARLYCHRISTIANITY

The Study of FaunalRemains from Archaeological Sites

Number

Philip Mayerson A note on the famous manuscriptand the history of the Sinai peninsula.

BA PORTRAIT

Enid Schmuch At Harvard,participantsin an ASOR-sponsoredprogrambringan enhanced appreciationof archaeology and materialculture to the study of the New Testament.

46

64

INTRODUCING THE AUTHORS FROMTHE EDITOR'SDESK LETTERTO THE READERS BOOKREVIEWS T G. H. James,ed., Excavatingin Egypt:The EgyptianExploration Society,1882-1982 Reviewedby Anthony J.Spalinger BOOKSRECEIVED

Cover:TheApostle Thomas.Artist's renderingof the mosaic portrait foundat the Monasteryof SaintCatherine, Mount Sinai.Artist:LydellJackson.

Biblical Archaeologist is published with the financial assistance of Zion Research Foundation, a nonsectarian foundation for the study of the Bible and the history of the Christian Church.

BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

Introducing the Authors

Hallo

Schmuch

Achtemeier

StevanDavies is assistant professorof religious studies at College Misericordia,Dallas, Pennsylvania.His book, The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom, will be

publishedby SeaburyPress in 1983. Michael Davies, who appearsalong with his fatherin the abovephoto, is seen perusinga book on his favoritesubject, galactic astrophysics.Mike's archaeologicalinterests lie more in the productionof sherds than their analysis, according to Dad. William W.Hallo is William M. LaffanProfessorof Assyriology and BabylonianLiteratureand Curatorof the BabylonianCollection at Yale.He is the authorof

Davies and Davies

BarryHobermanis ManagingEditorof BA. His articles on Near Easternand CentralAsian history appear regularly in Aramco World Magazine; he has also contributed to Harvard Magazine, The Boston Phoenix, The Boston Journal, and The Lamp. Hoberman has a

master's in Old Testament from HarvardDivinity School and another in medieval history from IndianaUniversity.

Early Mesopotamian Royal Titles (American Oriental

Society, 1957),and, along with YaleEgyptologistWilliam Kelly Simpson, co-author of The Ancient Near East: A

History (HarcourtBraceJovanovich,1971).Hallo's professional interests extend beyondAssyriology and biblical studies-he

translated The Star of Redemption, by the

20th-century GermanJewishphilosopherFranzRosenzweig, into English (Holt, Rinehartand Winston, 1971). Paul J.Achtemeier is HerbertWorthand Annie H. Jackson Professorof Biblical Interpretationat Union Theological Seminaryin Virginia.He is the author of the volume on Mark in the Proclamation Commentaries series

(Fortress,1975),Invitation to Mark (Doubleday,1978),and The Inspiration of Scripture: Problems and Proposals

(Westminster,1980).Achtemeier, who has co-authored three books with his wife Elizabeth (like her husbanda well-known expert on biblical hermeneutics), enjoys workingwith wood and sailing in his sparetime. FrancisE. Peters,historian, Arabist,classicist, is professorof history and Near Easternlanguagesand literaturesat New YorkUniversity.He has a B.A. in classics and an M.A. in Greek and philosophy from St. Louis University; his Ph.D.-in Islamic studies--is from Princeton. Petersserves as U.S. representativeon the InternationalCommission for the Preservationof the Monuments of Damascus. His books include The Harvest of Hellenism: A History of the Near East from Alexander the Great to the Triumph of Christianity

(Simonand Schuster,1971)and Childrenof Abraham: Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Princeton University

Press, 1982).

2

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

FreelancewriterEnid Schmuch lives in Reading, Massachusetts. She has studied New Testament at HarvardDivinity School, and serves on the planning committee of the Divinity School's Theological Opportunities Program.She went to Greece in the springof 1982 as a member of the ResearchTeamfor the Religion and Cultureof the Landsof the New Testament. RichardH. Meadow is head of the Zooarchaeology Laboratoryat the PeabodyMuseum of Archaeologyand Ethnology,HarvardUniversity.He has accumulated extensive field experience on excavationsin Iranand Pakistan,an areafor which he has "beentrying to construct a picture of animal exploitation practices from c. 8000 B.c. to the present day."Meadowlives on a horse farm outside of Boston along with his wife, two children,four dogs, and one rabbit. Philip Mayerson,professorof classics at New York University,was formerlyDean of NYU's Washington SquareCollege and University College. He has published severalarticles on the history of the Negev and Sinai in late antiquity. ErnestPennells, a charteredengineer in GreatBritain,is also an ordainedBaptist minister. He became interested in archaeologywhile pursuingtheological studies at Oxford,and subsequently participatedin the Hebrew Union College excavations at TelDan. He now works as an engineeringconsultant, advising on-among other things -the design of structuresused in offshoreoil exploration.

From

With

the

thepublication ofthisissueof

Biblical Archaeologist, readerswill note the completion of the transition period between the old and the new editors, between Ann Arborand Durham. They will also note that the process has been achieved with very little interruption.Hopefully, our readerswill recognize a genuine note of continuity not only with the immediate, past stewardshipof this magazine but with the forty-five volumes which precededthe present number. After nearly a half-century of publication we may observethat the forces which led ErnestWrightto found BA are still very much a part of the study of Bible and ancient Near East today. Interest in the Bible and the biblical world in contemporaryAmerica is very much on the increase. Decades afterrequiredBible courses were abolished in most colleges and universities, students are now flocking to introductorycourses in Hebrew Bible and New Testament in recordnumbers. Similarly,there seems to be an inexhaustible supply of interested students of all ages and backgroundsreadyto travelto the Middle East to work as volunteers on archaeologicalexpeditions, on both sides of the JordanRiverand all overthe MediterraneanBasin. ASOR in general, and Biblical Archaeologist in particular,have a unique role to play in the educational process that affects students and teachers alike. This magazine has been and will continue to be a vehicle of communication for scholars who can present the results of their inquiries to both the specialist and nonspecialist reader. It has never been an easy task to communicate

Editor's

Desk

in a comprehensible way the fruit of many years of scholarly activity. Nor has it been a simple matter to capturein the printedword the kind of excitement that propels the scholar of ancient texts and monuments in his or her quest for knowledge of the past. This issue of BA presents articles from the hands of a number of such experts in the hopes that their enthusiasm will arrestthe attention of our readers,and stimulate them to explore furtherthe topics under discussion. The success of a publication venture is hardto measure, for "success" is not an easy word to define. BA has its band of faithful readerswho will testify to its longstanding viability and usefulness. The true test of a magazine or journalof an academic society and its measure of worth, however,is not in the number but the kind of people who readthe magazine. It is a fitting tribute to the founderand to all the past editors that BA remains one of the basic staples of biblical scholarship and Near Easternarchaeologyto this day.It is, moreover,a vital organof a majorAmerican learned society which has been aroundfor nearly a century-the American Schools of Oriental Research,now based in Philadelphia.BA will continue to speak to a diverse mix of professionalsand laymen, teachers and students, and will continue to communicate the state of the field of biblical studies and Near Easternarchaeology- as these have emergedin their uniquely American formulations- to readers who demand the highest standardsof accuracyand trustworthiness. Biblical Archaeologist thus remains the oldest and most authoritative guide in its field. It will continue to relate the results of several traditional disciplines that are flourishing in American, European, and non-Westernacademic institutions today. Over the coming years BA readerswill be introduced to a thriving new field of intellectual inquiry as well: the study of the social world of ancient Israel. Associate EditorJamesFlanagan,the rest of my fellow editors and editorial committee members, and I assure you that we will do everythingin our powerto see to it that Biblical Archaeologist not only maintains its ties with the scholarly traditions of the past, but is also fully attuned to the important new intellectual currentsof the future.

Eric M. Meyers Editor

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

3

Letter

R

to

eadersofBiblicalArchaeologist may

wonder how the editors acquirematerial for the magazine. The answer is that there are a variety of routes which articles may take on their way to appearingin print. I'd like to discuss a few of these routes and, at the same time, supply some backgroundon two superbpieces found in this issue of BA. Perhapsleast common is the path of the unsolicited submission: a completed manuscript arrivesuninvited in our mailbox, manages to elicit smiles from our crusty,hard-to-pleaseeditors, and is judgedto be publishable. Now, we like serendipity as much as anyone,but it's rarethat an unsolicited piece can cut the mustard. Most editors, myself included, would preferto see a one- or two-paragraph query or article proposalas the initial step of the submission process. That way,we can offereditorial advice and guidance from the outset--a procedure that saves time and energyfor authors and editors alike. (A few years agoI approachedanother magazine with the idea of doing a piece for them on MarcoPolo's experiences in the Near East.It turned out that they had in their files a manuscript, slated for eventual publication, on that very topic. By queryingin advance,I avoidedan enormous amount of wasted effort,not to mention the inevitable rejection slip.) Often, we at BA invite an author to write an article on a specific subject. This was the case with F E. Peters'splendid essay in the currentissue, "Hellenism and the Near East."Petersis a wellknown, supremely articulate authority on both Hellenism and the broadsweep of Near Eastern history,and one would be hardpressedto think of a more apt candidateto execute such a piece. Moreover,we were looking not for a comprehensive analysis of Hellenism- no one can pull that off in 15-20 typewritten pages-but for an impressionistic overview that would convey the gist, the texture, of Hellenism in the Near East. With that addedcriterion in mind, BA EditorEricMeyers and I felt all the more strongly that Peters, who teaches at New YorkUniversity,was the bestqualified person for the task. When we say,then, that his manuscript actually exceeded our expectations, we hope our readers will appreciatethe magnitude of the compliment being offered.Peters'essay,which begins on page33, is an absorbing,challenging, intellectually intoxicating journeyacross centuries of Near Eastern history.Those who are looking for an expanded

4

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

the

Readers

dictionary definition of Hellenism-a dryaccounting of historical traits-will be disappointedand are advised to look elsewhere. Rather,the author's purposeis to bringinto focus the spirit, the essence, of that phenomenon which historians of the Near East referto as Hellenism-too often without having given much thought to what "Hellenism" means. The last question has occupied FrankPeters for much of his scholarly career,and the editors of BA areprivileged to present the fruits of his latest reflections thereon. Soliciting specific articles from specific authors is the best way for editors to shape editorial content and therebyimpart a distinctive flavorto a magazine. Occasionally,however,we ask an author to write on a topic of his or her own choosing. For instance, we extended an open invitation to Samuel Noah Kramer,the greatexpert on the civilization of the Sumerians. ProfessorKramer accepted graciously,and we will feature his contribution, "The WeepingGoddess: Sumerian Prototypesof the Mater Dolorosa," in our next issue. The featuredcover story in this issue is a fascinating article by Stevan Davies, entitled "Thomas-The FourthSynoptic Gospel" (page6). The piece is an enticing preview of the author's book, The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom, which will be published by Seaburylater this year.Behind the present article, however,lies the interesting story of how Steve Davies' byline came to appearin BA. Last spring,the incoming editors- EricMeyers of Duke University,Associate EditorJamesFlanagan of the University of Montana, Book Review EditorPeterMachinist of the University of Arizona, and myself-resolved to allot more space than had been customary to the fields of New Testament and early Christianity.None of us being a specialist in those areas,I wrote to Elaine Pagels, author of The Gnostic Gospels and now on the faculty at Princeton, asking her to recommend scholars of New Testament and early Christianity whom we might contact for articles. I stressed that we wanted reliable authorities who could write for an audience of educatednonspecialists. Elaine got back to me with a nicely annotated list of potential authors that included one StevanDavies of College Misericordia in Dallas, Pennsylvania. I had never heard of Davies but I had heard of Misericordia - one of my closest friends is a proud alumna. I made a mental note to find out more about the fellow from Ann's alma mater, and tucked Elaine's

letter into a file folder. Some weeks later,Eric Meyers and I were chatting in his office. He mentioned that he'd met some of the young college teachers who had come to Durham to participatein a National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminar conducted by W D. Davies, Duke's outstanding scholar of Christian origins. One of them, it seems, hailed from a school called Misericordia.Immediately I dug out Elaine's list. Washis name StevanDavies, by any chance? It was, and within a few hours Eric and I were eagerly discussing article ideas with the youngerDr. Davies (no relation to his eminent seminar leader). That afternoon,we learned that Stevewas a TemplePh.D. who had graduatedfrom Duke in 1970 (which meant that he, Eric, and I had all been in Durham for the 1969-70 academic year,when Steve was a senior, Eric a first-yearfaculty member, and I a lowly freshman).His first book, The Revolt of the Widows: The Social Worldof the ApocryphalActs, had been published by Southern Illinois University Press in 1980; he had just sent the manuscript on the Gospel of Thomas off to Seabury The more we talked with Steve,the more anxious we were to have him write for BA. Beforesummer's end and his returnto College Misericordia,he hand-delivered to us the manuscript of his article. In it, he further develops theories advancedby Helmut Koesterand others, arguingpersuasively that the Coptic Gospel of Thomas ranks alongside Matthew, Mark,and Lukeas a source of information on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Doubting Thomases may dispute Steve'sconclusions-he asks that skeptical scholars readhis forthcoming book beforeframinga detailed rebuttal-but there is no doubt that his voice will be an important and innovative one in New Testament scholarship for many years to come.

Biblical (. Archaeologist Editor Eric M. Meyers Managing Editor

BarryHoberman Associate Editor

JamesW Flanagan Book Review Editor Peter B. Machinist Editorial Committee

CaroleFontaine VolkmarFritz LawrenceT. Geraty David M. Gunn A. T Kraabel

BaruchA. Levine

Carol L. Meyers John Wilkinson Art Director

SusanLeeb

Editorial Assistants Amy-Jill Levine

JayGeller KarenS. Hoglund

Subscriptions Manager

Barbara G. Smiley Staff Assistants KarenW Reeves

LeslieE. Sladky Gay C. Trotter AdvertisingSales Allen E. Shubert Company 198 Allendale Road King of Prussia, PA 19406 215-265-0648 Biblical Archaeologist is published quarterly (Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall) by the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR),a non-profit, nonsectarian educational organization with administrative offices at 4243 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104. Subscription orders and all business correspondence should be sent to ASOR Subscription Services, 4243 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104. Annual subscription rates: $16 in the U.S., U.S. possessions, and Canada; $18 foreign. Special annual subscription rates for students and retired faculty: $10 in the U.S., U.S. possessions, and Canada; $12 foreign. (To qualify for student or retired faculty rates, send a copy of a document that verifies your current status.) Current single issues: $5 in the U.S., U.S. possessions, and Canada; $6 foreign. Students and retired faculty: $4 in the US., U.S. possessions, and Canada; $5 foreign. Members of ASOR automatically receive Biblical Archaeologist as one of their annual membership benefits.

BarryHoberman ManagingEditor

Moving?

Name(please print)

Article proposals, manuscripts, letters to the editor, and all other editorial correspondence should be sent to the Editor,Biblical Archaeologist, ASOR Publications Office, Box HM, Duke Station, Durham, NC 27706. Unsolicited manuscripts must be accompanied by a self-addressed,stamped envelope bearing the proper return postage. Foreign contributors should furnish international reply coupons. Books for review should be sent to Dr. Peter B. Machinist, Department of Oriental Studies, The University of Arizona, TIcson, AZ 85721.

YourNew Address

Composition by Carolina Academic Press, Durham, NC. Printed by Fisher-HarrisonCorporation, Durham, NC.

Attach LabelHere

Make Sure BA Moves

With You Please attachyour magazine mailinglabel to this coupon and send both to: ASOR Subscription Services 4243 Spruce Street Philadelphia, PA 19104

Be sure to includeyour new address on the form. Thankyou!

Second-class postage paid at Philadelphia, PA 19104 and additional offices.

city State

Zip

Send address changes to ASOR Subscription Services, 4243 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104. Copyright ? 1983 by the American Schools of Oriental Research. ISSN 0006-0895.

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

5

THOMAS The

Fourth

Synoptic

Gospel

of Gospel ranks Thomas alongside and Matthew, Mark,

The

Luke

Coptic

a

as

formation

teachings

of

source on

of

the

in-

life

and

Jesus.

by StevanDavies The Source

Most

ofthecriticalschol- miracles-just "Jesussaid,...,""Jesus but entirely independent sayings

ars in the New Testament field believe that Matthew and Luke independently used a collection of Jesus'ssayings in their revisions of Mark'sgospel. The simplest definition of this collection is that it comprises those sayings which occur in both Matthew and Luke, but not in Mark.This common sayings source was called (not surprisingly)"source"by German scholars or,in German, "Quelle," hence the abbreviationQ. Q was thought to be a document, since lost, which simply preserved sayings of Jesus (or,more precisely, sayings attributedto Jesus)without narrative,without a passion or a birth story,without accounts of

6

collection. Still, one of the reasons said,...," "Jesussaid,...."Although there are still New Testament schol- for the importance of Thomas is the fact that it providessuch strong ars who for various reasons do not indirect corroborativeevidence that accept the Q hypothesis, the main Q existed. It certainly shows that objection in earlierdecades was written collections of the sayings that no Q document had ever been of Jesuscirculated in the early found. Indeed,no document from church. early Christianity even resembling Q had everbeen found. Not EverythingNew Is Gnostic In 1945, a document very much The Gospel of Thomas has a great like the hypothesized Q document was discovered.It bore the title "The many significant things to teach us about the origins of Christianity, Gospel of Thomas," and was a but beforethese can be discussed series of sayings attributedto Jesus seriously one prevalentmisconwithout narrative,without a passion or birth story,without accounts ception must be laid aside. The Gospel of Thomas is quite freof miracles; a series of 114 sayings said to be a gnostic docuthe most for the quently part,by introduced, ment. But the Gospel of Thomas is phrase,"Jesussaid...."This Gospel not a gnostic document. of Thomas is not Q; it is a similar

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

The Nag Hammadi Libraryassembled. Codex II, containing the Gospel of Thomas, lies atop the center,rearstack of codices. Photo bylean Doresse, courtesy of the Institute forAntiquity and Christianity, Claremont,California.

The fundamental reason that Thomas is thought to be gnostic is that it was discoveredas partof the Nag Hammadi find, a collection of Coptic* texts buried in the late

fourth century,all of which are thought to be translations of Greek originals. The greatmajority of the texts found in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, over 50 in all, fall into the very general"gnostic" category.They restate or presupposea myth of the fall of the divine sophia, "Wisdom" (or,rarely,logos, "Word"),and the subsequent entrapment of sophia in a demonically createdlower world. Some, perhaps all, humans are thought to be elements of a higher world, a divine world, trappedbelow.

Into the lower world comes a divine revealerwho leads the way through spheres of evil "archons" back towardsGod. There are in gnostic literatureendless variations upon this myth, with wild and often incomprehensible generations of queerly named divine and demonic beings multiplied endlessly. The Gospel of Thomas has none of this. It lacks even an echo of this mythology. Unfortunately,because Thomas was found along with many gnostic texts, the assumption was made that it too must be gnostic-for surely gnostics would have readit in a gnostic fashion. Books have been written to argue that since Thomas could have

been read as gnostic and was found in a predominantly gnostic collection of texts, it is, therefore,a gnostic text. These contentions are, when presented so abruptly,ratherobviously fallacious. Certainly Thomas can be readas a gnostic text, but so can any religious literature if you tacitly assume beforehandthat it is "gnostic."Gnostic exegetical texts (both those long known and those newly discovered)cover the rangeof scripturefrom Genesis to the Psalms to Homer, from the Synoptics to Johnto the letters of Paul. Irenaeusand Origen (to give but two examples) complained repeatedly about the use of canonical texts by

* Coptic is a late stage of the ancient Egyptian language, written, however, with a modified form of the Greek alphabet. Although no speakers of Coptic remain, it is still used as the liturgical language of the Coptic Church.

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

7

A, IMM?i P.. if lh.i All T's ZT-11

W4

WR

L

.

li

.

OIL

's

kAi

V;

!:o

*moo

Fift

?W

`fM.

l

Q/

W,

Al "e

w

kf

.

24 V.

Or

f W

v

A: -Q,

5:

x

1.

Aft

C

!!:5rk,

Jil AL

AM,

No

The openingpage of the Coptic Gospel of Thomas.Photo courtesyof the Institute forAntiquity and Christianity

various gnostic groups.The occasional gnostic use of the Gospel of Thomas is no differentthan the more frequent gnostic use of canonical texts. Guilt by association is probably a riskier mode of thought regarding texts than it is regardingpeople. Had the Gospel of Matthew been found at Nag Hammadi we would not, I hope, have proclaimed it to be gnostic. It is interesting that Thomas was found along with a host of texts most of which are, in fact, gnostic-but that tells us nothing whatsoever about the origin

8

of Thomas itself. Occasionally it is arguedthat Thomas contains themes which are "typically gnostic."The two most often mentioned are that in Thomas (on fewerthan four occasions), self-knowledge is said to lead to salvation, and that in Thomas the body is occasionally devalued in relation to the soul. Now, leaving aside the fact that these themes arehardlypredominantin Thomas, virtually everyreligiously inclined person in the ancient world would have found those two themes congenial to, if not definitive of,

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

religious excellence. Is "know thyself" ipso facto gnostic? Of course not. If Thomas's occasional devaluation of the body in respect to the soul is gnostic, then Paul's thought is even more so. Occasionally it is arguedthat certain terms are inherently gnostic, the two most commonly mentioned being "light" and "rest."Both of these terms occur with positive connotations in Thomas, just as they do throughout the New Testament. Johnequates Jesuswith light (1:1-5) as does Thomas 77; Hebrews 4:1-11 regards"rest"as the goal of Christians in a more pronounced way than Thomas ever does. There is a host of specialized words found only in gnostic texts, as a glance through the Nag Hammadi librarywill show,but not one of these everoccurs in Thomas. Thomas uses words currentthroughout the ancient world with connotations not far removedfrom those that obtain in a variety of New Testament documents. Thomas, then, is not gnostic. It is arguablyless gnostic than the Gospel of Johnor Colossians, although it is admittedly hazardous to try to measure documents with such an ephemeralyardstick. Thomas is a quite ancient Christian collection of sayings attributedto Jesus. Some are his, some are not. Some of those that are not his, do sound ratherodd-but oddness is not gnosticism (although,goodness knows, most of gnosticism is odd). Thomas Introduced What can we know about the Gospel of Thomas? Tobegin with, the usual number of sayings accordedto the text is 114. There are, however, quite a few more than that, for sometimes two or three sayings are collected together as one unit beginning with "Jesus said...'."The numbering system is an arbitrary but necessary convention of modern scholarship. Take, for example, 47: Jesus said (A) "A man cannot mount two horses; he cannot stretch two bows. (B)A servant cannot serve two masters; either he will honor the one and

the other he will scorn.... (C) No man drinks old wine and right awaywants to drink new wine; (D) and they do not put new wine into old wineskins lest they tear,and they do not put old wine into new wineskins lest it spoil it. (E)They do not sew an old patch on a new garment, because there will be a tear." Here we have five different sayings! Saying47 (B)occurs in Luke 16:13//Matthew 6:24 (andthus in Q) and sayings 47 (E)and (D) appear in Mark 2:21-22. But what of 47 (A) and (C)?Are these sayings invented to accordwith synoptic sayings or are they genuine sayings of Jesuspreserveduniquely by Thomas? Probablythe latter is true (given, of course, that we cannot attribute anything to Jesuswith absolute certainty). The consensus of scholarship at present date is that the Gospel of Thomas, howeverit came into being, was not made by persons who were simply picking and choosing sayings from the gospels and addingothers. The sayings in Thomas have none of the identifying characteristics typical of the authors "Mark"or "Matthew"or "Luke."In other words, when sayings occur both in the synoptics and in Thomas, the versions in Thomas never contain any of the characteristicinterpretive or redactional touches that the synoptic authors occasionally added.There are, incidentally, no sayings in Thomas which are paralleled in John'sgospel. The Gospel of Thomas is wholly independent of the canonical scriptures and, for that matter, is also independent of Q. The sayings in Thomas were not taken from the New Testament but from other sources (oral tradition?) entirely. After considerable effort, I finally gave up seeking a correlation somewhere between the order of sayings in Thomas and in Matthew, Mark, Luke, Q, Special Matthew, Special Luke* * and various combinations of these. I was rather disappointed. It would have been a marvelous "Eureka!" to have discovered that

sayings in Thomas and, say,Special Luke were in the exact same order.But the negative result is significant. Since the content of its sayings represents a literary tradition independent of the synoptics, and the orderof its sayings is distinct from that of anything else we have, Thomas stands alone. It is a new synoptic gospel which, as it contains less editorial revision than the other three-it contains some, of course-may be our best source for Jesus'steachings. And then again, it may not be. It makes little differencewhether one wishes to claim that the new sayings given above as 47 (A)and (C) are from Jesus'slips or not. They reinforce our knowledge but, frankly, add little to it. Yet there are other sayings of much greaterinterest which are not paralleled in the synoptics and which may or may not

parables(see Mark 4:13-20, for example). ForChristians today,however,virtually every parableis familiar and coupled with a "normative" explanation craftedthrough two millennia of exegesis, eisegesis, and just plain guesswork. Thomas preservesat least two parableswhich almost certainly come from Jesus but which exist in a kind of prechurch purity.They allow one, in all likelihood, to hear Jesus without the whispers of centuries encouraging particularinterpretations. Here is 97: Jesus said, "The Kingdomof the [Father]is like a woman who was carryinga jarwhich was full of meal. While she was walking on a distant road,the handle of the jarbroke;the meal spilled out behind her onto the road.She did not know; she was not awareof the accident. After she came to her house, she put the jardown; she found it empty." It may be our best That is all Thomas gives you. The for parableis not gnostic, not orthosource Jesus's dox, not allegorical, and not clear. But I suspect that upon readingit And one comes as close as a 20th-century it may then readercan to reacting as a firstcentury Galilean peasant would have be. not upon hearing Jesus. Another parableis this, 98: go back to Jesus.There is a fascinatJesus said, "The Kingdomof the Fatheris like a man who ing and tantalizing middle groundin Thomas's sayings, between those wanted to kill a powerful man. He drew the swordin his sayings which most experts would attribute to Jesus and those which house, he thrust it into the wall so that he would know if virtually no one would attribute to Jesus. his hand would stick it Two sayings of Jesus that appear through. Then he killed the in Thomas are of particularinterpowerfulone." est. It is apparent,from the diversity The field of allegoryhere is still wide of interpretations of Jesus'steachopen and you may choose your ings which quickly appearedin the own, but it doesn't seem to me that early church, that he was not allegorywas the intended mode of prone to state things clearly.Mark, response. Note, if you will, Thomin apparentexasperation,concludes as's tendency to introduce parables that Jesus deliberately spoke in para- with the formula, "The Kingdom of bles (meaning riddles)to keep the Father (or, sometimes, "of people from understanding him Heaven") is like a person who...." This introduction is some(Mark4:10-12). As is evident from the synoptics, Christian teachers times found in the synoptics, but more often not. In Thomas, for frequently felt compelled to add allegorical explanations to Jesus's (continued on page 12)

teachings. again,

** SpecialMatthew and SpecialLukeareterms used by scholarsto designatematerialfounduniquely either in Matthew or in Luke.Some expertsbelieve these to havebeen two ancient documentarysources;others disagree,maintainingthat the authorsof Matthewand Lukederivedthis materialfrom oraltradition.

1983 ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER BIBLICAL

9

How

Did

T

the

Gospel

of

heanswer totheabove

question is simple: We don't know. However, with the help of information gleaned from the gospel itself, as well as from other ancient sources, we can offera series of educatedguesses. The prologue to the Gospel of Thomas states: "These are the secret words which the living Jesus spoke and Didymos JudasThomas wrote them down."This alluring declaration- whether or not it contains even the tiniest kernel of historicity-makes it explicit that the Thomas of the book's title is none other than the doubting Apostle of the New Testament. The name Thomas means, in Aramaic, "the twin." Didymos, "twin," is simply its Greek equivalent. Thus, in the Gospel of John,the Apostle Thomas is referredto as "Thomas, called Didymos" (11:16; 20:24), which the RSVtranslates as "Thomas, called the Twin."Was "Thomas"the Apostle's nickname or had it, in the first century A.D.,

become a simple personal name that did not necessarily call to mind its original meaning (in the same way that we take for grantedmodern names such as Victorand Ernest, Angela and Barbara,which have lost their primaryconnotations)?And if this man's nickname was "the Twin,"what, then, did that imply? Of whom was he the twin? Finally, was his twin a true sibling, or someone who merely resembled him physically,or perhapssomeone with whom the Apostle sharedother distinguishing traits or characteristics? A number of early noncanonical Christian sources patently regard "Thomas"to have been a nickname, for they also supply the real name of the Apostle. The historian Eusebius (ca. 263-339), bishop of Caesarea, speaks of "Judas-who

10

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

Thomas

Get

its

Name?

is also called Thomas."The Syriac Doctrine of Addaiuses "Judas Thomas."Yetnowhere in the New Testament is Thomas/Didymos specifically called by the additional name of Judas.Wheredid this "realname" come from? One possibility is that the Apostle who doubted,the one nicknamed "the Twin," was indeed given the name Judasat birth. But then why would Matthew,Mark, Luke, and Johnall have ignored,been unawareof, or suppressedthis detail? Perhapsbecause of the infamy of another Judas?A better possibility is that in ancient Syriac tradition (forEusebius tells us that his data on JudasThomas comes from a Syriacdocument which he himself discoveredin Edessa,now Urfa, in southeastern Turkey)two separatefigures, one, the Apostle Thomas, and the other, a certain Judas,have somehow coalesced. If that is the case, who was this Judas? Here the trail really gets intriguing for historical bloodhounds. John 14:22 mentions a "Judas(not Iscariot)."Both Mark (6:3)and Matthew (13:55)recordthat Jesushad a brothernamed Judas.This brother may be identical with the Judas noted by John;it is impossible to be certain. The various traditionsthat one of the twelve Apostles was nicknamed "the Twin,"that Thomas's real name was Judas,that one of Jesus'sfour brotherswas likewise named Judas- were, at least in the nascent church of Edessa, grafted on to one another until finally they achieved a remarkablefusion in an early third-century Syriac source, the apocryphalActs of Thomas. In this text, the Apostle JudasThomas is identified as the "twin brother of Christ, apostle of the Most High and fellow-initiate into the hidden word of Christ, who dost receive his

secret sayings...." This quote, astonishing in its boldness and redolent with mystery,allows us to catch a glimpse of the ancient tradition underlying the prologue to the Coptic Gospel of Thomas. But how close is the connection between the two texts? The tradition of the Apostle Judas Thomas- twin brother,soulmate, and confidant par excellence of Jesus Christ-is associated preeminently with the third-century apocryphal Acts. Does this date conflict in any way with StevanDavies' conclusion that the Coptic Gospel of Thomas is a first-century collection of reportedsayings of Jesus?Not at all. The "Didymos JudasThomas" tradition may be much older than the text of the SyriacActs of Thomas. Further,the enigmatic prologue might have been prefixed to the Gospel of Thomas long after the sayings were actually brought together. Nor does the fact that the text survives only in Coptic, or that it was discoveredin Egypt,tell us anything about its provenance.The gospel as we have it appearsto be a translation from Greek. And if any of the sayings are authentic-from the lips of Jesushimself--then they were first uttered in good Galilean Aramaic. The question remains: Who compiled and edited the Gospel of Thomas? Wasit the Apostle generally known as Thomas (whatever else one might wish to call him)? I doubt it, and I know that Steve Davies doubts it too. Rather,the venerable(andin this instance, transparent)principle of pseudonymous authorship is at work here. The best way for an author or editor to reach a wide readershipin antiquity was not to sign his own name to his work, but to attribute it to some revered figure from the past instead. From our twentieth-century vantage point, this seems a dishonest and oddly self-abasing practice, a bizarre kind of inside-out plagiarism. But in the ancient world, it was evidently a common and perfectly acceptable custom. (Some examples: the books of Daniel and Enoch, the letters of Peter, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs.)

Ai, r4taq

;ir!P~Cb

.-~

.*

i

-:

rr -%vW AYA P1 ..t ncw d*er* e S1-es intr" 'r7 t0

i

(

4

PlYAeMYou

&

f.l e~SaA.

4d" ct~ s;Ise,

C

e

k f.

reAW p'oryoktvvA~ef cmy'...yrtor *Irt aC

kee '2E4S

w%74 ft. % .

WwyJr.*c e*-w a 49 6 e-"~XOr: br*u at

&,-y NA1

us=try .:-a v, $76firk'l1n4 0-64?-bt.Wrik tW4*~e-rr---

1

)j4cri

*Z~tr

ouw~rcll wtsyalo~y~co.

* ra 6trs,'4totwsw*4~k~scknot xmr tr7 to I~fp M~~UINYC~lkd~i~~n

pi AYA

C

'

rrery?or )L~c(F rreardsese . A* 0 0 0 dwtI Thelast agefo theytGspPelofTho

mas

rInIsttuo fniqWanIhsint N

=,R

C

o

r A-eger

.

#.I

cope

f-

-r

<;g

E

The

last

.

Institute

the

of

pase

the

displaying -

for

title.

Grospel

of

Photo

courtesy

Antiquity

Ohm.

Why,then, did the compiler(s) of these sayings (orat least the author of the prologue)select the particularpseudonym "Thomas"? Again, we can only guess, but it may have to do with the idea that differentcountries, regions, and cities tracedtheir Christian origins to the evangelizing efforts of individual Apostles. The legitimacy of local bishops was thereforegrounded in the influential mechanism of apostolic succession. Similarly,as differentareas came to use and champion differentgospels, each locale may have ascribedits pet gospel to its founding-fatherApostle. The first part of the previous paragraph,alluding to the eagerness of ancient Christian communities to claim and proveapostolic origins,

and

Thjomas,

of

the

Chfistianity

is based on incontestable historical evidence. The second part, connecting locally populargospels to specific Apostles, is a hypothesis. It is an appealinghypothesis, but it may be impossible to prove.If we accept it, however,the suggestion advancedby ProfessorHelmut Koester of HarvardDivinity School-that the Gospel of Thomas may well stem from eastern Syria,where the Apostle Thomas was held in special esteem- makes excellent sense. How did the Gospel of Thomas get its name? We still cannot be certain and the answer may forever elude us, but the question is a detective's delight. Happysleuthing, comrades.

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

BarryHoberman

11

Panoramicview of the Jabalat-Tarif,UpperEgypt,site of the discoveryof the Nag Hammadi codices. Photo by JeanDoresse, courtesy of the Institute forAntiquity and Christianity

example, we find parable96 beginning, "The Kingdomof the Father is like a woman; she took a bit of leaven...,"whereas the synoptic parallelreads "The Kingdomof Heaven is like yeast, which a woman took..." (Matthew 13:33//

Luke13:20[Q]).Again,forthe

parableof the treasure,Thomas 109 has, "The Kingdomis like a man who had a treasure[hidden]in his field...," while Matthew 13:44 has, "The Kingdomof Heaven is like a treasurelying buried...."I think these are significant differences, and examples could be multiplied. Might the Gospel of Thomas here preservean important aspect of the form of Jesus'steachings which became variously alteredin the process of oral and written transmission that led to the synoptics? Did Jesusfocus his parablesupon people (The Kingdomis like a person who...) or upon things (The Kingdom is like a thing which...)? I suspect the formeris true, but that may just be because I preferthe former.(Wehistorians have to be wary of positing a historical Jesus who is basically a reflection of our own thinking!) The Wisdom of Thomas The Gospel of Thomas, like the various texts of the New Testament, does contain something of an overallpoint of view. Certain general themes appearfrequently in the text. I am afraidthat lack of space prohibits my making a carefulargument for my conclusions here. (The argumentis developedin detail in my forthcoming book, The

12

Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom, to be published by Seabury Press in 1983.)However,after long considerationI have concluded that the Gospel of Thomas is principally a remnant of a type of Christianity that was oriented towardthe Jewishwisdom tradition. Accordingto a widespread ancient Near Easternschool of thought, wisdom was considereda kind of semi-autonomous aspect of God, present with God at the time of Creationand active in creation. Wisdom dwelt within wise persons. One of the most common clich6s of the wisdom tradition was that a, or the, principal goal of human life was the seeking and finding of wisdom. In some circles wisdom was thought to permeate the world and to be a kind of divine underpinning of the orderof the universe. In Proverbs, wisdom speaks in the first person, calls to persons, and hides from persons. Such conceptions, I believe, underlie the Gospel of Thomas. Moreover,they are not foreign to the New Testament. Paul says that Christ is the wisdom of God (I Cor. 1:25);the introductorypoem of the Gospel of Johnis about the wisdom of God, utilizing the masculine genderterm logos ratherthan the feminine genderterm sophia (see RaymondBrown'sessay on this matter in his Anchor Bible commentary on John,vol. I). Deriving from Jewish wisdom thinking, Thomas contains significant similarities to conceptions found in Proverbs,the Wisdom of Solomon, and, in some of the gospel's clearly inauthentic sayings,

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

to the speculative writings of Philo. The Gospel of Thomas seems to make two crucial moves within the Jewish wisdom tradition, one with synoptic parallels and one without. Jesus himself, in Thomas, is identified with wisdom. This would have come as no particular surpriseto Paul or Matthew or John; of course, such a move does place Thomas outside Jewish tradition. The new move, the one which I believe is the very core of Thomasine thinking, and which might conceivably have characterizedJesus's own teaching, is the identification of the wisdom of God with the Kingdom of God. That identification does not, to my knowledge, occur in any other ancient Christian or Jewish text. Where wisdom is, the Kingdom is. This, I think, is the key point of Thomasine Christianity. Where is the Kingdom of God? It is present here and now, if you seek it and if you find it. It is also present wherever Jesus is or his words are (a conception not at all alien to most New Testament texts). Formuch of early Christianity and for apocalyptic Judaism,the Kingdom of God is an eschatological term denoting the end time. For Thomas the end time (i.e. the Kingdom)is and has been present. I shall take a closer look here at two sayings in Thomas which stand at (orclose to) the beginning and the end of the gospel. 3 reads: Jesus said, "Ifthe ones who lead you say,'There is the kingdom, in heaven,' then the birds will go first beforeyou into heaven (or-the birds of heaven shall go

beforeyou). If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish shall go beforeyou. Rather,the kingdom is within you and outside you. If you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will know that you are sons of the living Father.But if you do not know yourselves, then you are in poverty and you are poverty!' 113 reads: His disciples said to him, "On what day will the Kingdom come?" (He said,) "It will not come by expectation. They will not say,'Lookhere,' or, 'Lookthere,' but the Kingdom of the Fatheris spreadout on the earth and men do not see it." I find these two sayings rather delightful. Beforegoing into them at any length, some introduction to the first (3)is required.This saying has a history beginning with Deuteronomy 30:10-15, in which the thing that is not to be discovered in the sky or beyond (rather than in) the sea is the Lord's commandment. Job(28:12-15) is a similar passage, but significantly, there the passagehas to do with the discoveryof wisdom. That idea occursalso in Baruch3:29-4:1. (Paul's midrashon the same Deuteronomy passageis purely Christological. There it is Christ who is not to be sought in the sky or sea; Rom. 10:5-10.) Thomas 3, then, does not come out of the blue but from a tradition of exegesis of Deuteronomy 30:10-15. Nowhere in that tradition is it suggested that the Kingdomof the Fatheris to be sought at all, yet this is the theme of Thomas. The compiler of Thomas considers the Kingdomand wisdom to be equivalent terms, and reinterpretstraditional material accordingly(orretains a saying of Jesus). In both 3 and 113 contrary opinions are stated and refuted: opinions that the Kingdomis in the sky, or in the sea (i.e., abovethe world or below the world),or that the Kingdomis to come at the future end of time, are rejected.The Kingdomis not in another place nor at a future time- it is here now.

Thomas

is

a

Christianity the Jewish

remnant

that

of

a

type

oriented

was

wisdom

of toward

tradition.

People are expected to find the Kingdomin their own world, to see it spreadout upon the earth, to recognize it outside themselves and discoverit within themselves. The wisdom of God underlies the creation and operationof the world and is, at least potentially, within every individual. Discovery of that which is within oneself, then, is not the discoveryof some kind of gnostic godstuffbut the discoveryof the divine wisdom that is also spreadout upon the world. What if you do not discover the Kingdom?Then you are in the impoverishment that you in fact are, lacking what might enrich you. There is a connection between the latter part of 3 and Paul's comments in Galatians 4:4-9, where he says that the spirit dwelling within you makes you a son of God, whereby you come to be known by God. In Thomas, of course, the Kingdom (wisdom)within you allows you to discoverthat you are a son of the living Father,and to be known by God. Paul equates failure in this regardwith being underthe influence of impoverishedspirits; Thomas equates it with being impoverished. The foregoinginterconnections between texts are somewhat beside the point. Thomas claims the Kingdomfor the world here and now. Other sayings reinforcethat theme. Forexample, in searchingfor wisdom one must find Jesus,who is Wisdom incarnate (cf. sarx as used in 28). He is both beyond the world and within it, creative in regardsto the world, illuminative in regards to mankind. And so, we get a saying like 77: Jesus said, "Iam the light which is aboveall of them, I am the All; the All came forthfromme

whom all things came forth. His wisdom permeatesthe world.Where wisdom is not, is nowhere. The Wisdomof Solomon speaks similarly of wisdom herself. "For Wisdom is more mobile than any motion; because of her purity she pervadesandpenetratesall things. Forshe is a breathof the powerof God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nothing defiled gains entranceinto her. Forshe is a reflection of eternallight, a spotless mirrorof the working of God, and an image of his goodness"(Wisdomof Solomon 7:22-27). This is the wisdom that Jesusis, andthat the Kingdom is, in the Gospel of Thomas. The dual equation of Jesuswith wisdom, and Kingdomwith wisdom, is occasionally reflectedquite clearly in the sayings in Thomas. Accordingto Thomas 91, some people requestedJesusto "Tellus who you areso that we canbelievein you." Jesusresponded,"Youreadthe face of the heavens andof the earth,yet you havenot recognizedthat which is right in front of you and you do not know how to readthis very moment."Fromthe characteristic viewpoint of the Gospel of Thomas, this question is an invalid Christological query.Youought not look to Jesusas a leaderorguide;look instead to what is rightin frontof you. The presentmoment, the presentworld, is the goalof the quest, andthe significant act is that of perceivingit properly.Here,in 91, a question about Jesusis turnedaroundtowardan examination of space and timeleading to here and now. Do wehavein Thomasawisdombased Christology?In a curious way, the answer must be yes andno. In a generalsense, yes. Whatwisdom

and the All reached me. Split wood, I am there; lift the stone up, you will find me there." This is the wisdom of God, from

is, Jesus is. But in a more exact sense the answer must be no, for there is absolutely no Christology, properly so called, in Thomas. The

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

13

wordChrist does not appearthere; neither do the titles Savior,Messiah, Son of God, Son of David or Son of Man. The last expression does occur once in the general sense of "humanbeing," in 86: Jesus said, "[Thefoxes have]h[oles] and the birdshave [their]nests, but the Son of Man does not have any place to lay his head and to rest."It is rather odd that Thomas contains none of the manifold Christological titles of the other Christian traditions. Even the Nag Hammadi gnostic texts contain repeateduses of the whole familiar gamut of titles. The Gospel of Thomas, then, conceivably originatedat a time and place where such titles were not yet in common use among followers of Jesus. What is the date of the Gospel of Thomas? This is an almost impossible question to answer,but one can venture an intelligent guess. It representsthe same genre of Christian literatureas Q, and seems to stem from a time priorto the writing of narrativegospels and formal literarytracts. Most scholars believe that the inception of such forms terminatedthe age of simple collections of sayings and miracles. Nothing has seriously distorted or transformedthose sayings in Thomas which have parallels in the synoptic gospels. In fact, overall, Thomas shows fewer signs of editorial modification than any of the New Testament gospels. Thomas contains none of the Christological developments introducedby New Testament authors. Its wisdombased conceptions are derivednot fromphilosophical systematization but from the simple equation of Jesuswith wisdom, and of wisdom with the Kingdomof God. This wisdom-oriented Christianity began to crystallize very early on, but its precise origins are lost in the mists prior to the time when Paul declared Christ to be the wisdom of God. Both the synoptic gospels and the Q document contain more than a trace of wisdomrelated speculation regarding Jesus. The simplest hypothesis concerning the date of the Gospel of Thomas is that it emerged at about the same

14

time as the Q document, roughly

between 45 and 70 A.D.

Wemust not think that the Gospel of Thomas is alwaysa more accuratesource than the synoptic gospels when it comes to preserving genuine sayings of Jesusof Nazareth. Thomas includes some sayings obviously invented by later Christians, and other sayingsto which the New Testament versions are undoubtedlysuperior.But often, when sayings occur both in the synoptics and in Thomas, and when a clear decision can be made as to probable genuineness, preferencegoes to Thomas's version. The Gospel of Thomas creates or exacerbatesa greatmany literary, historical, and theological problems. These cannot be wished away by denigratingThomas as "gnostic."They can be banished by accepting only canonical, "divinely inspired"writings as relevantto Christian concern, but then one is still left with the awkwardexistence of sayings of Jesuswhich are not "inspired." The difficulties presentedby Thomas are, in more than the usual clich6d sense of the word, opportunities. In recent years, many scholars have come to conclude that one of the crucial sayings of Jesus is Luke 17:20: "Youcannot tell by observations when the Kingdomof God comes. There will be no saying, 'Look,here it is!' or 'Thereit is!' for in fact, the Kingdomof God is within (or "in the midst of")you."If this saying goes back to Jesus, then it is probablyfrom Jesushimself that much of the Gospel of Thomas ultimately derives. If not, then not. The Gospel of Thomas was buriedawayfor 1600 years and has been wished awayfor another30. It should now be taken very seriously. Not only is it a fourth synoptic gospel-it is a Q, too. Acknowledgment This article was written during a seminar sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities at Duke University, Durham, NC, summer 1982.

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

Suggestions for FurtherReading There are a number of good English translations of the Coptic Gospel of Thomas. The translations used in this article are those of David R. Cartlidge,whose complete rendering of Thomas can be found in David L. Dungan and David R. Cartlidge, Sourcebook of Textsfor the Comparative Study of the Gospels, 3rd ed. (Sourcesfor Biblical Study 1, Society of Biblical Literature,1973), PartII,pp. 177-94. Formany years, the best known translation was that of A. Guillaumont, H. C. Puech, G. Quispel, W Till, and Y. Abd al-Masih, The Gospel According to Thomas (Leiden:E. J.Brill/New York:Harper& Brothers, 1959). Now, however,translations of all the Nag Hammadi documents are available in a single volume, the Coptic Gnostic LibraryProject'sThe Nag Hammadi Libraryin English, James M. Robinson, General Editor (San Francisco:Harper& Row,1977). Thomas O. Lambdin'sexcellent renderingof the Gospel of Thomas appearson pp. 118-30. Other reliable translations exist, but the three listed here share the virtue of combining accuracywith accessibility. All three are recommended with confidence.

A

No

The

such

cycle

ofJesusare parables

Cycle

of

Jesus's

of parables I believe that

often taken one at a time and savoredas though each contained a specific correlated message with, but significantly differentfrom, his other parables.When a scholar or theologian accepts a series of New Testament parablesas authentic and groupsthem together into one or several sets, he or she will generally do this to reflect varyingideological themes presumed to lie behind those sets. Such a set or collection of parables,as I define it, is a set of parablesbound together by a close similarity of both style and ideology, so that the members of that set of parablesare slightly differentways of saying the same thing. No such cycle of parablesof Jesus is now known. I believe that one exists, and that it can be discoveredthrough carefulutilization of the synoptics along with the Gospel of Thomas. First, some methodological comments: when versions of parablesshow obvious signs of having been commingled with other material or show signs of having been tendentiously revised, such versions will be considered inferior;when a parableis missing an element which its parallelhas, and which the cycle has, that element shouldbe consideredoriginal; finally, when in doubt about explanatoryconclusions, those conclusions should be omitted. The ruling supposition here, common among New Testament scholars, is that most of the genuine parablesof Jesuswere short, direct, and non-

of one

Parables Jesus

is

now

known.

exists.

allegorical.The parablesin question should be familiar to most people: the parablesof The Pearl,The Treasure,The Lost Sheep, and The Fishing Net. To the best of my knowledge, only the first two have ever been consideredclosely similar. The parableof The Pearlin Matthew 13:45-46 reads,"The Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls,who, on finding one pearl of greatvalue, went and sold all that he had and bought Lukelacks this parable.In Thomas it!'." the parable,76, reads, "The Kingdom of the Fatheris like a merchant who had many goods. He discovered a pearl.The clever merchant sold his goods and bought the pearl for himself." Frankly,I don't see much significant differencebetween these parables.Given the exigencies of oral and textual transmission, and the fact of the translationof Thomas from Greek into Coptic, I think they may be said to be the same. Whatevertendentiousness one might think the Matthean or Thomasine version contains can be expungedby the creation of a neutral version. Matthew favors"the Kingdomof Heaven"and Thomas, usually but not always, "the Kingdomof the Father."Let's arbitrarilygo with Matthew -although whether Jesus used "heaven"or "father"is undoubtedly an interesting question. The parableof The Treasureis quite differentin Matthew and Thomas. Lukehas no parallel.In Matthew we read, 13:44, "The Kingdomof Heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man

found and coveredup; then in his joy he went and sold all that he had and bought that field."In Thomas, on the other hand, we find, 109, "The Kingdom is like a man who had a treasurehidden in his field without knowing it. After he died he left it to his son. His son did not know about it and took the field and he sold it. The one who bought it went plowing and found the treasure. He began to lend money to whomever he wished." Not only is this entirely differentthan the version in Matthew,but it contradictsThomas's saying 95, "Ifyou have money, do not lend it expecting interest, but give it to those from whom you cannot expect it back" (cf. Luke 6:34-35). Joachim Jeremiassolved this problem when he noticed that Thomas's parableof The Treasure had been conflated with a rabbinic parable,Midrash Canticles 4:12. Hence the Thomas version must be considered inferiorto Matthew's. The only element of the Thomas parablewhich merits our attention is the opening phrase, which is basically in accordwith all the superiorversions of parablesin the cycle, i.e., "The Kingdom is like a person who...." Matthew's version of the parable of The Fishing Net shows every sign of majorMatthean redaction. Such favoritethemes of Matthew as the separationof the good from the wicked and the "place of wailing and gnashing of teeth" areparamount.His version (13:47-49) reads, "The Kingdom of Heaven is like a net which was thrown into the

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

15

sea and gatheredfish of every kind; when it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers but threw awaythe bad. So it will be at the close of the age. The angels will come out and separatethe evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire; there men will weep and gnash their teeth." In Thomas, the parable(8)is clean and short: "The man is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea and drew it up from the sea full of small fish. Among them the wise fisherman found a fine big fish. That wise fisherman threw back all the small fish into the sea and without regretchose the big fish."I see no reason to do other than opt for the Thomasine version, simply because it is relatively clearcut and in accordwith The Pearl and The Treasure.Gilles Quispel wrote an essay on this parablein the EranosJahrbuchvol. 38, showing that the Thomasine version was attested in ancient texts and hence should have a strong claim to authenticity.But this hardlyseems necessary to demonstrate (howevernice the confirmation is), for Matthew's version is filled with Matthew's own personal concerns, while the version in Thomas is not tendentious. It should, of course, be clear that the opening of Thomas's version is mistaken-nowhere else in the four synoptics does any parable begin, "The man is like...," and every saying from Thomas 5 through 8 is muddled. (They seem to have been copied by a sleepy scribe.) Finally,both LukeandMatthew (andthus Q) contain the parableof The Lost Sheep. Luke'sversion (15:4-7) is, What person of you, having a hundredsheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his neighbors, saying to them, "Rejoicewith me, for I have found my sheep which was lost." Even so, I tell

16

you, there will be more joy in heaven overone sinner who repentsthan overninety-nine righteouspersonswho need no repentance. The parablein Matthew (18:1214) is similar: What do you think? If a man has a hundredsheep, andone of them has goneastray,does he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills andgoin searchof the one that went astray?And if he finds it, truly,Isayto you, he rejoicesoverit morethan over the ninety-nine that neverwent astray.So it is not the will of my Fatherwho is in heaventhat one of these little ones should perish. This versionhas clearconnections with the Luke version. Both, however,seem superficially to be wholly apartfrom the parable cycle that we are attempting to reconstruct. InThomas the parableis quite different.Here we read, 107, The Kingdomis like a shepherd who had a hundredsheep. Whenone of them went astray, the largest,he left behind the otherninety-nine andsought for the largestuntil he found it. Havingexhaustedhimself he said to the sheep, "Ilove you morethanthe otherninety-nine." Of the four parableswe are considering,this is clearlythe least well transmitted by all sources. To beginwith, all threearedefectivein their beginnings and all three differ,with Thomas alone retaining anything like usual parablestyle. Thomas, at least, reads,"TheKingdom is like," and this may be expanded,conjecturally,to "the Kingdomof Heavenis like... ."This

parableaccordingly.Matthew does likewise, butfocuses more attention upon the rejoicing of the Father (identified allegorically with the shepherd),while Lukefocuses upon general rejoicing in Heaven. Thomas has none of this "rejoicing,"although his conclusion regarding"more love" is not too dissimilar.Still, significantly,Thomas does not allegorize the Lost Sheep into a sinner.This parable'sconclusion in Thomas is more vague than that of Luke and Matthew, yet it strikes me as tendentious, redundant,and out of accordwith the general simplicity found in the majority of Jesus'sparables.To simplify matters, it is probablybest to strike the conclusions of all three Lost Sheep parables. Now, perhaps, we are able to reconstruct a cycle of four parables, one equivalent in Matthew and Thomas (The Pearl),one superior in Matthew (The Treasure),and two superior in Thomas (The Fishing Net and The Lost Sheep). It is, of course, highly significant that Special Matthew groups three of these parablestogether (Matthew 13:44-49). FavoringThomas's practice and Matthew's terminology, let's assume that the beginning of parableswas, "The Kingdom of Heaven is like a person who...." The wordingis imprecise-revise as you wish-but the cycle can be reconstructed roughly as follows: 1. The Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant with many goods who discovereda valuable pearl. He sold all his goods and bought that pearl. 2. The Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who found a treasure hidden in a field. He found it, and coveredit up, and then sold all that

conjecture receives support from the fact that 109, two sayingslater, begins similarly, "The Kingdom is like," and, as this is atypical in Thomas, we can assume that either "of Heaven" or "oftheFather"has dropped out of both parables. The two Q versions of The Lost Sheep are highly tendentious insofar as they clearly allegorize the parable. Luke's version simply equates the Lost Sheep with a sinner and presents the

he had to buy that field. 3. The Kingdom of Heaven is like a fisherman who cast his net

BIBLICAL 1983 ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER

into the sea and pulled it from the sea full of small fish. Among the small fish he found a fine big fish. He threw the small fish back into the sea and kept the fine big fish. 4. The Kingdom of Heaven is like a shepherd who had a hundred sheep. When the largest of them went astray he left behind the

other ninety-nine and sought for the largest until he found it. These are, obviously, carefully I I selected reconstructionsof parables; -At not one exists anywhere in the tradition in the loosely reconstructed form just given. Details 4," can be revised here and there- as indeed they were, I feel, by those who carriedthe parabletradition in the first century- but, by and large,I suspect that the cycle of parablesgiven aboverepresentsa single set of coherent teachings which probablygoes back to Jesus. 'r " I$r~ C t i ', 4" ,,N,~1 . . What I have done is to create a system, a cycle of parablesrather than a mere groupingor collection. The system has been creatednot by the creation of detail but by the blurringof detail. I have made basic selections from Matthew, Luke re ho *as. t and Thomas on what I believe are Y Y ' I'ia' T.t unobjectionable methodological grounds. Does this cycle of parables representthe teaching of Jesus? Perhapsso- these four parables are almost universally attributedto him. The cycle is neither biblical nor Thomasine but a combination of those sources, a utilization of the full synoptic set. If this cycle derives from Jesus, then we can be more confident that he intended to focus his teachings upon both sudden discoveryand relinquishment of the nsteitute goods for the sake of attaining forpAtiquity something greater.The latter theme is ubiquitous in Jesus'steachings. The formeris a bit less common and and Christianity a bit more mysterious.Whatexactly is it that is to be found?What is like the pearl, the treasure,the fish, the sheep? Is it the Kingdomof Heaven? I don'tthink so, not if I have I cannot claim that the cycle correctlyreconstructedthese parables, person'sevent of discovery. of as I present it here is in I it to as believe If Thomas their parables is, opening phrases. especially any way precise. But that the cycle Their emphasis is not upon the great be, a set of sayings frequently trumpeting the theme that God's wisdom exists at all, or,rather,that it can be thing found but upon the discoverer. fills the world and is availablefor reconstructed,points to the exciting The Kingdom of Heaven is not like a fit these human possibilitythat the Gospelof Thomas, but or fish parables discovery, sheep pearl, treasure, utilized in concert with the other well with that theme. As Thomas like the person who discovers these synoptics, can revealaspects of the emphasizes seeking and finding, so things. The Kingdom of Heaven is mothe focus do these teachings of Jesuswhich previous like a person who finds the great upon parables The of ment generationsdid not perceive. it for what however, it fact, and discovery. recognizes thing that they fit well with the themes is, and who puts aside or dispenses of Thomas does not mean that they with other things. The focus here not even is not upon the thing, requirea Thomasine explanation, upon StevanDavies the person, exactly, but upon a only that they allow one. -.

0

,10

'

L'y.

Yv

,PM

q:- I L

r

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

17

International

The

Institute

for

Mesopotamian Area

Home

Studies

Seminar

Program LANGUAGE

ARCHAEOLOGY

RELIGION

HISTORY

LITERATURE

ART

FORDETAILS ANDA FREECOURSE CATALOG: NAME STREET CITY STATE

ZIP

HOMESEMINARPROGRAM POB787 CA90265 MALIBU,

18

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

The lot (puru)of Iahali.

The

P

First

by William W. Hallo icturethis:anewadmini-

stration comes to town. It is headed by a man in whom the entire country places great confidence, for he promises not only to introduce vigorous new policies but also to appoint energetic, effective lieutenants. He selects these assistants from among the leading military, financial and religious figures of the country,thus both pleasing his constituents and securing his base of support.Am I alluding to Washington,D.C., in 1981 A.D.? Hardly!I am referringto Kalah,capital of Assyria, in 858 B.C.! At that time, some 2840 years

ago, a new king became the third in the long succession of Assyrian monarchs to adopt the resounding throne-name of Salmaneser.Salmaneser IIIwas destined for greatness: He reigned an almost unprece-

dented thirty-five years (amonghis 100-oddpredecessors,only seven are recordedas ruling longer than this); he extended the Assyrian bordersby dint of nearly continuous conquests, carryingout a kind of manifest destiny that saw Assyrian arms push everfurther westward; and he broughtAssyria into its first direct conflict with the army of Israelat the battle of Qarqarin 853 B.c. (Hallo 1960: 37-41).

Yet beforehe could undertake all these great steps Salmaneser had to attend to some domestic business. Since its beginnings, Assyria used a peculiar calendarin which the years were designated, not by the number of a continuous era as in our own present system, nor by the regnalyear of the current king, as in ancient Israel,nor even by an outstanding event of the

precedingyear,as in early Babylonia, but ratherby personal names. The rosterbegan with the king himself, followed by the grandeeshe had selected to serve in his cabinet, and then by the governorsof all the far-flungprovinces of the empire (Pritchard1969: 274). The orderin which the individual ministers and governorssucceeded each other was determined (at least originally)by lot, and if a king lived long enough, each official could anticipate having his name immortalized in the calendar. SalmaneserIIIdid even better.In the thirtieth yearof his reign, he observeda kind of jubilee and, having run through the rosterof his assistants, he started overagain. The famous Black Obelisk with the latest edition of his annals indicates this process. The inscrip-

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

19

tion includes the recordsnot only of his furthermilitary encounters with the western alliance (in the years 849, 848 and 845 B.c.), but

also of the submission of Israelin 841 B.c. along with what is gener-

ally regardedas a relief of King Jehu prostratinghimself before the Assyrian monarch--the first portrait of a historical figurefrom the Bible.1The text concludes: "Inmy thirty-firstyear (i.e., 828 B.C.),I cast the lot for the second time in front of the gods Ashur and Adad." And at the same time his ministers cast lots to determine the order in which they would serve to name the years remainingto the long-lived king. (Schramm 1973: 95f. thinks the orderwas alreadyfixed, but that the officials went through the motions anyway.) By one of those rarechances that characterizearchaeology the lot of one minister has survived. And not only has it survived, but it has been secured by the YaleBabylonian Collection, one of the world's greatrepositories of cuneiform inscriptions. Because I have the privilege of caringfor this Collection, I am able to show you this lot (orrathera cast of it) and to readit to you. The lot is a simple little cube, inscribed on four sides. In the native Akkadian the text reads:Ashshur belu rabh, Adad belu rabh,phru sha Iahili abarakkurabh sha Shulmanu-asharid shar mat Ashshur, shakin mati al Kibshhni, mat Qumeni, mat Mehrani,mat Uqu, mat erinni, rabi kA7ri-inalimeshu phirishuebar mat Ashshur lishir lidmiq, ina pan Ashshur Adad phrshu lidda. This may be translated: "Oh Assur the greatlord, oh Adad the great lord, the lot of Iahali the grand vizier of Salmaneser king of Assyria, governor-of-theland (for) the city of Kibshuni (in) the land of Qumeni, the land of Mehrani, Uqu and the Cedar Mountain, and minister of trade-in his year assigned to him by lot may the harvest of the land of Assyria prosper and thrive, in front of the gods Assur and Adad may his lot fall." (Cf. Michel 1949: 261-64; for the latest transliteration and transla-

20

abarakku,which I have loosely renderedby "(grand)vizier."Of that of those rare one more presently.The other is the concluding wish: "in front of the chances that chargods Assur and Adad may his lot fall."Although the verb translated acterize archae"to fall" is only partially preserved, its restorationis reasonablycertain. the lot of The use of lots for a variety of legal one minister has and commercial purposes is well attested in every period of ancient survived. Mesopotamian history,and the typical verbused in all these contexts, tion see Kessler 1980.2) in Sumerianas well as in both Quite a mouthful for this little dialects of Akkadian, is one of the object. But although the medium many terms for "to fall" or "to is unusual, the message is clear.The throw." Thus, for example, it was cusgrandvizier Iahali appealsto two of the leading deities of the Assyrian tomary in Babylonia,when a person died intestate, to divide the pantheon as had his sovereign beforehim. And his prayerwas inheritance among the eligible heirs by lot. This was expressedin granted-at least in part.We know that the fourth year of Salmaneser's Sumerianas "they made the division (of the property)and cast lots (to "second term" (like the 25th of his distribute it)" (i-ba-e-ne gishfirst) was named afterIahali. Howshub-ba i-shub-bu-ne: CAD I 198d), ever,we cannot say that this fourth and in the Babyloniandialect of yearwas thriving or prosperous.In Akkadian as either "they have cast fact, Assyria was by then in revolt, and the great king died beforethe lots, they have divided (the propyearwas over.But Iahali himself erty)"(isqa iddfzzizh: CAD I 199a and M 2:33b), or "the share that survived,to serve the king's son and successor as vizier or perhaps falls to him by lot" (zittu isiqshu even as commander-in-chief(tartaimaqqutu: ibid.). One of the earliest Assyrian references,in the connu rabh; cf. KAV75) and to give his name to yet another year,the new text of a commercial transaction, third mentions that a salesman is in(821 king's B.C.). While I do not want to turn this structed to "divide that merchandise article into a lesson in Assyrian, into two (parts)and (thereafter) two words or phrasesfrom the little cause the lots to fall" (phirishashqitamma; Lewy 1938). Finally,Salinscription are worth bearingin mind. The first is lahali's title, maneser himself used still another synonym when he "cast the lot for the second time" (shanhdteshu puru... akruru:CAD K 209aj. All these parallelssupporttL:' suggestion that our text too concluded with a form of the verb "to fall."Moreover,these options offera

By

ology,

Glass dice from Babylon.

BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

clue to the technique involved: Presumably the inscribed lots were thrown, either by their owners or by an impartial third party, and priority was established by the location in which they fell. In the case of Iahali, perhaps the lot which fell closest to the statues of the gods Assur and Adad took first place. Another theory concerning the manner in which lots were cast

has been proposedby the dean of German Assyriologists, W von Soden. He notes a revealingpassage near the beginning of the Epic of Atrahasis, the earliest Babylonian story of the flood, which when put into English from his original German translation, readsapproximately as follows: "The gods seized the lot-bottle by its neck, cast the lot, and divided (the universe)" (kutam ihuzu letisha/isqam iddzi ilh izz-zu; Soden 1978: 55; 1971: 100 and 1969: 421). In other words, the lots were placed in a jug with a long neck or a spout (which, in another context3 has even been comparedto the trunk of an elephant!) and then shaken out one by one, so that the first place went to the lot that fell out first. (Cf. alreadyMichel 1949: 263f., n. 8 for which von Soden 1969: 421, n. 1, claims credit.) And one more theory for your consideration. The word for "lot" in the oldest cuneiform sources, that is, in Sumerian,has a transparent etymology. It is called "wood that is thrown"(gish-shub-ba),and is equated in standardAkkadian with a term whose etymology suggests "allotment," "assignment," or even "tally-stick" (isqu)which is "notched" (ussuqu) when apportioning lots.4 But twice in our little cube, and elsewhere in the Assyrian dialect, the word for lot is puru -and this term has no such clear etymology. (A derivation from Hittite pul-- "lot"-is unlikely, since that is not attested until later; cf. Friedrich 1954-56.) One theory that has some merit is to derive this specific Assyrian term from an old Sumerian word for bowl (bur;cf. Hallo 1962: 12, n. 94; Salonen 1966: 79). Wehave a good idea of what such bowls looked like because surviving examples are identified by precisely this designation in their votive inscriptions. They are either round, deep bowls (Hallo 1962: 41 sub Anonymous 8) or wide, shallow platters (Sollberger and Kupper 1971 sub III B 2a, as far as they are not so fragmentary as to preclude a reconstruction cf. YOS 9:11: RA 41: 27: AO 15393 and 16651, or simply unavailable in photograph

An inscribed bowl (puru)found at Lagash.

form cf. Hallo 1961 sub Rim-Sin 20). If this etymology is correct, we may state that the lots took their (Assyrian)name from such a "fishbowl," and that they were thrown from it one by one, perhaps by the king or by a person blindfolded for the purpose. Regardlessof the theory that may eventually carrythe day,one thing is certain: The technique of casting lots was equally well known in biblical Israel (Lindblom 1962). The Bible has numerous idioms for the use of lots, and most of them employ one of the several verbs meaning "to throw" (YDD, NPL, SHLK,YRH; but cf. also cLH for the scapegoat and YS' for the assignment of tribal lanas). And the Bible recordsmany different uses for such casting of lots, from the division of the Promised Land among the twelve tribes by Joshua, to the finding of the culprit in the tale of Jonah,to the gambling for the garment of the condemned man in Psalm 22- an image taken overby the Gospels in connection with the crucifixion (Matt. 27:35; Mark 15:24; Luke 23:34; John 19:24). The noun for "lot" in all these and numerous other passages is gdral, a word which originally meant sim-

ply "stone, pebble" and which ultimately came to signify "fate, destiny,"much like the English equivalent (lot) or for that matter the Sumerian and Babylonianones as well. There is, however,one biblical book which employs, not this usual Hebrew noun for lot, but ratherthe Assyrian wordphr(u). Forin the Scroll of Esther3:7 we read,following the text of the Septuagint: "In the twelfth year of King Ahasueros, in the first month, i.e., the month Nissan, one cast the phr, i.e., the lot, in the presence of Haman, day by day and month by month (LXX: and the lot fell on the fourteenth5 day of) the twelfth month, i.e., the month of Adar."Laterin the same book (9:26)we read:"Therefore they called these daysPurim, after the word (or:on account of the) pur." Wehave moved a good bit in time and space-from the ninth century and Kalah,one of the capital cities of Assyria, to the fifth century and Susa, one of the capital cities of Persia.And the purposeof the lottery has changed -from fixing the calendarof the Assyrians to fixing a date for the destruction of the Jewsof the Persian

BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

21

millennium. Such cubes look exactly like modern dice, except that their purpose dots are not (normally)arrangedin the modern fashion where opposite the sides alwaysaddup to seven (Dales of the to 19687;this becomes normative at least as early as Islamic times; of the for the destruction Rosenthal 1975: 35). Similar discoveries have been made in Palestinian excavations as well, for example at Gaza by Sir Flinders Petrie (1931 Empire.But the terminology and pl. xxiii; 1933 pl. xxviii; 1934 pls. the underlying technique remain the xxiv and xxxvi) and at Tell Beit same: one casts the lots called phr Mirsim by W E Albright, in connection with nine other gaming pieces or,in the plural,purim. And the festival of the fourteenth of Adar that almost certainly called for a observed the fifteenth, (originally gameboard.8Albright calls his today as Shushan Purim)takes its piece a "teetotum" ratherthan a die, A because like those from Gaza it is name, we are told, from this very word for lots. shaped like a truncated four-sided That explanation will have to do pyramidand is numbered with for us too, for none of the many from one to four dots only (on the alternatives offeredduring a century four sides), and one dot on the top of the most ingenious scholarly face. (He derives this form from detective work is more convincing. Egyptwhence, he says, it was (Forsurveysof these theories see, presumably borrowedalso into e.g., Gaster 1969: 831f. and 874f. Greece.) notes 11-13; Besser 1969, esp. 38f.) B In any case, such finds occur Such alternatives include various farin Palestinian excavations only in fetched comparisons as those with early second millennium strata, Dice recoveredat TepeGawra. the Greek festival of Pithoigia that is, long before the Israelite (Paton1908: 77-94), with the conquest and settlement. Instead Hittite festival of purulli (Del Medof dice with dots on them, the later in the text of Esther-on support ico 1965: 255f.), and with the excavations in Israelhave turned the contrary,that text is robbedof Romanfestival of Feralia(Greek its raison d'&treif it is not seen as up potsherds with names. These as well as the and sufficient phournikilia; ibid.), justifica- so-called ostraca have been discovnecessary the inherently more plausible theory tion for the institution of the ered at such locations as Aradand Masada. Those from Aradare festival. The only solid evidence of Julius Lewy,describedas "probthought by the excavator,the late (outside the Scroll of Esther)for the ably the most skillful" of these YohananAharoni, to have "served observanceof a festival having constructions (Besser1969: 39), as lots for the priestly terms such as which derives the festival from the anything in common with Purim is indicated in the Bible for the the allusion in IIMaccabees (15:36) Persianfestival of Farwadigan to "Mordecai'sDay" which is celeJerusalemsanctuary"(Aharoni 1968: (Lewyr939).Theproblemis that bratedon the fourteenth of Adar. each of these alleged precedents 11 and 29 fig. 17; cf. 1969: 32 and Thus the biblical derivationof the rests on little more than a dubious figs. 53f.; note that the captions are inadvertently reversed).9At name of the festival from the lots assonance, and none of them has called phr remains the best availMasada,Yigael Yadinarguedthat anything in the least to do with the some ostraca served to establish the what I hold in and hands it is of lots. There able, true, my is, casting are (in replica)the oldest-indeed one furthercandidatethat I am order in which the desperate defendthe only-lots of this name yet ers agreed to carry out their suicide tempted to put forwardwith all recoveredby archaeology,the first due reserve,namely the Hittite pact (Yadin 1966), a view vigorously Purim. "festivalof the lot " (EZENpulash; challenged in other quarters (WeissFriedrich1954-56), but we know Rosmarin 1967, esp. p. 7).1o In They arenot, it is true, the oldest lots ever turned up by excava- classical Greece, such ostraca were nothing more about this relatively minor holiday than that it was listed tion. The cube as a device for playing used to vote unpopular leaders into our term "to ostracize." exile-hence games of chance has been traced among other festivals celebrated But the Greeks also were well back to the Indus Valleyculture of both in autumn and in spring,in the Hittite capital (Hattushash)and acquainted with the technique of prehistoricPakistan,and it was borrowedfrom there by Mesopotaalso in the provinces (Nerik)."And casting or rolling dice. Though they attributed the invention of dice mia beforethe end of the third even this candidatecan find no

The

of

the

lottery

fixing changed-from

Assyrians

fixing

has calendar a date

Jews

of the Persian Empire.

22

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

(along with the alphabet)variously to the Egyptiangod Toth or to the Phoenician Palamedes son of Naupolis, they themselves have left us the first discussion of loaded dice (in the Problemata of Hero; Brumbaugh 1966: 24f., 73f). And they furnished post-biblical Hebrew with its various words for dice (qubid from Greekkubera;pispds or psipds frompsephos- strictly a round pebble; tipas or from tipips the that Hebrew suggesting tupos),• wordg6orahad become too sacred to use for gambling in the language of Mishna and Gemara.If therefore the late biblical text of Esther alreadyavaileditself of another foreign word for lot, and even explained the origin of the festival of Purim by it, this was quite in line with later usage. I am not, of course, suggesting that the use of pebbles or dice was totally unknown in Israel,whether for divination or for gambling. The use of the Urim and Thummim has long been recognized as a form of divination by means of a pair of stones distinguished by their marking (Hallo 1972) and hence comparable to the Babyloniantechnique of psephomancy (Reiner1960, esp. p. 25). As for gambling, the combination of evidence alreadyadduced indicates that, at least in its pervasive form of rolling dice for money or other valuables, it was typically regardedas a foreignvice (Cohn 1971, with bibliography).Biblical law did not bother to proscribeit or to list it among the many other alien abominations catalogued in Leviticus or Deuteronomy.Talmudic law also toleratedit, although the rabbiscondemned such gambling in general and even found a Psalm passage to back them up (Braude 1959: 363f. to Psalm 26:912). Certainly one form of dice has a legitimate place in Jewish life to this day. I am referring to the dreidel, that four-sided spinning top associated with the innocent games of another popular holiday, perhaps related to Purim in origin, namely Hannuka. (For the possible connection, see Del Medico 1965.) Its four sides are inscribed with the Hebrew letters N, G, H, SH, and

these are interpretedas an acronym fornes gad61hayashim, "a greatmiracle happenedthere," i.e., in Israelat the time of the Maccabees. (ModernIsraelis emend this to "a great miracle happened here.")But ihe real significance of *theletters is in Yiddishwhere they stand for nichts, ganz or gib, halb and shtell or shenk, i.e., "nothing, all (orpay),half, pay up," that is, instructions for a game of chance. That this device too was borrowedfrom the outside world, in this case Christian Europe,is clear to me from a fact never before(to

earlier.So even that most Jewish of dice, the dreidel,has a foreignorigin. But let us leave Hannuka aside and returnto Purim. Does the physical recoveryof the oldest pur, the first Purim, somehow help to establish the historical authenticity of the story of Mordecai?Does it solve or at least ease what GeorgeMendenhall has called the "prodigious...difficulties in the Book of Esther"(1973: 101)? My answeris an emphatic no! Along with Jonah,Daniel and Ecclesiastes, Estherremains what the late Elias J.Bickerman(1967)

Dice and gamingpieces found at Gaza by SirFlinders Petrie. Courtesyof the Petrie Museum, Department of Egyptology UniversityCollege, London.

my knowledge)noted by authorities on such matters,12a namely the priorexistence of the identical game in Latin guise. The Oxford Universal Dictionary (1955 edition) defines what Albright referredto as the "teetotum" as 'A small four-sided disk or die having an initial letter inscribed on each of its sides, and a spindle passing down through it by which it could be twirled or spun with the fingers like a small top, the letter which lay uppermost, when it fell, deciding the fortune of the player.....Theletters were originally the initials of Latin words, viz. T totum, A aufer,D depone, N nihil.'3 Laterthey were the initials of English words, T take-all, H half, N nothing, P put down."Describing the game, the English word is tracedback to 1753 and, in the sense of the device with which it was played,to 1720; but the Latin totum had both meanings much

called one of "fourstrangebooks of the Bible."Recent researchhas removedsome of the mystery surroundingit, but at the same time it has tended to confirm what has ! alwaysbeen intuitively sensed: that the Scroll of Estheris not history but ropiance, a kind of historical novel or novella. It is full of authentic historical memories of the Persianperiod and the Persian setting of Jewish life afterthe Babylonian exile, and thus conforms in interesting details with archaeological evidence (Moore 1975), but it is not to be readas the authentic record of actual events.'4 Thus it is unreasonable to expect archaeology to unearth the royalgardensand pavillion of Ahasueros, even afternearly a century of excavations at the acropolis and royalcourt of Susa, and even though Assyriology has a good deal to tell us about the royalgarden(ginna)

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

23

and pavillion (bitan) that figure so prominently at crucial points in the story-at the opening festivities (1:5)and again when Esther invites Haman and the king to her own banquet (7:7f.; Oppenheim 1965). And it is equally pointless to look for the names Mordecai or Esther among the thousands of cuneiform tablets excavated at Susa, even though a certain Mardukahas been found there, and even though an interpreter-scribe(amelsepiru = Iti-a-bal) of that name has been

identified wiith him (but this official probablydid not serve during the reign of Xerxes I; Zadok 1979: 70 based on Stigers 1976: 36). And the recoveryof a cosmetic burner at fifth century Lachish contributes no more than a welcome touch of reality to the elaboratedescriptions of Esther's beauty treatments (2:12; cf. Albright 1974b). The Book of Esther is essentially belletristic, not historical, a fact which has long been recognized, and which is merely confirmed by the ongoing discoveries of Near Easternarchaeology in general and Assyriology in particular.(Forthe present state of the question, see e.g. the comprehensive surveys by Moore 1971 and Berg 1979.) But in other respects, these discoveries are forcing revisions of traditional conceptions, or shall we say of cherished misconceptions, about the scroll (Jones1977). In the remaining pages, I can do no more than highlight two or three of them.

disArchaeological are coveries forcing tional or

shall

cherished

ceptions, the

tradi-

conceptions,

Scroll

we

say

of

misconabout of Esther.

Forone thing the book has been described as mysogynistic. It depicts Ahasueros as readyto display his queen's charms to the drunken courtiers and, when she refuses, as banishing her and replacingher with a new queen selected by an elaboratebeauty contest. But a closer readingreveals on the contrarythat it is not Vashti who comes off badly but the king, and all the husbands of the realm. Esther herself develops by stages from mere beauty queen to veritable sage in her own right, outwitting Haman and outstrippingeven Mordecai, until in the end it is she who dominates the story.And lest it be thought that giving so prominent a role to the female protagonist

Cosmetic burnerfromLachish.

24

of

revisions

BIBLICAL 1983 ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER

brandsthe entire book as a late, Hellenistic creation, it is only necessary to recall the prominence of Ruth and Judithin the late biblical and Apocryphalbooks bearing their names, or of Miriam, Deborah and Hannah in the Pentateuchal and the Prophetictexts. Further,there is much earlier testimony to the depiction of women as prominent heroines and even as authors of cuneiform narratives.On the eve of the Persianconquest, for example, the mother of the last king of Babylonreviews the history of the first 95 years of her eventful life in a remarkableautobiography.A postscript to this work made it a funerarystele when she finally died nine years later at the ripe old age of 104 (649-547 B.c.) (Pritchard

1969: 560-62). Overa millennium earlier,the daughterof the King of Uruk pleadedwith the all-conquering King of Larsato spareher city and to restoreher to her priestly functions there. Her letter-prayer rankswith the best examples of this characteristicSumerianliterary genre (1800 B.c.). Earlier still, in

the 21st century,some equally moving compositions were written by the "ladies of the Ur IIIEmpire"; their works include laments, lovesongs, and lullabies for their royal husbands and sons. The earliest and greatest of these priestly and princely poetesses, and the very first identifiable author in history -male or female- is Enheduanna, daughterof the great Sargonof

Akkad who forgedthe first Mesopotamian empire in the 23rd century B.C. (Hallo 1976). Cuneiform literature thus providesboth a succession of role models for female protagonists and a long tradition of respectful attitudes towardswomen. That tradition was part of the general cultural milieu and, so farfrom being a woman-hater,the author of Esthercould, for all we know,have been a woman! The author was not, at any rate, a male chauvinist; nor was he or she, as might at first appear,an uncompromising Jewish chauvinist. On the face of it, true, the Jews exacted bloodthirsty vengeance on Haman, his sons, and all who sided with them. But the sheer numbers of the victims, and the resignation with which they allegedly met their fate, are evidence enough of literarycliches intended to appealto the reader'spleasure in encountering the traditionalfolkloristic reversalof fortunes, or even to his sense of humor, but certainly they are not intended to enhance the credibility of the narrative.In its essentials, that narrativeis anything but xenophobic. The king, for all his bumbling and limited intelligence, is not an object of hatred;his empire represents the civilized world ("127 provincesfrom India to Ethiopia"),and his law ("the law of the Medes and Persians")is proverbial in its unalterability. Thus, if we turn now from the story of Estherto the story of Mordecai, we find a formula for overcoming the disabilities of exile by using one's wits in the loyal service of a foreign monarch. This is the theme of "the success story of the wise courtier" (Niditch and Doran 1977). It is already present, outside the Bible, in the tale of the wise Ahiqar, an Aramaean who served under the Assyrian kings Sennacherib and Esarhaddon and who triumphed over adversity to

become the vizier under the name of Mannu-kima-Enlil-hatin(AbaNINNU-dari) and to bequeath many wise sayings to posterity. These axioms arepreservedon a papyrusfound at Elephantine, a Jewish colony settled in Upper Egyptin Persiantimes, and so this tale could well have helped to inspire that of Mordecai.(On Ahiqar see Pritchard1969: 427ff.) But Mordecai achieves more than only a personal triumph. He also provides a model for the retaining of one's ethnic heritage while accommodating to foreign surroundings. He obeys and he serves -indeed, he saves-the king, but he will not bow down to the vizier, even though his whole people are threatened with having to pay the price for his obstinacy. In the end, his twin policies of loyalty to the king and to his faith are rewardedhe is able to save and enrich his people and to become vizier in his own right. Thus his narrativeis a paradigmfor a largerissue: It describes and prescribesfor what has aptly been identified as "a life style for the diaspora"(Humphreys 1973). As such its closest analogy is found within the Bible, in the first half of the Book of Daniel (esp. Dan 2-6), whose hero likewise serves a foreignking (in this case Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon)without in the least surrenderinghis faith. We have alreadycharacterized the form of the narrativeas a "novella."If we now consider the content or theme we can narrow this classification even more. The text, whose setting is the diaspora, may be called a "diaspora-novella" (Meinhold 1975-76). And this type has its closest analogy in an unexpected quarter, the biblical tale of Joseph. " Numerous correspondences have frequently been pointed out between the tales of Joseph and of Mordecai, such as their roles at the courts of foreign kings. And it has generally been assumed

that the description of Mordecai's being paradedthrough the streets (6:11)was simply taken over from the story of Joseph'sinvestiture (Gen 41:42f.). This interpretation may well be true, but an alternative may be offered.That same story in Genesis contains a precious clue to its date of composition in the cry with which the Egyptiansgreeted Joseph. They call out "Abrekh,"which has been a crux interpretum since antiquity. Onkelos "translates""this is father to the King"and the LXXreads "herald."However,you may now perhapsrecognize that this term is none other than the Assyrian wordfor vizier, abarakku, the title of the owner of our lot which I asked you to file in your memory earlier!If this explanation is correct,it helps date much of the Josephstory to the Assyrian period of Egypt'shistory,or even later.Moreover,it suggests that this story,at least secondarily,has a function similar to the tale of Mordecai.The story of Josephis a novel of life in that other diaspora,in Egypt,which was the western counterpartof the Babylonianexile (Hallo apud Plaut 1981: 10 = Hallo apud Plaut 1974: xxxif.). One final misconception needs still to be addressed,and that concerns the allegedly secular or even atheistic characterof the text. Admittedly, the Book of Estheris alone among the books of the HebrewBible in failing to mention God by name even once; 16alone, too, in its complete absence from the biblical manuscripts found in the ancient sectarian libraryof Qumran. And the rabbisdebated at length whether to include it in the canon of Holy Scripture-T though in this respect it was not unique, for similar debates raged also over three other scrolls or megillot, namely Ruth, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes; only the Scroll of Lamentations escaped this fate. The Scroll

That same story in Genesis contains a precious clue to its date of composition. BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

25

of Esther eventually passed muster, probablybecause it servedboth as an aetiology and as a libretto for the festival of Purim. But on a more sublime level, the Book of Esthermust also be seen as a reflective work, with a philosophic if not precisely a religious message to impart. More specifically, it can be readas a commentary on the element of chance in human life (Besser1969). It symbolizes this chance through the fateful roll of the dice, the casting of lots, with all the accompanyingdramaticreversals of fortune. And it celebrates this chance through encouraging feasting and revelryto match that of the Persianking himself, and so it breaksthe solemn restraints of the rest of the liturgical year by granting the license to drink. On the Sabbathof Remem-

brancethat precedesthe holiday of Purim, we readin the Maftirfrom Deuteronomy (25:17-19) the solemn injunction: "Rememberwhat Amalek did to you on your journey, afteryou left Egypt-how, undeterredby fearof God, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary,and cut down all the stragglersin your rear. Therefore,when the Lordyour God grantsyou safety from all your enemies aroundyou, in the land that the Lordyour God is giving you as a hereditaryportion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!" And in the traditionalHaftara(I Sam. 15) we readhow Saul failed and Samuel notably succeeded in carryingout this harsh command against Agag,king of the Amalekites. But on Purim itself, when we

1. Hallo 1960:41 and n. 34. But P.Kyle McCarter(1974:5-7) thinks the king depictedis Jehoram( cf. McCarter1975:32 andn. 11).Tadmor(lectureof 11-13-80) believes the pictureis that of the messengerof the king, not of the king himself. Miller (1967:285-87) and Green(1978:355 n. 13; 1979)both supportthe identification of Jehu. 2. Kessler(1980: 170)thinks that the unique lot of Iahali is more likely a votive offeringthan an originallot. While I agree that a votive objectis normally "an artistic replicaof an objectused in daily life in the domestic, commercial or military sphere" (Hallo 1962: 12),I see no indication that this lot or its inscription is votive in character.Foran earliertranslationof the inscription,see Oppenheim 1964: 100. 3. Specificallya catalogueof prodigies: CT 29:49:23;cf. CAD K 612ab; Salonen 1966:222. 4. Also ezequ, eshequ. VonSoden,AHw s.v (1965:249) comparesthe HebrewcZQ, a hapaxin Isaiah5:2, where it is usually translated"to dig carefullyabout"or (NJV)

"to breakthe ground."Cf. Cohen 1978. 5. tessares-kai-dekatenor,with 8:12, the thirteenth? 6. Informationcourtesyof G. Beckman. The new study by Kellerman(1981)brings additionalevidence in favorof this suggestion. 7. Cf. Klengel-Brandt1980 and Borger 1975No. 177 forsome interesting later examplesfromAssur andBabylon respectively. 8. Albright1930, 1933, 1974a. See the illustration in EncyclopaediaJudaicavol. 7 (1971)col. 304, fig. 1., basedon Albright 1933. On gameboards,see fornow Ellis and Buchanan1966 and Brumbaugh1975: 135-37. 9. Forwhich see Rabinowitz 1976. 10. Foran adjudicationof all the conflicting views, see Feldman1975. 11. Forthe last see ToseftaSanhedrin

26

5:2.

12. "Gen. 7:10 provesthat duringthe 7 daysof mourningfor the righteousMethusela, God held off his judgementof the generation of the flood that they might repent,but they did not repent.Hence Methusela

1983 ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER BIBLICAL

readthe story of the reincarnation of Agagin the person of "Hamanson of Hamdathathe Agagite,"or simply "Agagison of Hamdatha"as he is called in the Maoz Tsur,we are commanded not to remember, but to drink to the point where we forgetthe differencebetween "blessed Mordecai"and "accursedHaman."

This article was originallydeliveredas a lecture to the WashingtonHebrewCongregationin Washington,D.C., on March 15, 1982.It has been partiallyreworkedin the BAoffice.

prayed(Ps.26:9) "gathernot my soul with sinners,nor my life with men-of-blood," that is with the unrepentantmen who were to perishin the flood. The phrase"in whose handsis craftinessand their right hand is full of bribes"(Ps.26:10) refersto dice-players who reckonwith the left hand, but addup with the right and thus roband cheat one another." 12a.But cf. Rivkind 1946: 217 and 51f. with n.18 citing Harkavy(1928: s.v. dreidel). 13. i.e. "all, take away,pay,nothing." 14. Fora recent defense of the historicity of the tale, see Gordis 1981. 15. Note the Midrashicawarenessof the connection, e.g. BereshitRabbahto Gen. 12:3where Mordecai,Josephand Daniel each savedor serveda foreignking. The editor comments "to show the Jewishattitude of loyalty to his country of domicile" (Freedman and Simon 1939:323). 16. Songof Songs 8:6 is usually interpretedas containing a short form of the divine name in the expressionshalhebet-yah.

The

Die

of

Iahali

The die of lahali was first published in 1937 by FerrisJ.Stephens,late curatorof the YaleBabylonianCollection, as No. 73 of his Votiveand Historical Textsfrom Babylonia and Assyria (YaleOriental Series. BabylonianTexts Vol. IX).Stephens simply describedit as a "terracotta cube with an inscription of lahali," whom he identified with the eponym of that name, i.e., the official whose name was given to the yearin which he held office. No suggestion concerning the function of the object or the reasonfor its "unparalleled"form was offered.Creditfor solving this problemhas usually gone to Albright. Laterthat same year, in a briefnotice of the new volume in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research(No. 67, p. 37) he described it as "aunique illustration of the practiceof casting lots (piru = Heb. pir, the source of the name Pfrim) in connection with the succession of annual eponyms."He was followed by E. Weidnerin Archiv ffir Orientforschung13 (1941)308f., A. L. Oppenheim in ANET(1950) 274 n. 2 and others. But a check of Yalefiles turnedup a news release datedApril 21, 1934, reprintedbelow by kind permission of the YaleUniversity Library. WilliamW Hallo

YALE'SBABYLONIAN COLLECTION YIELDS NEW FACTS New Haven, Conn., April 21- The discoveryof an Assyrianinscribed cube of bakedclay,entirely differentin shape and content from any of the many hundredsof thousands of Assyrian and Babylonianinscriptions hitherto known has been announced by the Babylonian Collection of YaleUniversity.It is the only cube that has survivedto this dayfrom the time when lots were cast annually in the selection and installation of the "eponymofficial," whose name was used in chronological tables to signify a certain year of a king's reign.The peculiar shape of the object was probablyrequiredby the nature of the ceremony in which it was used. The Yalecube was the "lot of Iahali" a high official of ShalmaneserIII,King of Assyria from 858 to 824 B.C., accordingto the inscription, which was decipheredby ProfessorFerrisJ. Stephens,Acting Curatorof the Collection. "Itwas believed that the events of the yearwere predeterminedon New Year'sDay when the new eponym was inauguratedinto office," the announcement stated. "The inscription upon this piece contained an invocation to the greatgods of Assyria, Ashur and Adad,and a prayerthat the events determinedon the auspicious occasion of the installation of lahali may constantly remain in the mind of the greatgods to insure good crops for the land duringthe year."The cube, not quite perfect, measures27 x 27 x 28 millimeters, or little more than an

inch. A stone object in the shape of a brick, three inches thick and measuring six by ten inches, bearingthe name of a king of Babylonialong lost to the memory of man is another importantinscription discoveredin the Yale BabylonianCollection by ProfessorStephens.The brick acquiredearly this yearby the Collection came from the walls of the ancient temple of Ekur,in the city of Nippur, and bearsthe name of Hashmargalshu,who lived in about 1550 B.C.,a member of the Kassite Dynasty which ruled Babylonia from 1746 to 1171 B.C.

"Variouslists of the thirty-six kings of this dynasty have been preserved,all more or less broken,but the name of one king, now discoveredto be Hashmargalshu, remainedmissing," accordingto the announcement. "Veryfew of the Kassite kings recordedtheir names on memorial tablets in the temples of their gods.The one missing king of the dynasty,now restoredby our inscription, was one of the few who so recordedhis name. It is partof the irony of history that the names of all the rest of his line were preserved,and only now has his name and his inscription come to light." The inscription on a fragmentof a stone pillar that formedpartof an altarhas also been decipheredby ProfessorStephensand shows that it was dedicatedin honor of the famous king Rim-Sin of the city of Larsa,a contemporaryof Hammurabi.

1983 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER

27

Bibliography Aharoni,Y 1968 Arad:Its Inscriptionsand Temple. Biblical Archaeologist 31: 2-32. 1969 The IsraeliteSanctuaryat Arad. Pp.25-39 and figs. 40-55 in New Directionsin Biblical Archaeology, eds. D. N. Freedmanand J. C. Greenfield.GardenCity, NY: Doubleday. Albright,W E 1930 The ThirdCampaignat Tell Beit Mirsim. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 39: 1-10. 1933 A Set of EgyptianPlayingPieces andDice from Palestine.Mizraim 1: 130-34 and P1.XIV 1974a Archaeologyof Palestine and the Bible. Fourthedition. Cambridge, MA: American Schools of Oriental Research[Memorialed. Reprintof 3rd ed. with new foreword]. 1974b The LachishCosmetic Burnerand Esther2:12. Pp. 25-32 in A Light Unto My Path:Old Testament Studiesin Honor of JacobM. Myers,eds. H. N. Bream,R. D. Heim and C. A. Moore.Philadelphia: TempleUniversity Press. Berg,S. B. 1979 The Book of Esther:Motifs, Themes and Structure.SBLDissertation Series44. Missoula, MT: Scholars Press. Besser,S. P. 1969 Estherand Purim-Chance and Play.Central Conferenceof American Rabbis Journal16: 36-42. Bickerman,E. J. 1967 FourStrangeBooks of the Bible: Jonah,Daniel, Koheleth,Esther. NY: Schocken. Bickerman,E. and Tadmor,H. 1978 Darius I, Pseudo-Smerdis,and the Magi.Athenaeum n.s. 56: 239-61. Borger,R. et al., eds. 1975 Die Weltdes alten Orients: Keilschrift- Grabungen- Gelehrte,2nd ed. G6ttingen:Seminarfiir Keilschriftforschung. Braude,W G. 1959 TheMidrashon Psalms. YaleJudaica Series 13. New Haven:YaleUniversity Press. Brumbaugh,R. S. 1966 Ancient GreekGadgetsand Machines. NY: Thomas Y Crowell. 1975 Knossos Game Board.American Journalof Archaeology 79(2): 135-37.

28

1960 FromQarqarto Carchemish:Assyria Cohen, H. R.(C.) and Israelin the Lightof New 1978 Biblical Hapax Legomenain the Discoveries.Biblical ArchaeoloLightof Akkadian and Ugaritic. Missoula, MT: ScholarsPress. gist 23: 34-61. 1961 RoyalInscriptionsof the EarlyOld Cohn, H. H. 1971 Gambling.Cols 299-303 in EncycloBabylonianPeriod:A Bibliography. Bibliotheca Orientalis 18: 4-14. paedia Judaica.Vol. 7. Jerusalem: Keter. 1962 The RoyalInscriptionsof Ur: A Typology.Hebrew Union College Dales, G. E Annual 33: 1-43. 1968 Of Dice and Men. Pp. 14-23 in 1972 Diggingup the future.UnpubEssaysin Memoryof E.A. Speiser, lished manuscript. ed. WilliamW Hallo. American 1976 Womenof Sumer.Bibliotheca Oriental Series 53. Journalof the American OrientalSociety 88, 1. Mesopotamica4: 23-40, 129-238. Del Medico, H. E. Harkavy,A. 1928 Yiddish-EnglishDictionary. NY: 1965 Le cadrehistoriquedes fftes de HebrewPublishing Company. Hanukkahet de Purim. Vetus Testamentum15: 238-70. Humphreys,W L. 1973 A Life-stylefor Diaspora:A Studyof Ellis, R. S. andBuchanan,B. the Talesof Estherand Daniel. 1966 An Old BabylonianGameboard with SculpturedDecoration. Journalof Biblical Literature92: 211-23. Journalof Near EasternStudies 25: 192-201. Jones,B. W 1977 TwoMisconceptions about the Feldman,L. Book of Esther.Catholic Biblical 1975 Masada:A Critique of Recent Quarterly39: 171-81. Scholarship.Pp. 218-48 in ChrisKellerman,G. tianity Judaismand Other Greco1981 Towardsthe furtherinterpretation Roman Cults: StudiesforMorton of the purulli-festival. Pp.35-46 Smith at Sixty, Part3, ed. Jacob in L. Fleischman et al., eds., Slavica Neusner. Studiesin Judaismin LateAntiquity Vol. 12. Leiden:Brill. Hierosolymitana. Slavic Studies of the HebrewUniversity 5-6. Freedman,H. and Simon, M., eds. 1939 Genesis. MidrashRabbah Vol. 1. Kessler,K. 1980 Untersuchungenzur historischen Trans.by H. Freedman.London: Soncino Press. TopographieNordmesopotamiens nach keilschriftlichen Quellen des Friedrich,J. 1. Jahrtausendsv Chr.Tilbinger 1954-56 Hethitisch pulund Ableitungen. Atlas des VorderenOrients. Beiheft Archiv ffir Orientforschung 26. Wiesbaden-Dotzheim:Reichert. 17: 92. Klengel-Brandt,E. Gaster,T.H. 1980 Spielbretterund Wiirfelaus Assur. 1969 Myth, Legend,and Custom in Altorientalische Forschungen7: the Old Testament.NY: Harper and Row. 119-26, Figs. 1-2 and Pls. XIII-XIV Lewy,J. Gordis,R. 1938 Old Assyrianpuru'um and 1981 Religion,Wisdom,andHistory in the Book of Esther-A New Solupirum. Revuehittite et asianique 36: 117-24. tion to an Ancient Crux.Journalof 1939 The Feastof the 14th Day of Adar. Biblical Literature100:359-388. Hebrew Union CollegeAnnual Green,A. R. 14: 127-51. 1978 Solomon and Siamum:A Synchronism between EarlyDynastic Israel Lichtenstein,M. 1971 Lots. BiblicalData. Cols. 511-12 in and the Twenty-firstDynasty of EncyclopaediaJudaica.Vol. 11. Egypt.Journalof Biblical Literature 97: 353-67. Jerusalem:Keter. 1979 Suaand Jehu:The Boundariesof Lindblom,J. 1962 Lot-castingin the Old Testament. Shalmaneser'sConquest. Palestine VetusTestamentum12: 164-78. ExplorationQuarterly(January-June): 35-39 and Pls. IV-VI. McCarter,P.K. 1974 "Yaw,Son of 'Omri'":A PhilologiGrunewald,M. cal Note. Bulletin of American 1946 The Topin Israeland Among the Schools of Oriental Research216: Nations. Edoth 2: 72-75 [Hebrew]. 5-7. Hallo, W W

1983 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER

1975 TheAntiquity of the GreekAlphabet and the Early Phoenician Scripts.HarvardSemitic Monographs9. Missoula, MT: Scholars Press[forHarvardSemitic Museum]. Meinhold,A. 1975-76 Die Gattung der Josephgeschichteund des Estherbuches: Diasporanovelle.Zeitschnift fur Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 87: 306-24; 88: 72-93. Mendenhall,G.E. 1973 The TenthGeneration:The Origins of the Biblical Tradition. Baltimore:JohnsHopkins. Michel, E. 1947-52 Die Assur-TexteSalmanessars III(858-824). Die Weltdes Orients 1: 5-20, 57-71, 205-22, 255-71, 385-96, 454-73. Miller,J.M. 1967 Another Lookat the Chronology of the EarlyDivided Monarchy. Journalof Biblical Literature 86: 276-288. Moore,C.A. 1971 Esther.The Anchor Bible. Vol. 7B. NY: Doubleday. 1975 Archaeologyand the Book of Esther. Biblical Archaeologist 38: 62-79. Niditch, S. and Doran,R. 1977 The Success Storyof the Wise Courtier:A FormalApproach. Journalof Biblical Literature 96: 179-93. Oppenheim,A. L. 1964 Ancient Mesopotamia:Portraitof a Dead Civilization. Chicago:University of ChicagoPress. 1965 On RoyalGardensin Mesopotamia. Journalof Near EasternStudies 24: 328-33. Paton,L. B. 1908 The Book of Esther.The International Critical Commentary.NY: CharlesScribner'sSons. Petrie,E 1931-4 Ancient Gaza. 4 Vols. Publications of the British :chool of Archaeologyin Egypt53-56. London:British School of Archaeology in Egypt. Plaut, W G. 1974 Genesis. The Torah:A Modern Commentary.Vol. 1. NY: Union of American HebrewCongregations. Plaut, W G.; Bamberger,B. J.;and Hallo, W W 1981 The Torah:A Modern Commentary NY: Union of American Hebrew Congregations. Pritchard,J.B.

Zealot's Last Stand.NY: Random 1969 Ancient Near EasternTextsRelating House. to the Old Testament.3rd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Zadok,R. Press. 1979 The Jewsin Babylonia during the Chaldean and Achaemenian PeriRabinowitz,L. I. ods According to the Babylon1971 Lots in the SecondTemplePeriod. Cols. 511-12 in Encyclopaedia ian Sources. Studiesin the HisJudaica.Vol. 11. Jerusalem: tory of the JewishPeopleand the Landof IsraelMonograph Keter. Series3. Haifa:University of Reiner,E. 1960 Fortune-tellingin Mesopotamia. Haifa. Journalof Near EasternStudies 19: 23-35. Rivkind,I. 1946 Der KamfIegn Azartshpilen bei Yidden(Thefight against gambling among Jews).NY: Yiddischer WissenschaftlicherInstitut. Rosenthal,E 1975 Gamblingin Islam. Leiden:Brill. Salonen,A. 1966 Die Hausgerite der alten Mesopotamier. 2. Teil. Gefasse.Annales Academiae ScientiarumFennicae B144. Helsinki: SuomalainenTiedakatemia(Vertrieb:Akateeminen Kirjakowppa). Schramm,W 1973 Einleitungin die assyrischen Konigsinschriften.2. Teil. Handbuch der Orientalistik. 1 Abt., Erg.5. Leiden:Brill. Soden,W von 1965 Akkadisches Handw6rterbuch.Vol. 1, A-L.Wiesbaden:Harrassowitz. 1969 "Alsdie G6tter (auchnoch) Mensch waren."EinigeGrundgedanken des altbabylonischenAtramhasisMythus. Orientalia 38: 415-32. 1971 Zu W G. Lambert,"FurtherComments on the Interpretationof Atra-hasis."Orientalia 40: 99-101. 1978 Die erste Tafeldes altbabylonischen Atramhasis-Mythus."Haupttext" und Parallelversionen.Zeitschrift fiirAssyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archiaologie68: 50-94. Sollberger,E. and Kupper,J.-R. 1971 Inscriptionsroyalessumbrienneset akkadiennes. Litteraturesanciennes du Proche-Orient3. Paris:Editions du Cerf. Stigers,H. G. 1976 Neo- and LateBabylonianBusiness Documents from the Frederick Lewis Collection. Journalof Cuneiform Studies 28: 3-59. Weiss-Rosmarin,T 1967 Masada,Josephusand Yadin.Jewish Spectator32, 8: 2-8, 30-32. Yadin,Y. 1966 Masada: Herod'sFortressand the

BIBLICAL 1983 ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER

29

JI

Z ?? W' ?( ?+-,++ i+I~

?

I(

~

,IIr•

d

+•

(l•(. -ql

lll

C(

I + ijl++

tL

. |l

II•

ow" .4.,,,4.

^00

Oe-* 0"

o

d' d,.tr ,+. -0"44 Ol-.

14P/ell

0del ,

(v&. do. 4,.:+

+

r,

6

atC (C~?

+l•t

IAOI s4eo .sla

BIBLEPASSAGES ENIG1MATIC

It's (Mark

the 14:1

Things that

Little 7-21;

Luke

Matthew

4:1-13;

Count 18:

10-14)

by PaulJ. Achtemeier

T

heinterpretation oftheBibleis often perceived as a formidable task, and

rightly so. The pages of this periodical witness to the massive effortswhich have gone into the study of, among other things, ancient languagesand archaeologicalsites. In the interpretation of some texts, however,the neglect of the smallest word will alter the meaning of the passage,or make it impossible for us to determine what the original author had in mind. In such cases, it's the little things that count. To see how important they are, let's look at three passagesin which one of the smallest words in the passageis really the key to its whole meaning. The first passageis found in Mark 14:17-21. This is where Jesus announces that one of those eating with him at his last meal beforehis crucifixion will betrayhim. The response of the disciples is predictable:each denies that he could be the one who would do this. The RSVtranslates verse 19 this way: "They began to be sorrowful,and to say to him one afteranother,'Is it I?"' It seems easy enough to reconstructwhat went on in the mind of each of the disciples when they heard those words. Mournful at the thought of Jesus' impending betrayaland subsequent death, they raise the question of the possibility of their own involvement in it. The question "Is it I?"is asked with a hesitation which betraysthe sudden realization on their parts that they might have a sharein such a betrayal.Hearingthe darkpredictionfrom Jesus, they hesitantly ask their master,who has displayedsuch remarkablepowersof foresight, whether that betrayalcould come from any of them. It is easy enough to empathize with the twelve disciples as each one, plaguedby the self-doubt so common to all of us at some time or another,asks that with a certainfearfulanticipation. The scene, recreatedin such a way,is quite

30

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

moving--and quite believable- and certainly lies within the meaning of the languageas the RSVhas renderedit. The problem is that such an interpretation takes us, the readers,in exactly the opposite direction that Mark intended us to move in this narrative.To understandthat intention, it is necessary to know that in Greek, the languagein which the Gospel of Mark is written, it is possible to ask questions in such a manner that the person being questioned can infer whether the appropriate response should be "yes"or "no."The question in 14:19 is phrasedso that, in the minds of the disciples, the only possible answer Jesus could give to their question, "Is it I?"is "Of course not. Don't be silly."Markmakes it clear here that the disciples are not plagued by introspective foreboding or a dawningawarenessof the depths of evil which may lurk in any human breast.They are asserting, with absolute confidence, that even to imagine that any one of them could betrayJesus is foolish to the point of idiocy. They are sorrowful,not at Jesus'impending betrayal,but that he could think that one of them could ever do such a thing. Far from self-doubt, the form of the question shows supreme self-confidence that of course, such a thing would never be done by any of them. Their mood has not changed at all when later on the Mount of Olives Peter "said vehemently, 'IfI must die with you, I will not deny you,' and they all said the same" (Mark14:31).Thus, it is the little word-not even translated-at the beginning of the question that makes it clear how we areto understandthe question as it is put to Jesus.

A

second passage, this time from Luke, shows furtherhow in translating the Greek text of the New Testament, it is the little things that count. That passage,Luke 4:1-13, is the story of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness. In Luke'saccount, immediately afterJesus'

baptism the Holy Spirit drives him out into the wilderness where, after a 40-dayfast, he undergoes a series of temptations put to him by Satan.In the first temptation, the "devil said to him, 'Ifyou are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread'"(RSV4:3). What is Luke trying to tell us? Perhapsit is this: Having heardthe heavenly voice at his baptism (see Luke3:22), Jesus, in the solitude of a desertedplace, begins to wonder about what Satan has just said. Could it be that he really is God's son? Or is that some devilish trick, designed to get him to do some things that would be blasphemous-since he would do them as the son of the Almighty? And if he decides he is God's son, what then? How should he act? Should he perform the miracle? One who can turn stones to breadis surely capable of working much good in the world. Yet the text says this temptation is from the devil, clearly hinting that such activity- should Jesus decide he was in fact God's son-would be an improperway to act. All of this is familiar enough to people who read Luke and who hear sermons preachedfrom its text. However,as soon as one readsa bit furtherin Luke, one begins to wonder if such an understanding of our passage makes sense. Takethe business about stilling physical hunger.Jesus does exactly that in an event recordedin Luke 9:11-17; he feeds 5,000 hungry men (if women and children were also present, then many more than 5,000) in a miraculous way,with food that under normal circumstances would make a meal for only one person. Obviously,Jesus did think he could feed people in a wondrousway without compromisinghis mission as God's son. But then what arewe to make of that first temptation? Maybe the temptation is not so much how to act as God's son as it is for Jesus to decide whether or not he is that son. Here, another little Greekword providesthe clue. In Greek, one can state a condition (an "if" clause) in a way that conveys whether one thinks of it as an open possibility, or as alreadydecided. In Luke4:3, the condition is introducedwith the form of "if" that assumes the issue has alreadybeen decided!A translation closer to the intention of the Greek would be: "Since you are God's son, command this stone to become bread."What is at issue is not

Luke'sGreek thus makes it clear that the temptation is not for Jesus to doubt his call as God's son. The temptation is to use that call for his own benefit. When Luke ends his story with the remark, '"Andwhen the devil had ended every temptation, he departedfrom him until an opportunetime" (4:13),he implies that there will be other, similar temptations. When Jesuspraysin the Gardenof Gethsemane for his death on a cross to be avoided, God willing (Luke22:42), it is that same temptation: to use his sonship for his own benefit. The conclusion of that prayershows that just as he had in the wilderness,here too Jesusresists the temptation: "nevertheless,not my will, but thine, be done."And the whole dramawill be missed by the readerof Luke if he fails to understandcorrectly the little word "if" in 4:3. Again, it's the little things that count.

whether Jesus is really God's son; even the devil is willing to concede that. The temptation has to do with how God's son should act. Here it is necessary to pay careful attention to the context. Luke tells us that after his prolonged fast, Jesus was hungry. Then the devil comes and says "Command this stone to become bread." The question is not if Jesus will use his power to feed the hungry masses. It is: will Jesus use his sonship to satisfy himself? To still his hunger he is tempted to turn one of the flat round stones into a loaf of bread, which they superficially resemble.

human being as it is for a shepherd to pursue a lost sheep. In fact, it is characteristic of Him to act that way. Pursuit of the lost ones is, for Matthew, what God and Jesus are all about. The comforting thought that God goes after even one who is lost would itself be lost in this passage -were it not for the single word that introduces the question and tells us how to answer it. Just as with that shepherd who lost the one sheep, so in the interpretation of scripture, often it's the little things that count the most!

A

third passagewhere a little word is important for the entire understandingis Matthew's parableof the shepherdwho had 100 sheep, one of whom went astray(18:10-14). He leaves the 99, and goes afterthe one. But is it wise to jeopardize99% of one's assets in the hope of recoveringa lost 1%? Maybethe answer to Jesus'question in 18:12 ("Ifa man has a hundredsheep, and one of them has gone astray,does he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go in search of the one that went astray?") is intended to be, "Well,I am not so sure."Possibly, then, the point of the parableis that the one stray sheep must have been awfully valuable for the shepherdto risk so much on the chance of its recovery.Perhapsthis particularshepherdis far more concerned about that one sheep than an ordinaryshepherdwould be. The shepherd's act would then be something extraordinary,and if the action of the shepherdin some way reflects God's attitude- as the parableseems to hint-then God is a special shepherdto go after the one even at the risk of the other ninety-nine. Yet, once again, a single word in the Greek text tells us that the question carrieswith it an intended response. We are expected to answer "Yes, of course, that is obviously the way any shepherd would react."But in that case, God's concern for his sheep is, as Matthew understands it, not at all unusual. It is as normal for Him to pursue a lost

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

31

Over 1000,000 ies have now been sold of

co

'~: "i

.?s

?i:

. "

The Anchor Bible has received the highest honor of the American publishing industry, the Carey-Thomas Award. The continuing response to the series as a whole has been extraordinary.And each new volume receives its own critical acclaim. Most recently, the first volume of the Gospel According to Luke by Joseph Fitzmyer has been described as "THE "One commentary on Luke for some years to come"-Krister Stendahl. biblical 'A magnificent, monumental work that ought to be in the ofthe library of every intelligent Christian."-David A. Hubbarc4 FullerTheologicalSeminary. "There have been many textual "The English Many bookstores stock and archaeologicaldiscoveries Bible volumes, and Anchor bearingon biblicalscholarship Bible libraries make them all nearly since World War II, and Sun -Baltimore If you would like a available. yet' Americans have become leaders of published list in these studies,"said a recent That concern of each contributor complete and details of a volumes, article in TheNew YorkTimesBook -to concentrate on what the order plan, write: Review."So in recent years subscription Bible says, not on any one & Company, Inc., Doubleday biblical commentaries and interpretation of "what it translations in English have Dept. ZA-210, Garden City, means"-has made The Anchor New York 11530. replacedthe Germanscholarship Bible one of the most widely that held the field for a century. read, as well as widely praised, The Anchor Bible seems to have biblical commentaries in history. biblical with the grown scholarship." That growth is decidedly in harmony with the original plans of the general editors, William Foxwell Albright, who died in 1971,and David Noel Freedman, who continues as General Editor of The Anchor Bible. "Protestant, Jewish and Catholic scholars work independently on the separate books,"the Timesarticle went on to report, "but they are required to concentrate on greatest translating and explicating the contributions text and not to promote interpretationsjust because their churches think certain own century." are the orthodox ones." -BostonGlobe readings

Since E. A. Spieser's Genesiswas published in 1964, over 1,000,000 Anchor Bible volumes have been sold. Thirty-six volumes have appeared, out of a total expected to reach sixty-three before the project is completed. Forty-four scholars have worked on the series; twenty-two are at work on volumes still to appear.

ofthe

best commentary

*IDOUBLEDAY

32

1983 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER

HELLENI

and

the

Near

East by E E. Peters

The Templeof Bacchus at Baalbek, Lebanon. Lyingin the heart of the ancient Semiticspeaking world,Baaibek became an archetypal Near Easternpolis, a monument to Hellenism. Photo by Rev FrancisLyonsIII.

What

weareandhave

been and likely will be is displayedthrough the pages of Bonitz's Index Aristotelicus; here is revealednot the lyricism perhapsnor the feeling, which we sharewith many other societies, but our heart, our understanding.Those astonishing heuristic devices that at once pry into and are Hellenism were not all Aristotle's own inventions, but he describedthem best: the stunning insight, proclaimed like an oracle at the opening of the Metaphysics, that is the starting point of all science; the notion of entelechy, operation filled with function and so perfection; dynamis, not simply power,but power to, toward,almost a longing, a need; theos, god, where at a stroke a whole mythic orderof older deities was shattered and reconceptualized into a new demonstrable and defined divinity; psyche, too, and logos, the latter

the very entelechy of Hellenism, and of Westernman. The syntax of Hellenism is all in Aristotle, the program,the blueprint, whatever figurewe choose to employ.It is in the Iliad too, embodied in the matter and the medium of epic; in buildings like the Parthenon;in the pots of Attic vase painters and the tragediesof Aeschylus; in the medical treatises of Galen and the astronomy of Ptolemy (whose hypotheses are often wrong but whose minds are invariably right);in the city-plan of Miletus and in Alexander's phalanx. It can even be read off the works of converts and proselytes: in the Roman Vergil,the EgyptianPlotinus, and the JewJosephus;in the Muslim Dome of the Rock in Jerusalemand the medina of Damascus; in Saadya ben Yusufthe Gaon, Ibn Rushd or Averroes,Thomas Aquinas;indeed, in the entire intellectual tradition of the West.

Wecan speak freely about Hellenism, more freely than we dare about Judaismor the Gallic spirit or the soul of America, because its bearerswere at the same time its definers and its analysts. Their selfconsciousness drewthem to observe what they were and attempt to define it, to be simultaneously lepidopterist and butterfly So we have a solid groundingfor an exploration of Hellenism. Weneed only to turn to the Greek selfportrait,as expressively manifested in literature,art and architecture or,more simply, to the intentional form of self-analysis,to Hellenism's summary of itself. Wecan study the Greeks'languagewith their own grammars,their philosophy with its own analytical tools, and do so easily since they are our own as well. More astonishingly, these are the only tools contrivedby humankind for the inspection of both one's own and the other's reality."Give

1983 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER

33

entire

world

me someplace to stand," Archimedes said in his heavy Doric, "andI shall move the earth."Hellenism is that center, and from it the entire world can be both moved and understood. This understandingwas available even to strangersand barbaroi. Not the least of the Greek achievements was their devising of a new and profoundly effective way to transmit their values. Other societies relied on absorption or mimesis, depending on the osmotic properties of a mother's knee or the example of the tribal elders to orient the young; the Greeks ultimately had little need for either method, since they did not "orient" but ratherinstructed their young in schools. Contemporarysocieties used schools to impart techniques; the Greeks used them to transmit culture. Exemplarytexts which contained neither the arcanaof life nor the revelation of mysteries beyond the gravebut simply the moral and aesthetic values of the society were taught. And taught, moreover,not merely to Greeks. Hellenism was a tribalism of the spirit, not of the blood, and its lessons were learned and its effects felt no less by Egyptians in the Delta, schoolboys in Arabiaor Iranians in the farthest reaches of Khurasanthan by Athens' own native-born citizens. Alexander the Great proposedto incorporate just such young Iraniansinto his phalanxes and eventually into partnership in his empire, and so he engagedthem in studying not closeorderdrill but Homer. His analysis was exact: to fight like a Hellene, one had to think like a Hellene, and the shortest route between Khurasanand Hellas ran through

the schoolbook that took its reader to Agamemnon's camp outside of Troy. And what is it to think like a Hellene? To put it succinctly, Hel-

34

that

is

Hellenism can

be

and it the from center, both moved and understood.

lenism proposedthat man has the capacity both to understandand to achieve his own perfection, which is his happiness. That perfection is to be found in society, since man is a social or, as the Greeks said, a political animal. Hellenism's achievement lies not simply in socializing, however,but in the pursuit of intellectual ends. These can best be attained by mutual examination, accordingto Socrates,or dialectic, as Plato refined it, by analysis and diathesis, taking apartand putting together.Thus the setting of man's happiness is the city and its primary instrument is logos, the use of reason.Reasongovernsthe universe through the operation of natural laws; it guides the individual in making prudentjudgments; and it controls the civil environment throughinstitutions. Exegesis is the mode of Hellenism, the display of parts syntactically arrangedthat will at one end of the process show forth the assemblage as a beautiful whole or as a true effect, and at the other uncoverthe very elements, building stones, premises or causes that lay bareits mysteries. Analysis and synthesis -science is the understanding of the most primaryof causes; wisdom the contemplation of the grandeurof the most universal of effects-the two are linked by logos. Logos,the bond that extends from cause to effect not only in the orderof existence but in that of understandingand utterance as well, is both the measure and the essence of Hellenism. The discovery of that looping effect, that the orderof causality in nature could be replicatedin both thought and speech and so fed back into nature, had enormous consequences. It shattered, though it did not annihilate, its chief competitor in the world of human discourse, what the Greeks called mythos. Mythos explained by describing: it

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

was narrativeand paratactical.It was genially non-exclusive- apparently contradictorymyths could exist side by side--but it was also static and unresponsive;mythos entertained no questions. Logos, on the other hand, explained, volubly and aggressively.It demonstrated, and since it was also self-correcting, it evolved. Organicin nature, logos reacted,adjusted,and grew under outside stimulation, whether by new data or counter-argument. It defined the truth and then proceeded to fill its own parameters. The world is not so simple perhaps,but as an approximation of reality,persuasive enough to redesign most of mankind's thinking about reality and apposite enough to control that environment, Hellenism's logos paradigmenjoyeda success more far-reachingand pervasive than either Christianity's or Islam's. This paradigmtriumphed over the most redoubtableauthority, God's own Word,which in the end had also to yield to Hellenism's exegesis. By its cogent analysis, classification and definition of truth, logos loosed the grip of all other modes of discourse and perception. "Ifeel," '"Asour fathers taught," "It is relatedof old" were all swept, together with "The Lord saith," into a bin alreadymarked by Aristotle for "RhetoricalTopoi" and "RefutableSophistries."Pontius Pilate, Procuratorof Rome's troublesome Near Easternprovince of Judea, was waffling; he knew perfectly well what the truth was, or at least how you get at it. The man standing beforehim could be no help, of course; he was still traffickingin mythos: '"Amen,amen, I say to you .... " The Hellenes, or at least their Macedonian surrogates, came to the Near East in arms, but Hellenism put down its still discernible roots there through the polis, the city. As with all complex organisms, it is

easier to understandand to translate Hellenism through its external properties,its embodiment in and functioning throughmatter, than to peer directly into its essence. Its prima facie presence can be immediately graspedin the controlled critical judgments of a Polybius or a Plutarch or a Sophocles attempting to penetrate to the causes of the most dense phenomenon, human polypragmatism.It is present in equal measure in Demosthenes' oration, "On the Crown,"and in the Roman Pantheon, where the syntax of word and stone is stretched into ever largerand more complex architectonic units with such ease and skill and daringthat the spectator can move effortlessly from part to whole and back again without either moral or aesthetic vertigo. And it is revealed,finally, in the GrecoRoman city, the polis or civitas. On the surface the polis is merely an urban settlement, often a diminutive one, yet this smallscale polity carrieddeep within itself-like a genetic code-the essence of the Hellenic ethos. The public buildings, theaters, gymnasia, council chambers and temples that were the feature of everypolis, were pleasant and even remarkable to the eye. But more importantly they were the housing of institutionalized acts and events that formed the basic ritual of Hellenism: men acting in concert by their own volition can rule themselves and in the process procurethe means to their own fulfillment. In those A artist'simaginative reconstructionof the interiorof the RomanPantheon same buildings and acts, the Hellenic in nineteenth-century its heyday The splendorof the Pantheontestified to and perhapsepitomized the impact citizen navigated his own passage Hellenism had beyond the bordersof Greece. from dynamis to entelechy. The marvelof the polis, whethmonumentalization of what others cross-axes by arches or columned er in the Near East or elsewhere, is monuments. Public and privatespace, might view as a routine need or a simple pleasure is itself a perfect precisely its conversion of ideals religious, commercial and residenmicrocosm of the Hellenic city. into human institutions, each of tial functions were all as mingled in The Greco-Romancity was enwhich was lodged in its approprithe plan as they were in the citizens' ate architectural setting. The counown minds. Even today,the shape during even as a physical structure. Built of limestone or even highly cil or bould, the basilica and the and monuments and characterof a bath reflect, each in its own distinct Greco-Romancity remain unmispolished basalt, finished often without benefit of mortar or even of way, the Hellenic view of man as a takable, whether it stands in desotimber because of the Romans' social animal with social powers, late splendor in the midst of a marvelous precision with stone, the steppe or lies barely concealed under social responsibilities and social pleasures. The bath with its open yet public buildings of the polis were present-dayAleppo or Jerusalem. Greek cities dotted Anatolia in complex spaces, its coherent funcarrangedacross a grid of streets ruled tionalism distributed among a multi- off in its main lines with colonnadclusters, stretched in a glittering ed avenues and anchoredat the tude of parts, its adornment and line acrossHigh Mesopotamia, encir-

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

35

cled recusant Judeain the necklace of the Decapolis, and one of them, Alexandria,stood like a solitary brilliant crowningEgypt. Alexandriawas more than the jewel of Egypt;it was the royalpolis, Alexander'sown city and the head and heart of the Hellenic enterprise in the Near East. Alexandriahad its political rivals in Rome and Antioch and Constantinople, but its schools and scholars, the Curia that presidedover the Propagation of Hellenism, had no peers. It was Alexandrianscience, whether in mathematics or medicine or theolothat trickgy or Literaturgeschichte, led down into the curriculaand thence into the public ways of Gerasaand Apamea and Ephesus, and even of Rome and Constantinople. No matter that the city was sacked and burnedand mobbed with tedious regularity.In the seventh century,a thousand years after Alexanderhad founded his city, there was still a faculty propounding grammarand logic and cosmology and medicine at the university when the last class of Greeks graduated and the first class of Muslims descended from their mounts and took up matriculation. As the polis phenomenon unfolded in their midst, the barbaroi from Anatolia to Egyptand Iran stood without and wondered.Subdued by Greek arms, they were now witnessing in their own lands a more radicalconquest by far.Their temples and gods rested in a kind of familiar accomodation, but the myths and belief systems that undergirdedthe cultus grew shabby or outmoded or were converted into the odd new currencyof allegory.The Near East, where mythos had reachedthe state of high art, went onto the logos standard: local issues continued to circulate, but increasingly as colorful chits redeemable only by rational exegesis at the tables of the Greeks. We have seen the process repeat itself often enough in such a variety of cultural circumstances to understand why it occurs thus. Logos discourse, science as we might call it, along with the technology that is its necessary corollary, has no

36

The

Near

where

East, the

reached

high

had

mythos art,

of

state

went

onto

the logos standard: conissues local tinued to circulate but increasingly as rechits colorful

deemable rational the tables Greeks.

by only exegesis of

at

the

the Christians had alreadyheardthe thunder in their cellars and were forced to choose between resistance, acceptance or accommodation. It was not very helpful to express the question as Tertullianhad, 'Athens or Jerusalem?"since there was no more likelihood of discarding Athens in the third Christian century than of ignoringDarwin and the scientific tradition in the twentieth -none, that is, short of living in an insulated shtetl. Christianity was not shtetl-bound, however,and to put it in gross terms, while Christianity,pace Tertullian,accommodated, Pharisaic/RabbinicJudaismchose the shtetl when and where it could, which was not everywhereor often. Not in Alexandria certainly, where a largecommunity of Jews lived in the very shadow of the so-called "birdcage of the Muses" and shortly after its introduction to Hellenism producednot only a new, "scientific" translation of its Scripturesinto the sacredtongue of Greek but also the first "reformed" Jew.The theologian Philo, an odd, new title in the Jewish world, instructed his coreligionists how to adjust their sight at precisely the correct angle for readingthe Bible simultaneously with the eye of faith and the eye of reason, the new Hellenic reason. There were many Jewswho ignored Philo, just as there were many Egyptians who ignoredEuclid and Ptolemy and many more Syrians and Anatolians who were untouched by Hellenism. Hellenism spoke to the high tradition and left untroubled the peasant and shopkeeper and slave with their kitchen gods and vernacularshrines. The polites or citizen was a member of a social and economic elite, and

equal as an instrument of invention, understandingand explanation. It uncoversnew truths; it comprehends them by systematically associating them with an accumulated body of similar truths; and it is capableof demonstratingits case in a manner so clear and convincing that it seems, as Aquinas said, that veritas ipsa cogit nos, the truth itself compels us. Ghazali, a Muslim thinker slightly beforeAquinas'time, was troubledby what Hellenic theology had to say about his received faith and proposedtossing out the lot of logos from Islam. He paused, however,at mathematics, coerced, it would seem, by the verity of it. The pause was fatal. If you wish the mathematics, you had perforceto take the theology since the two areasare as closely premise- access to the polis, if it lay not linked as Homer and the Macedothrough the bloodstream or genealonian phalanx or,let us say,the gies, did march over property and deeds and tax assessments. It recomputer and the logic and logos within it.

Ghazali was not the first Muslim to have had problems with Hellenism, nor was Islam the first Near Easternreligion to experience fearand resentment at the dynamiting of its divinely revealedfoundations. The Jewsfirst and then

BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

quired leisure to become a Hellene. But if it demanded wealth, the Greeks' way taught altruism in the name of civic good. Hellenism was an economic as well as a cultural agent: it took the burdens and the rewards of public works, once the responsibility of royalty alone, and

spreadthem among the citizenry. The large civic enterprises that went on in every city of whatever size in the Greco-RomanNear East redistributed wealth as effectively as an income tax, and its end products in the city--the theatricalproduction, the library,the temple, the endowed professorship-while perhapsappearing to us as civic amenities, representedfor the generation that sponsoredand used them an authentic public utility. The axiom "from each polites accordingto his ability; for all polites unto the common good,"was everywheredemonstrated in the public facilities that were the ornaments even of what once had been only villages. Jerusalemwas no village. Prior to the Greek age, it had been a substantial urban settlement, a national capital and a shrine-city. Then, under the Ptolemies and the Seleucids it slowly became in fact, if only briefly in legal status, a polis. The Hasmoneans, only recently themselves rebels against the godless Greeks, lived in a Hellenized court and were buried in Greek-style tombs. Jerusalemhad a boulh and a gymnasium and a rapidlyHellenizing upper class. It was bourgeois stuff likely, the icing without much cake beneath.But Herod,unabashed admirerof things Greek and Roman and public works benefactorof half the eastern Mediterranean,put some yeast in the mix. Jerusalemgot its grid-planof streets, theater and race-course,and as the rabbis gasped, though in delight and wonder and not in Maccabean disdain, the worship of the One TrueGod of the Jewswas celebratedin a temple as grandlyHellenic as the one Philo was constructing for Him in Alexandria. Neither edifice survived very long. Herod's was destroyed in the civil insurrection of 70 A.D., and the shock of that encounter and the issues that it raised in its wake probably toppled Philo's exegetical temple as well. Despite some obvious opportunities, no one appeared much interested in emulating Herod, but Philo's enterprise was somewhat more urgent. The issue was resurrected some eight hundred

er cities or roadsor laws or alliances. years later,under an Islamic regime that was itself struggling to They sufferedphilosophers, somecome to terms with Hellenism, by times even gladly,and particularly Saadyaben Yusuf.The Gaon'sprob- in the incorrigibleEast. They suflems were the same as those of his feredChristians too, once they Muslim contemporariesand arose were assuredthat they were not from the same roots. In the early Jews.And in the end, they joined ninth century the leaven of Alexan- them. driahad begun to work once again, The Gentiles subscribedto and the Islamic worldwas introduced, Christianity,but those new converts half willy and half nilly, to translawere alreadyHellenes by temperations of the founding fathers of ment and education and not simply scientific Hellenism. The physical outback pagani. They addedto and mathematical sciences went their belief in Christ what was alien down with satisfying ease, as and unnecessary for the earlier Ghazali remarked.But when the Jewish Christians, a dialectically bedazzledMuslims andJewsreached reasonedand theologically defined the crownupon the work, the First faith. Their summary legacy was the creed:orthodoxy,true and correct Philosophy,they found there a portraitof God, the one carefully faith, became the touchstone of a limned by everyprecision tool in Gentile, Hellenic Christianity,and the armamentariumof Hellenic sci- for the millennium between Justin, ence, that squaredill with the the Christian rabbiand philosoScriptural,and so equally guaranteed, pherof Sichem, andThomas Aquinas, portraitof that same deity. The Christianity set forth, in diction, TrueBelieverand the Enlightened style and concepts that areunmistakModern had the issue of faith and ably Hellenic, precisely what it reason neatly and precisely before believed. The martyrs had died for the faith, but it was the Fathers them, where it rests today. Christianity had fewerproblems. and Doctors, all of them Hellenes under the cloth, who explained it. Though Jesuswas as backwatera In one of the most extraordinary prophet as Muhammadwould be and had only the vaguest of nomeetings of mind and method in tions about the Good News of the history, Hellenism, the Roman EmAncient World,his followerswere pire and Christianity became vehisomewhat betterinformed.Moreover, cles of mutual propagation.Contheir headlong flight from Judaism stantine, Roman Emperorand lately carriedthem directly into the emChristian, built out of imperial braceof the Gentiles and their funds grandiose Roman basilicas and endemic Hellenism. Those Gentile mausoleums over the sites of Jesus' Hellenes were no longer Greek, to birth, death and burial in Palestine. be sure, but Roman converts to the At the same time, he summoned his bishops about him to discuss, in ways of Hellenism. The Romans were apt students and even shrewder terms farmore appropriateto the masters of empire. They left intact university of Alexandria than to the and even enhanced the Greekpolis- Gospels, what exactly was meant network in the Near East and gave when Jesus was said to be the it a political and administrative Logos.Washe homoousios, of the coherence that lay beyond either Greek talents or interests. They built better and stronger and more permanently than the Greeks, wheth-

same essence as the Father, or homoiousios, of a like substance? It was anaodd way for a Christian to talk about Jesus perhaps, but in the

The True Believer and The Enlightened Modern had the issue of faith and reason neatly and precisely before them. BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

37

Hellenized world of the fourth century,it was the only way. Emperorsfrom Trajanto Septimius Severushad raised the Near Easternpoleis to new heights of grandeurand perfection: Bostra, Baalbek,Palmyra,Gerasa,Berytus, Damascus, Philadelphia that was once RabbothAmmon, BeroeaHaleb, Emesa-Homs, and Jerusalem now renamed Aelia Capitolina. A single imperial visit, like Hadrian's tour of the Near East in 130 A.D.,

TheDome of the Rockin Jerusalem,"thefinest of Hellenism 's later architectural monuments," as it appearedovera half-century ago.

Another view of the ruins of the Templeof Bacchus at Baalbek. Photo by Rev FrancisLyonsIII.

38

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

left a flood of patronagein its wake. Once Christians, the later Roman emperors continued the tradition, and though the object of their benefactions were still municipalities, the settings and motives were somewhat differentfrom what they had been in the second century. Where once it had been the commercially valuable caravancity of Palmyrathat had benefited from imperial interest, Zeno and Anastasius in the fifth century built cities in equally remote places in Egyptand Syriaand called them after their long-deadinspirations, City of Saint Menas, City of Saint Sergius. There were no theaters in these new shrine-cities of the Christian martyrs,no gymnasia or amphitheaters in the old Hellenic style. They were municipal ephemera perhaps,but they were not garrison towns or corporatecompounds either. The Christian Roman city still governeditself as a polis should, and while the political authority within it was vested more often in the bishop than in the secular magistrate of the prototype, this was the sign of a new age when the best talents went into the Church and the largest investments, public and private,were directedto the construction and endowment of houses of the worship of God. In the sixth century, the most splendid new buildings in Bostra, still the capital of Provincia Arabia, were a bold new domed cathedral and an episcopal palace. The former caravan towns of the Negev sprouted churches as if they were a native desert bloom, and Madaba in Transjordan, once an obscure village, had laid down across its terrain of churches a

carpet of mosaic in the new mannerist style. In the Among the Madabamosaics is a large-scalemap of Byzantine Jerusaand lem, a city sitting for her portrait sometime near the turn into the cal of the works seventh century.The polis markings are all still there, such as a Hellenic masters Piazza del Popolo just inside the Damascus Gate with a monumental were harnessed to column set in its midst; yet, we can make out few secular buildings on the map other than walls, gates and citadel; instead, the city is and rigor jeweled with churches, hospices, hostels, shrines and convents. And to the energy though Jerusalemcould boast no work of philosophers as such, there was dialectic and enough theological Christian disputation to satisfy the spirit of a Plato or an Aristotle that Hellenic inquiry was still flourishing in the ments, the Dome of the Rock on the once Jewish and now Christian Muslim Haram in Jerusalem.The self-conscious though unobtrusive holy city. Plato and Aristotle were themsymmetry of that building, its selves still alive in Jerusalem.By the organicrelationshipof partsto whole, sixth century the premises and the soberyet glittering mosaic work within, the open concealment methods of Christian theology were of its innermost part, its imposiadroitly and unashamedly derived tion of orderupon a rock irregularin from the two Greek thinkers, just as the churches where those disputashape and uneven in texture, all of it speaks of Hellenism; it is only the tions took place were, basilica and rock itself that echoes another, martyrium, the not unworthydescendents of Hellenic prototypes non-Greek, perception. There were many such rocks enlargedand magnified by the scattered across the Hellenized Roman mastery of brick and conNear East, bits and pieces of other crete. Temple architecturewas as traditions unyielding to logos and unsuitable by its associations for the persuasiveness or coercion of its these new houses of worship as the instruments: the cross that still old myths were for Christian disstood defiantly beneath the Roman course, and so in one as in the building on Golgotha;the Torah other, different,more secular forms enshrined in synagogueswhose mowere taken up and adapted.In saic floors shone with the glories and the logical physical philosophy, of Greek mythology and astrology; works of the Hellenic masters were harnessed to supply conceptual Muhammad's footprints in the earth under an elegant Hellenic rigorand exegetical energy to the work of Christian cupola next to the Dome of the theology, ongoing while the apsed basilical hall was Rock; still-living mythologies and that most unhellenic of all ideoloadapted for church and synagogue. gies, Gnosticism. These are not Imperial Roman mausolea taught mere aberrations;they are the both Christians and Muslims to standardsof an incomplete accomsuspend domes of dizzying dimenmodation, pickets along a line of sion over a variety of polygonal demarcation between rationalism bases: the Cathedral of Saint George and belief, between the Hellenes' at Bostra, Hagia Sophia in Constantilofty vision where man was ennople, the church on the site of the shrined and reaching for heaven and former Samaritan temple on Mount that other high place where God Gerizim, and the finest of Helalone had His dwelling. lenism's later architectural monu-

philosophy, logical physi-

supply

conceptual exegetical

ongoing

theology.

Suggestions for FurtherReading Peters, E E., The Harvest of Hellenism. New York:Galaxy, 1970. Eddy,S. K., The King is Dead. Studies in the Near Eastern Resistance to Hellenism 334-31 B.c.

Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961. Hengel, M., Judaism and Hellenism, 2 vols. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974. Jaeger,W, Early Christianity and GreekPaideia. New York: Oxford, 1969. Brown,P, The Worldof Late Antiquity from Marcus Aurelius to Muhammad. London: Thames and Hudson, 1971. Peters, E E., Allah's Commonwealth. A History of Islam in the Near East 600-1200 A.D. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973.

BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

39

BA

PORTRAIT

George Smith (1840-1876) Pioneer Assyriologist by BarryHoberman the civilizations of the ancient Near East was fired December3, 1872,a 32-year-old assistant in the Department of Oriental by the arrivalin Englandof the first batches of at the British Museum a Mesopotamian antiquities from archaeologicaldigs Antiquities gave in Iraq.In the late 1850s, experts working to before the formed paper recently Society of Biblical Archaeology,in London.When he was indecipherthe curious wedge-shapedAssyro-Babylonian script were just beginning to achieve a troduced,the distinguished audience, which inmeasure of consensus. The teenaged Smith, now cluded Prime Minister William Gladstone, burst into cheers. Foradvancenotices had apprenticedto a firm of banknote engravers, realized that the fledgling science of Assyriology primed them for the announcement of a truly held enormous potential for shedding light on the epochal discovery. Old Testament. He devotedhis evenings to studying The young scholar, George Smith, astoundedhis the published materials and assiduously poredover listeners by detailing his success in restoringand the monuments and inscriptions on display at the deciphering a cuneiform tablet, the fragmentsof British Museum. which had been found aroundthe middle of the Around 1862, a persistent Smith was in excavations at the ruins of the ancient century hired of The contained tablet by the museum to rejoin broken Assyrian capital Nineveh. cuneiform tablets that had been shipped what was unmistakably a Mesopotamian back from the various excavations at account of the Deluge, roughly paralthe site of Nineveh (nearMosul, in lel in content to the Biblical story northern Iraq).The job involved of Noah and the Ark. Its more than mechanically piecing deciphererimmediately the fragments together;to do became a public celebrity, the work with any degreeof a rarespecimen in the efficiency, one had to be able to history of Assyriology-the readthe tablets, which were study of the language, written in Akkadian, a Semitic literature,history, and culture of the ancient Mesopotalanguage.It soon became clear that Smith, an authentic prodigy, mian kingdoms of Babylonia could do so with uncanny ease. In and Assyria. recognition of his remarkable George Smith never attended a university or philologicaltalents he was appointed in 1866 to the museum's received formal instruction in Near Easternlanguages. Departmentof OrientalAntiquities, where he was to assist in the Fromhis boyhood he was the publication of texts. Servingin intrigued by Bible, this capacity,he discoveredthe above all by the historical existence of the BabylonianEpic books of the Old Testament. fortheIllustrated GeorgeSmith,as engraved of Gilgamesh, the eleventh His early interest in LondonNews in 1875.

On

1983 ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER BIBLICAL

41

tablet of which relates the story of the Flood. Smith's disclosure that he had found a cuneiform account of the Deluge touched off a wave of excitement throughoutBritainandthe Continent. Many seized upon his discoveryas definitive proofof the Flood'shistoricity-and, by extension, of the "truth"of the Bible. Smith was too good a scholar to endorsethe extravagantclaims made by fundamentalists, although, knowing a promising source of funds when he saw one, he did little to discourage them. His restraintpaid off. The LondonDaily Telegraphput up a thousand guineas to reopen British excavations at Nineveh, on the condition that Smith head the dig and periodically furnish the paper'sreaderswith dispatches from the field. This was agreedto, and the peerless decipherer -who had absolutely no archaeologicalexperience and had never been to the Near East-left for Iraq in Januaryof 1873. If Smith was professionallyunqualified to direct an archaeologicaldig, his personal attributes left even more to be desired. He demonstrateda consistent lack of tact in dealing with the Ottoman officials (i.e., he refused to pay baksheesh);nor could he get along with the local Arabs,Kurds, Turks,and Circassians. The prolific Orientalist E. A. Wallis Budgerememberedhim as "a highly nervous, sensitive man," and relateda curious incident that occurredaftera crucial tablet had been cleaned for Smith's perusal: "Smith took the

42

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

tablet and began to read...andwhen he saw that [it] contained the portion of the legend he had hoped to find there, he said, 'I am the first man to readthat aftermore than two thousand years of oblivion.' Setting the tablet on the table, he jumpedup and rushed about the room in a greatstate of excitement, and, to the astonishment of those present, began to undress himself!" Unsuited though he was for field work, Smith still managedto recoverseveralthousand fragments of inscribed tablets in 1873 and 1874. He even found a missing portion of the Flood story,creating another sensation back home. On a third trip, in 1876, he was preventedby Ottoman red tape from excavatingand was left in Mosul in late Julywith no work to do. Everthe foolhardyand ill-prepared traveler,he set out with typically inadequate provisions under the blistering midsummer sun for the British consulate in Aleppo, Syria,only to contract dysentery along the way.He had to be carriedinto Aleppo, where he died on August 19. "His loss is an irreparableone to Assyriology," wrote a colleague, A. H. Sayce. "Scholarscan be rearedand trained, but hardly more than once in a century can we expect a genius with the heaven-born gift of divining the meaning of a forgotten language...." Copyright? 1979 HarvardMagazine.Reprintedby permission.

Exploring the

Mediterranean Backgrou of Early Christianity

~I

Hagios Georgios,the rotunda originally built to serve as the mausoleum of the EmperorGaleriusin Thessalonike. Convertedinto a Christainchurchin the fourth century it was later used as a mosque. Photo courtesy of the ResearchTeamfor the Religion and Cultureof the Lands of the New Testament,HarvardDivinity School.

by EnidSchmuch

and sponsoredby the American Schools of Oriental Research.Its purpose is to achieve a clearer understandingof the early Christian missionary environment by engagwarmed ing in detailed examinations of Maysunshine the groupof students clusarchaeologicalmaterials. What can tered beforethe massive pagan monuments tell of customs that may have influenced Christian Rotundaof the Emperor Galerius in Thessalonike. It was a practices?How did the syncretistic leanings of the first century help to perfect day for the presentation of shape Christian attitudes and my study on the early Byzantine mosaic inside. I had spent the patterns of worship?What caused springsemester researchingthe paper the Thessalonians to respond to the Apostle Paul in a manner so while participatingin a seminar differentfrom that of the Corinofferedregularlyby the Divinity thians? Questions such as these set a School at HarvardUniversity. The course is part of an ongoing program challenging task for Harvard's directedby ProfessorHelmut Koester ResearchTeamfor the Religion and

T•he

Culture of the Landsof the New Testament. The end of the term found the nine members of the 1981 Seminar in Greece. There we sharedboth the fruits of our librarylabors and the excitement of seeing the sites we had chosen to study.Two of us had selected works of art in Thessalonike, the city to which St. Paul had addressedhis earliest Epistle. Shaun Casey chose to examine the sculpted "sacrifice"scene on the Arch of Galerius, a blatant display of egotism by an emperorwhose favorite sport was persecuting Christians. I examined the badly fragmentedmosaic in the dome of Hagios Georgios, the Rotundabuilt

BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

43

Shaun Casey and Helmut Koesterin front of the sculpted Arch of Galeriusat Thessalonike. The sacrifice scene is directly above their heads. Photo by the author.

to serve as the mausoleum for Galerius but which, ironically,had been convertednot long afterhis death in 311 c.E. into a Christian church. Todaythe surviving minaret offersa silent reminderthat the Byzantine tranquility was also ephemeral.The building was taken overby the Turksand used for centuries as a mosque. My immediate interest in this structure concerned what the monumental piece of art inside may have said to the early Christians in Thessalonike. The mosaic must have had some special meaning for the descendants of those believers to whom Paulhad written so lovingly, speaking "like a father to his children"and calling them "ourglory and our joy"Adorningthe entire dome and spanning nearly 79 feet across, the mosaic had originally been composed of an estimated 36 million tesserae. A scene in three concentric bands was depicted in colors rangingfrom brilliant blue to shimmering gold. But by the time the Iconoclasts, the Turks,and the earthquakeshad left their respective calling cards,the figure of Christ at the top had vanished, portraitsof severalsaints at the bottom were damagedor destroyed,and in the middle zone only a few sandaled

44

feet stood firm. On the basis of these scanty remains, and believing that the designer would have selected a theme meaningful to the local congregation, I proposedto link the mosaic to the text of I Thessalonians 4:13-18, in which Paul sets forth his reassuringvision of the Parousia.However,the resident scholar at the site, in responding, advocateda less subjective approach. Thus, while student hypotheses often become as batteredas the artifacts they seek to interpret, this kind of exchange is a valuable aspect of the work of the Research Team as well as an excellent training tool. A little over a decade ago, Helmut Koester,Morison Professor of New Testament Studies and Winn Professorof Ecclesiastical History, began casting about for an enriching project to undertake during a forthcoming sabbatical. FrankMoore Cross, Hancock Professorof Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages, suggested he explore the relationship between the Christian Scriptures and archaeology.From their conversation, the idea for the Research Team for the Religion and Culture of the Landsof the New Testament was conceived. Koesterwas initially somewhat

1983 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER

hesitant to undertake this project because of his lack of training in archaeology.Nevertheless, he set out to determine first the extent of the need for such an investigation. He quickly realized that the gap in this areaof scholarship was startlingly great. Standardworks by scholars such as Adolf Deissmann and Paul Wendlandwere last revised early in this century,and so lacked referencesnot only to recent discoveries but also to advanced researchmethodologies. New Testament studies in the past few decades also contributed to this gap. Under the influence of such giants as Koester'sown mentor, Rudolf Bultmann, these texts had become more heavily concerned with theology. Finally,the limited amount of New Testament archaeologywhich was being practicedreflected what ProfessorKoesterrefersto as "the Holy Landsyndrome."Criticizing this emphasis, he says, "Palestine is not the land of the New Testament, and the notion that Jerusalemis the Christians''holy city' was already rejectedby the Apostle Paulthough with little success." With Cross's encouragement, Koesterapplied for and receiveda grantfrom the American Council of LearnedSocieties, which enabled him to spend several months of his 1971/72 sabbaticalin Greece and Turkey.There, having assessed the situation, he began to develop an approachto the study of nonliterarymaterials which would better inform our understandingof the Hellenistic environmentencountered by early Christianity. Partof Koester'sprogramwas to examine the results of earlier archaeological investigations in Greece and Turkey. However, most of the work done in this region had been devoted to the Classical rather than to the later Hellenistic and Roman Imperial periods which hosted the development of early Christianity. And even when they did explore material from these later periods, the classicists were not asking the same questions which New Testament scholars need to raise. Obviously, much fresh interpretation would be necessary. Yet, at

the same time, Koesterrealized that some of this earlierwork could serve as a foundation for his own endeavor.Forinstance, the social, political, and economic data from earlierperiods acquiredby archaeologists is essential to any study of Paganism'sinfluence on early Christianity.Also, the expertise scholars from other disciplines have in utilizing relevantmaterial is extremely helpful to students of theology who lack training in such specialized areasas epigraphy,numismatics, and art history. Koesterreturnedfrom his sabbaticalwith several concrete objectives in mind. He knew that the neglected and badly fragmented discipline of New Testament archaeology requiredthe establishment of specific tools for study, such as the collection and reassessment of both published and unpublished data and the compilation of a comprehensive file of photographic materials. He also saw that the understandingof ancient Christianity within its total religious and cultural context would profit from interdisciplinaryscholarshipon both the local and international levels. The problem was where to begin. Whathad originallybeen a personal quest was mushrooming into a multi-faceted programof sizeable proportions. Back at Harvard,Koesterconvened an ad hoc committee of scholars from the fields of Old and New Testament, Fine Arts, and Classics. Fromthis grouphe sought advice and collaborativesupport. He received both. A majorrecommendation of the committee, says Koester,was "the initiation of a team which would survey relevant archaeological data."To help implement his suggestion, Dieter Georgi, Professor of New Testament at Harvard Divinity School, along with Albert Henrichs and Zeph Stewart of Harvard's Classics Department agreed to serve as advisors. Professor Cross as well as Professors David Mitten and George Kaufmann of Harvard's Fine Arts Department also promised assistance. Koester conducted the first experimental graduate seminar in

Centralmedallion borne aloft by four angels at the summit of the mosaic inside the dome of Hagios Georgios.Photo courtesy of the ResearchTeamfor the Religion and Cultureof the Landsof the New Testament.

1972/73, and by the end of the academic yearhe had developedthe nucleus of his ResearchTeam.The format for the seminar has remained much the same from the start of the program:each participantis requiredto select a site included in the currentyear's itineraryand then, during the early weeks of the semester, analyze relevant published material. At this time, scholars from related fields share ttheirexpertise with the group. The students then present detailed reportson their chosen site to the class, utilizing slides selected from the Team's collection. The next step is to submit a paperon the site addressing the questions and comments raised in class. The culmination of the course is a series of seminar meetings in Greece, and during the weeks spent there, the students present and defendtheir papersbefore resident experts at each specific locale. Even at significant sites where no papers are given, outstanding scholars serve as guides and lecturers.

A perennial favoriteof the students is Dr. JudithBinder of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. During the 1981 semester she served as a seminar leader for two days, sharing her profound knowledge of important archaeological sites in Athens and Eleusis. Dr. Binder,who punctuates her lectures with lively anecdotes, delighted everyone with her keen sense of humor as well as with her expertise. Another memorable archaeoloand lecturer is the Swedish gist octogenarianOskarBroneer,professor emeritus from the University of Chicago, who annually heads for Greece with the first breath of spring. As Broneerleads the way through fields of tall clumpy grass and rocks, where students one fourth his age have to exercise caution, he never misses a step. After three hours of tramping in the hot sun and watching this remarkableman pause before one artifact after another to point out important features, one almost has to be

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

45

OskarBroneer(at farleft), professoremeritus at the Universityof Chicago,presidesas StephanieSnow and Nicole Hirchfeldtry out the reconstructedstartinggates at the site of the ancient Isthmian Games. Photo by the author.

reminded of the fact that he sees them only through memory, because Dr. Broneeris now blind. Richard Buckner,a Divinity School student and the group'sathlete-in-residence in 1981, was especially pleased when Broneerhad an assistant set up the reconstructed starting gates of the ancient Isthmian Games so that he could try them. Bucknervalues this experience as highly as his sprint down the track in Olympia used by runnersin the original Olympic Games in the 8th century B.C.E.

In addition to the American School in Athens, which provides many of the scholars who have addressedthe seminar,the Greek Ministry of Culture has supplied invaluable help to the Research Team.Dr. Koesteris also gratefulfor the aid and supportof many individuals, especially Bishop Demetrius Trakatellisof Athens, who holds a Ph.D. (1971)in New Testament from Harvard,and Dr. KaterinaRhomiopoulou, who keeps the Teaminformed of any new discoveries which might have some bearing on its research in Thessalonike, where she is Director of the Archaeological Museum. Thessalonike is where Th.D. candidateHolland (known as Holly) Hendrix, who joined the team in

46

Formercollege trackman RichardBuckner crouchesfor a start at the stadium in Olympia, site of the first Olympic Gamesin 776 B.C.Photo by the author.

its early years, chose to do his initial research.He still remains involved with his study of the city and visits there almost annually. Thessalonike has providedhim with sufficient material for his doctoral dissertation as well as for a book he intends to publish as part of his contribution to the program.Yet this material has often proven difficult to obtain. Thessalonike presents archaeologists with peculiar prob-

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

lems which stem from the fact that the modern city--and it is the second largestin Greece-has been built on top of the ancient site. Accordingto Hendrix, most of the diggingthere is done not by scholars, but by the city's department of public works. Whenever the department uncovers materials from antiquity, it calls in the Greek Archaeological Service. The scholars are permitted to dig and examine for six weeks; then the excavation is closed and work on the interrupted modem projectis resumed. "So," says Hendrix, "a lot of the evidence that has been found is the result of where the city decided to put its water mains or build its streets." Scholarly expeditions have their light side too. On one free evening duringthe ResearchTeam's latest trip to Greece, students staged a graduationparty.The guest of honor was dressedin a bathrobe, which servedas an academic gown, and a cap complete with a tassel made of yellow clothespins. He was then led down the aisle while everyonehummed "Pompand Circumstance."Teammembers also remember the daywhen the boat almost left without Th.D. candidate Ren6 Riittimann, who had made an unannounced stop at the bakery to replenish his food supply.Bread is the basis of at least two meals a day on a student budget.Varietyis achieved by putting jam on the bread for breakfastand cheese on it for lunch-or vice versa. The student budget is also responsible for many breakfastseaten by the side of railroad tracks;it is sometimes imperative to be at a station first thing in the morning, since second class tickets areusually sold out early. Minor frustrations also abound, which can be seen as humorous only in retrospect. A paper presented in 1981 concerning the dining rooms of the Asclepius sanctuary in Corinth described many features which its author intended to point out on location. But the report was delivered by a disappointed student before a nondescript pile of rubble; what had been for centuries an orderly array of the remains of dining couches had been leveled the

previous month by an earthquake. Koester,who is fond of telling jokes Palestine is not land the of the New Testaon himself, recalls a daywhen he led a hot, exhausting climb up to the and the notion that early Byzantine monastic chapel of Hosios David situated high on a was is the hill overlookingthe city of Thessalonike. Only upon arrivaldid he the Paul. discoverthat he had left the tripod for his camerafarbelow, standing in the middle of the Via Egnatia. the Team's work with inscriptions. Recently he offeredfor Christianity." Perhapsthe most exasperating In spite of his busy teaching schedule, the first time a new lecture on the circumstance occurredin 1974, a he remains an active member of "Religious History of the Islands of the ResearchTeam. He is especially Delos and Thera,"which was year which saw Greece torn by internal problems. Koesterhad hired interested in the project because it receivedwith great enthusiasm. The a boat to ferrythe groupto Samoprovides educational benefits for programshave the advantageof thrace, a virtually uninhabited pastors and because it sets Christibeing flexible enough to please island. The captain had agreedto anity into a broadersocial context. secular as well as church groups. come back for the return trip at Many scholars from other fields, The material deals with the envirfour o'clock that afternoon.In the who participatedin the programat onment of the early Christian misits inception, still remain involved meantime, however,small boats sion ratherthan its theology; biblical were called up by the governmentto with its work. David Mitten willing- links are easily introduced for meet an emergency,and consely continues to lecture on architec- church programs,and question perture to the seminar, and Harvard's quently, Koesterand his comiods always allow ample opportunity panions found themselves marooned Sterling Dow, though now retired,is for special interests to surface. on Samothracefor three days, as he always ready to spend hours with One of Helmut Koester'sdreams describes it, "without even a each new group explaining techfor the ResearchTeamwhich has toothbrush." niques for making "squeezes" (casts) alreadybeen realizedis the collection SeveralTeam members are of inscriptions and sharing other of nearly 4500 slides. They are now sharing the fruits of their secrets from the world of epigraphy. used to enhance lectures given both researchwith a new generation of Koesterand Hendrix both see this inside and outside the classroom. students. Holly Hendrix has recently interdisciplinarycooperation as a Including depictions of landscapes, completed two years of teaching at majorachievement, not only for ruins, sculptures, mosaics, coins, HaverfordCollege, and has just its intrinsic value to the students and inscriptions, the slides providea assumed a position at Barnard and the project,but also because it valuable tool for research.Koester College, which is associated with his has opened a communication line, has compiled this comprehensive undergraduatealma mater, Columlong overdue,between Harvard file of photographsthroughhis bia University. During the spring associations with various Greek University and its Divinity School of 1981, he conducted a seminar'at faculty. museums, the Archaeological SerHaverfordpatterned after the HarConnections with churches are vice, and the government.As he vardmodel. Hendrix brought a group also developedas participants in graduallygained the confidence of of his students to Greece, where the seminar enter the ministry, and these institutions and cemented such bridgesare strengthened and they joined forces with the students personal friendships within them, from HarvardDivinity School. extended to the community-at-large he was permitted access to baseDennis Smith (Th.D. 1980), whose whenever ProfessorKoester or ment storageareasand other places seminar project involved gathering another Team member lectures out- which remain closed to the public. evidence of the Egyptian cults in side the university. Such presenAmong Koester'scurrentgoalstations both keep the academics in Corinth, now teaches at Oklahoma one which must be achieved soon touch with the special concerns of State University, and former Team because of the hazardof deteriorathe laity, and serve as a much-needed tion-is the acquisition of sufficient member Thomas Robinson (Ph.D. source of revenue for the work of 1981), shares his knowledge of the funding to duplicate the entire the ResearchTeam. early Christian environment with slide collection, which is in constant Dr. Koesterhas given illusstudents at Union Theological use. He also hopes to rent atmotratedlectures throughout much Seminary. Closer to home, Philip spheric-controlledstoragespace Sellew (M.Div. 1978 and Th.D. of the United States and Europeand for the originals to ensure their when giving presentations in the candidate), is currently Director of preservation.Ultimately Koester Boston area,he is often assisted by Language Studies at Harvard Divinwould like to have still a third set, so students. Two of the most popular ity School, where he passes on the that one collection would always

ment,

Christians' rejected by

knowledge of Greek which enabled

him to contribute significantly to

'holy

topics at present are "The Cities of Paul" and "Competitors of Early

city'

Jerusalem already

Apostle

be available to churches and schools for instructional uses.

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

47

Koesterhas severalmore dreams and projectsfor the ResearchTeam. With the studies of Greece nearing completion, Asia Minor-site of many early Christian communities including the city of Ephesusbeckons. Another goal is the publication of studies on significant areas where detailed researchhas been undertaken.Koesteris currently preparingmaterial on the development of the Agorain Athens duringthe RomanImperialperiod and on the cult of Artemidoruson the island of Thera.Hendrix is working on Graeco-Romanreligions in Thessalonike in the early Christian era.Doctoral candidatesRobert Stoops and JohnClabeauxare assembling data they have collected on Olympia and Corinth for their respective volumes. The Research Teamhopes to obtain the funding necessary to producebooks with a sufficient quantity of good photographswhich would be helpful to the student and appealingto the lay person. Semi-annually the Teampublishes a scholarly newsletter called Numina Aegaea, comprised of articles by Teammembers who wish to sharehighlights of their research beyondthe Harvardcommunity. One recent issue included a study of the depictions of Diana carved into the "living rock" at Philippi. This curious assemblage of nearly 200 bas-reliefs,mostly of female deities, is scatteredin situ across the south side of a 750-foot hill. The paperwas preparedby ValerieAbrahamsen (M.T.S.1979 and Th.D. candidate),who has been a valued member of the ResearchTeam for severalyears. Numina Aegaea is now edited by Th.D. candidate Paul Mirecki, who designed a new format similar to that of other scholarly journals. The newsletter now features more concise articles, allowing space for a greater number of studies and encouraging more independent thinking on the part of the reader. Its current mailing list numbers several hundred addresses in the U.S. and abroad, and Mirecki hopes that this will soon be expanded.

Another aim of the Research

48

ditionally, Sellew sees greatpotential for a "supportnetwork" comprised of Team members scattered across the country at other universities who could engage in cooperative teaching efforts and serve in both advisory and fund-raisingcapacities. In 1982 there was no trip to Greece. It was a time for catching up on "homework"and for trying to stabilize the budget-somewhat. The ResearchTeam is a projectof the American Schools of Oriental Research,but its financing is entirely dependent upon grants, contributions, and lecture fees. One of its majorefforts duringthis year at home has been a recataloguing of the slide collection, which Koesterhopes will be completed before the end of 1983. Th.D. students CarolHoward,ChristopherMatthews, PaulMirecki, Rene Riittimann, and RobertStoops Helmut Koester,SteveHolten, and Rend have been especially involved in this Rizttimann(goingleft to right) emergefrom a cave on the Greekisland of Thera(often task. known as Santorini).Photo by the author. Holly Hendrix attributes some of the Team's success to the Team is the introduction of more approachof a professorwho has been students to field archaeology.Three willing to let his students "range years ago Hendrix and Laurence freely" accordingto their interests, Kant (M.T.S.1981), participatedin but who remains always accessible an excavation on the Greek island of and readyto criticize their work Thasos, while RobertStoops and constructively--a style that results SarahTanzer(M.T.S.1977; Ph.D. in what Koesterrefersto with a chuckle as "productiveanarchy." candidate),joined a dig in Israel. Hendrix anticipates the day when Anyone who has followed Helmut the Team becomes involved with Koesterthrough Greece wonders at his ifitial qualms about his lack of training young scholars in the art of digging on its own projects,in archaeologicaltraining. Todayhe areas that have been neglected or seems able to pull a story out of any rock or other fragmentof evidence incompletely excavated.Koester also considers this a desirableposhe encounters, and the vitality of his sibility, but to avoid or correct any personalityprojectshis enthusiasm for the researchwhich continues to misconceptions, he firmly states that "Teammembers remain scholars spread-to his students, his lecture studying ancient Christianity and audiences, the readersof Numina using archaeological data for that Aegaea, and beyond. purpose." Philip Sellew envisions the establishment of a broaderinstitute for archaeology at HarvardDivinity Copyright? 1982 The Presidentand Fellows of HarvardCollege. This article originally School which would incorporate appearedin the HarvardDivinity Bulletin. the ResearchTeam. This system Reprintedby permission. would allow not only a greater division of labor,but also, it might even link the Team's work with Syro-Palestinianresearchto achieve a more comprehensive study of New Testament backgrounds.Ad-

BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

BA

GUIDE

TO

ARTIFACTS

The Study of Faunal Remains from Archaeologi Sites by RichardH.Meadow n the NearEast,the excavatorof an archae-

ological site is just as likely to dig up faunal remains as potsherds or lithic debris. Consisting mostly of the durableparts of animals (bones, teeth, shells, etc.), these materials usually representthe garbageleft overfrom past meals and food preparationactivities. As garbage, they owe their deposition to human agency and thus, in that sense, are just as "cultural"as other artifactualremains. Yet, more often than not, unworkedanimal bones and shells have been given short shrift by archaeologists principally because, in and of themselves, they have not been considered as artifacts.This is not to imply that faunal remains have been ignored altogether,but it is probablyfair to say that the degreeof attention paid to them has been directly related to the antiquity of the deposits and inversely relatedto the cultural complexity exhibited. Thus, the study of Pleistocene faunas has alwaysbeen integral to the investigation of early homonids, while, until recently,the number of reportsdealing with faunal remains from historic period sites in the Near East could be counted on the fingers of one hand. But why study animal bones at all? For prehistoricperiods, the answer is relatively easy -they providethe only source of information on one important dimension of ancient economies. Formost of human prehistory,people were hunters and gatherers,the wild animals being exploited varyingwith time, space, and cultural tradition. Throughaccurateidentification of faunal remains and analysis of their attributes, using techniques such as those to be describedbelow,it is possible to investigate such economic and ecological featuresas seasonality of settlement and scheduling of resource utilization, selection of prey (forexample, by age or sex), carcass utilization, and even the sharing of food resources by the ancient inhabitants of a site. But what about later periods when written recordsprovideinformation on animal husbandrypractices (as in Mesopotamia),or when pictoral representations show animals being hunted, herded,slaughtered,and butchered (as in Egypt)? The answer to this question is that faunal analysis

providesthe researcherwith a differentperspective, an additional dimension. Writtenand pictoral information tends to be selective and thus incomplete; the same is true of animal bone data but in a differentfashion. For example, at Catal Hiuyiik,the 7th/6th millennium Neolithic town in what is today Turkey,hunting scenes dominate the wall paintings. While these scenes may provideimportant clues to the ideology of the ancient inhabitants, they provide very little information about the economy, a fact attested by the overwhelming dominance of bones from domestic cattle in the faunal record.In Mesopotamia and in Egypt,the archivaland representationalmaterials deal primarilywith animals kept by or for largeestates (whether religious or secular);little is known of the

bones animal Unworked have and shells been given shrift short by archaeolonot because they have gists as artifacts. been considered exploitation of animals by villagers or of the actual consumption practices of urbandwellers. In brief, those faunal remains which arethe durabledebris of ancient meals provideus with the consumers' view--often very differentfrom a scribe's or draftsman'sor priest's opinion of contemporaryor ideal practices. Thus, the answer to the following question can be approachedonly throughfaunal analysis: To what degreedid religious prohibitions against the consumption of certain types of animals actually affect such activities? Tell Hesban in Jordanis one of the few sites where the question has been asked. There, the consumption of pork apparentlyreachedits height duringthe Byzantine period, and although decreasingin importance, the keeping of domestic pigs clearly did continue into

1983 ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER BIBLICAL

49

Islamic times. During this later period, also, a relatively largenumber of wild boarbones were identified, "some with prominent incision marks testifying to the consumption of swine flesh" (AndrewsUniversity Seminary Studies 16/1, 1978, p. 264). The reasons for the relative neglect of faunal remains from culturally more complex sites are not difficult to understand.Archaeologists dealing with such sites have tended to have their training in such humanistic disciplines as classics, art history, philology, or ancient history, while prehistorianstrace their ultimate intellectual origins to geology,paleontology,and naturalhistory. The division between "prehistory"and "archaeology" is still maintained in Europe,and even in the United States most prehistoriansfind their homes in departments of anthropology,while a greatmany of those dealing with the BronzeAge and later periods have other affiliations. In any case, without the active interest and supportof archaeologists and without an intellectual frameworksuited to its inclusion, faunal analysis had only very limited opportunities to develop. The situation was made that much more difficult by the fact that, until the mid-1960s, those individuals who carried out faunal studies in the English-speakingworld were zoologists or paleontologists with usually only a secondaryinterest in these "too old" or "too young" animal remains. About 20 years ago, however,the whole nature of archaeology,as it was conceived and practicedparticularlyin North America and GreatBritain,began to change. Simultaneously there was a sizable influx of new students, there was funding availablefor field research,and there developedan increasinginterest in ancient economies, in the relationships of humans and their environments, and in the processes of change in ecological relationships through time. Since archaeologists could not find a sufficient number of trainedpersonnel able or willing to carryout the specialized studies necessary to answer their ever more elaborate questions, they encouragedtheir students to seek trainingin the relevant fields. The result has been a remarkablegrowth in the number of individuals who carryout faunal studies, togetherwith increased attention being paid to the recovery of faunal remains from archaeological sites. Faunal analysis carried out by Central and East European researchers has taken a rather different course. These individuals, trained principally in comparative anatomy and veterinary medicine, have long been interested in the development of domestic animals. During the middle of the last century, the recovery of faunal remains from "Swiss Lake Dwelling" sites provided large bodies of well-preserved material which could be characterized by measurements and compared with specimens from modern breeds. By the 1920s, sufficient

50

1983 ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER BIBLICAL

comparativeosteology (study of bones) had been carriedout in the German-speakingworld to permit compilation of definitive methodological compendia. These source books included discussions of techniques for ascertainingthe age at death and sex of animals on the basis of their bones, as well as exhaustive listings of dimensions to be measured.The author of one of the most thorough of these compilations, J.U. Duerst, also carriedout one of the earliest studies of faunal remains from a Middle Easternsite, that of Anau, near the Iranian borderin what is now Soviet Turkmenistan (publishedin English in 1908).Because of the languagebarrier,however,and because of differences in the faunas being studied and in the questions being asked, the German approachto faunal analysis either remained unknown to--or was rejectedby-most Anglo-Americaninvestigators until the mid-1970s. Those in America who dealt principally with wild faunas felt little need to recordexhaustively every measurablespecimen since this apparentlycontributed little to an understandingof the human utilization of their environment. Those who dealt with domestic stock generallybelieved that attempts to sort out the

Sectioning with

microscopic of

archaeospecimens have considerable success.

examination

logical

and

met

lineages of modern breeds on the basis of comparative osteology and measurements were as misguided as similar attempts which had been made in physical anthropology. The coming together of these two broad traditions of faunal analysis is occurringat the present time. Translationsinto English of a number of summary articles and of A Guide to the Measurement of Animal Bones from Archaeological Sites (PeabodyMuseum Bulletin 1, 1976) have made availableto a wider audience some of the best fruits of more than a century of Germanlanguageresearch.At the same time and often quite independently,Anglo-American researchers have begun to use measurements and morphological attributes of the skeletons in orderto determine the age, sex, and size of animals representedin archaeologicaldeposits, and to study changes in prehistoric animal populations through both time and space. On the other side and again often quite independently,a youngergeneration of European researchers,particularlyin Scandinaviaand the Low Countries, has turned its attention to more archaeologically-orientedquestions. Finally,a series of international conferences, smaller symposia,

and the continuing researchbeing done by Englishspeaking investigators on faunas of continental Europeand especially the Middle East have provided the opportunityfor increased personal contacts between individual faunal analysts, many of whom now identify themselves as "archaeozoologists"or "zooarchaeologists."The flurry of articles addressing the question of whether this field of study should be termed"archaeozoology," "zooarchaeology," or even "paleoethnozoology" is symptomatic of the fact that those who carryout the analysis of animal remains from archaeological sites have begun to recognize themselves as a groupof investigators concerned with a distinctive set of problems, while developing a particularset of analytic methods and theoretical approachesto deal with them. The methods of zooarchaeology are, in some instances, much like those of paleontology.Both disciplines involve identification of usually fragmentary remains with the occasional exceptional finds of whole skeletons. In addition to a family, genus, or species level identification, however,an attempt is usually made by zooarchaeologists to determine the sex and age at death of the animal representedby the specimen(s) at hand. Such information can be extremely valuable for studying such phenomena as the season of occupation of a site and the scheduling of animal-relatedeconomic activities, for determining kill-off patterns, and for gaining insight into animal husbandrypractices. Standard techniques used for looking at age distributions in a faunal collection include documenting the fusion (growingtogether)or non-fusion of articular ends of bones to their shafts and recordingpatterns of tooth eruption and wear.The results are interpretedusing information obtained from similar studies carriedout on modern specimens of known age, studies which permit groupingof the archaeologicalspecimens into approximateage classes. Recently,microscopic study of the fine structure of bones, teeth, otoliths, and shells has revealedthe existence of incremental structures (layers)which are deposited in regularyet alternating fashion apparentlyon a seasonal, or in shells even on a daily,basis (in a fashion similar to tree rings). Sectioning and microscopic examination of

observableeven on fragmentarymaterial. Secondary sexual characteristics such as antlers in male deer and relatively largerhorns in many male bovids can also be useful. Another featurewhich can sometimes be employed is the largeroverallsize of adult males when comparedto the females of some vertebratespecies. Measurements of the bones will tend to cluster in two more or less widely spaced groupswhich, on the basis of comparisonwith modern specimens, can be identified as coming from males and females. Especially when dealing with domestic mammals, however,such groupings are not always so clear because the rangeof variation for each sex is often considerablywider than in the wild relatives of the same animals. In fact, the presence of a very wide overallrangeof variationin bone measurements can be a useful piece of evidence for ascertaining the presence of domestic animal remains at a site. Another featureof many early domestic animals which has been documented by measurement of faunal remains is that successive generations tended to get somewhat smaller in overallbody weight over time, this possibly due to impoverishedliving conditions (when comparedto conditions in the wild) and to human selection (conscious or unconscious) for smaller stock. Domestication studies have long been an important topic in zooarchaeology.Such work has tended to concentrate in EasternEuropeand the Near East on the remains of dog, sheep, goat, cattle, and pig from Neolithic period sites. Recent researchon faunal remains from sites in areas distant from this "corearea,"however,shows that both the idea of domestication and the animals themselves were spreadvery rapidly.Thus, sheep and pig bones have been identified in seventhmillennium deposits on the island of Corsica, where there were no wild ancestors of either animal, and the local domestication of cattle, sheep, and possibly goat has been postulated for the same period far to the east on the margins of the Indus Valley, where ancestral wild stock did exist. In addition, increasing attention has been paid to such secondarydomesticates as the camel, horse, donkey, and water buffalo, all of which began to play significant roles in the economic life of Asia at least

archaeological specimens to observe the same phenomena has met with considerable success, and promises to provide to researchers in faunal studies an important tool for accurate determination of age and season of death. Determination of sex of an animal from faunal remains is carried out by documentation of traits which differ in kind or in size between the two sexes (sexual dimorphism). Thus in the pelvic region of most mammals which bear their young one at a time (for example, humans, cows, goats, and sheep, but not dogs or pigs), there are significant differences between males and females, some of which are

by the third millennium B.c. In addition to the more "animal-related" aspects of faunal studies, both zooarchaeologists and paleontologists have been paying increasing attention to circumstances surrounding the deposition, burial, and preservation of faunal remains, a domain of concern often called taphonomy Because paleontologists generally deal with deposits laid down by geological and geomorphological means, the taphonomic processes that interest them are natural in origin. While many of the factors which affect preservation of archaeological faunal remains may be similar, zooarchaeologists are principally

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

51

the

Behind "asses"

lies

"oxen"

to

work

of

change by

an

alert

concerned with cultural processes such as butchering of carcasses and the fragmentation,disposal, and human redeposition of faunal remains. As a number of researchershave shown, these processes arenot only culturally related but often significantly affect what bones of which animals actually turn up at archaeologicalsites. Furthermore,even within a given site, differentialdistribution of faunal remains will occur, a phenomenon which presents valuable possibilities for gaining furtherinsight into such cultural features as economic and activity specialization, but also harborsthe possibility of serious interpretativedistortions if representative portions of all the differenttypes of deposits in a site are not sampled. Fromthe abovediscussion it should be clear that the analysis of faunal remains from archaeological sites is a dynamic and growingfield of research, archaeologicalin orientation but with strong ties to both zoology and paleontology.Zooarchaeological studies, however,depend for their very success on the availability of good modern comparative collections, on a tradition of careful comparative morphologicalresearch,and on the support of personnel in all related disciplines but especially in archaeology.By way of concluding, and as a final example of the value of faunal studies for archaeology, the following case history is presented:

the a

single of

bit

word detective

archaeologist.

4o~r

GRE80

~2

c• rlr12

,

S"4r lu

I

,

,'I

O

?

Zzz

SiT;O00 •

'.

. ,,t C A

cvol/

"Infront of the chariot lay the crushed skeleton of two asses with the bodies of the grooms by their heads..."(C. L. Woolley,Excavations at Ur, 1954, p. 61). "Infront of the chariot lay the crushed skeleton of two oxen with the bodies of the grooms by their heads..." (C. L. Woolley,1954, as revised by P.R. S. Moorey, Ur 'of the Chaldees,' 1982, p. 62). The abovequotations come from Sir Leonard Woolley's dramaticaccount of his finding of "Royal Tomb"800, the tomb of "Queen Shubad"at Ur. Behind the change of the single word ''asses" to "oxen"lies a bit of detective work by an alert archaeologist (recountedin the journalIraq 22, 1960, pp. 102-04); with some resulting cautionary tales. Findingan animal tooth in the University Museum (Philadelphia)catalogued as "of one of the asses from the tomb of Shubad,"RobertH. Dyson, Jr.sent the specimen to a competent specialist for examination. Identification as "bovid"

52

1983 ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER BIBLICAL

Groundplan of "Royal 800, the tomb chamber of excavatedby Sir LeonardWoolley "QueenShubad"at Ur,Tomb"

and not "equid"was forthcoming, a specific determination as "Bos taurus" (domestic cattle) being made later on more complete material in the British Museum. Woolley had made the original "equid"determination on three bases: first, on the assumption that the equid-surmounteddouble rein ring found in association with the bones in fact reflected the nature of those animals; second, because the animals apparentlyhad no horns; and third, because the Arabworkmen identified the jaws as coming from an ass. Unfortunately,similarly mistaken identifications continue to be made even today on similarly questionable groundsby wellmeaning archaeologists.A majorproblem with such incorrect determinations is that once they enter

the literature,they are difficult to expunge. In the case of "Queen Shubad'sasses," one still comes upon occasional referencesto them as evidence for the domestication of donkeys or onagers (Asian wild half-asses) during the third millennium in Mesopotamia. As a final note, it is possible for a specialist to ascertain even from a published photograph(Ur ExcavationsVol. II, 1934, Plate 39a) not only that the Ur animals were "oxen" (taken in the general sense as meaning "cattle")but that one of them was only about 30 months old when it was killed. (This is evident from the state of tooth replacement and wear.)Furtherinformation which might have been obtained if a faunal specialist had been present duringexcavation include the sex and size of the animals, information which would be useful for comparison with cattle remains found in other tombs, as well as in the occupational debris of the site. Wasthere anything special about the "oxen" which drew the "death chariots?"Perhapsthis intriguing question will be asked when the next "RoyalTomb"is found. Acknowledgment This essay is a revised version of "The Study of FaunalRemains from Archaeological Sites" published in Symbols, Spring 1982 (PeabodyMuseum, HarvardUniversity). The author wishes to thank the Museum and the Editorof Symbols, Martha for permission to publish the Lamberg-Karlovsky, modified essay here.

Suggestions for FurtherReading Chaplin, R. E., The Study of Animal Bones from Archaeological Sites. London and New York: Seminar (Academic)Press, 1971. This book provides a more detailed introduction to the subject than could be includedhere. Clutton-Brock,J.,Domesticated Animals from Early Times. London:British Museum (Natural History);Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1981. This is a well written, nicely illustrated, and nontechnical summary of what faunal remains have told us about domesticated animals. Clutton-Brock,J.and Grigson, C., editors, Animals and Archaeology. Oxford:British Archaeological Reports, 1983. The proceedingsof the 4th InternationalConferenceof Archaeozoology contains an arrayof papersreflecting the full rangeof faunal studies. A number of articles deal with the Near East. Coy,J.,FirstAid forAnimal Bones. Hertford, England:Rescue-The BritishArchaeologicalTrust, 1978. This little book is very useful as a field guide for non-specialists. Meadow,R. H., Animal Bones: Problemsfor the Archaeologist Togetherwith Some Possible Solutions, Paleorient Vol. 6, 1980, pp. 65-77. This article, written for archaeologists diggingin the Near East, identifies some of the problemsfaced by faunal analysts and suggests how they might begin to overcome them. STATEMENTOF OWNERSHIP,MANAGEMENTAND CIRCULATION BIBLICALARCHEOLOGIST

FAV cA.NO. OFISSE

0

0

8

9

5

182

0.ANU AL SUBSCRIPTION ISSUES =ISHEO OF .COWUTE ADM" OF KOWN OFFCE CCont OF PmUCTION (Shrool. Cods) mPo ) u SanZIP riAILI" .•NNUALL 4

QUARTERLY

IN THE NEXT BA Samuel Noah Kramer, Clark Research Professor of Assyriology Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, is one of the towering figures in ancient Near Eastern studies in this

century. He has been called "Dean of the world's Sumerologists, and the scholar who has done more than anyone else to recover and make available Sumerian literature."In "The Weeping Goddess: Sumerian Prototypes of the Mater Dolorosa," Professor Kramer examines the earliest literary evidence for a prominent and oftrecurring motif in the literature and iconography of the world's religions.

September14, PRIlC $16.00

American Schools Of Oriental Research 4243 Spruce Street PA 19104 Philadelphia, 4243 Spruce Street

M

Pa 19104

AND MAKING 04AES M?!PLSTIE ADORE" OF MDMANAGING EDITOR LFULL AND PULISHER, EDIOR, ITomNOT60hmin) Philadelphia,

(same as above )

4243 Spruce Street P.O. Box HM Duke Statiot,

Co, MANAGINGEDITORr(Nam,,,

MAffairs

Barry Hoberman

AmericanSchools of Oriental Research

,o

msbe r

PA 19104

. )urham, Nrrth Caroli-a

P.O. Box H.M. Duke Station

tionisPubi oshedbya nonprofit orgaizaio. it naendsddir

FULL NAME

Philadelphia,

sai?.

27706

Durham, North Carolina

27706

becompleted (item musr

COUPLETSMAIINGADO

4243 Spruce Street Philadelphia PA 19104

L KNOWN I PERCENT BONDHOLDERS ANDOTHER HOLDERS ORHOLDING ORMORE MORTGAGEES OWNING SECURITY OF

NAME FULL

COMPLEr MAAILING ADDRESS

None

. FORCOMFLETION BYNONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS TOMAIL ATSPECIAL AUTHORIZED RATES (Setion 114.DMmonly) andtheexempt andnonprofitstats function. statusforFedera inometaxpurposes 0") ofthis Thepurpose or•anization dlkhk

A.TTALO.COPIES (NtPsA10,000

10,000

CANON OR OTHE R"AS$ D. MC.TRtItO *y h byL

"..e

..'

"

7600

7295

2350

2705

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

53

fteranumber ofyearsof

--

. - -7 I- Themonastery of Saint Catherinein the mid-19th century Lithographby the greatHoly Land artist, David Roberts.FromGeorgeCroly The Holy Land,Syria,Idumea,Arabia,Egyptand Nubia (1855-56). Courtesyof the RareBooks Collection, PerkinsLibrary,Duke University

news reportsof a newly discoveredhoardof ancient manuscripts in the Monastery of St. Catherine at the foot of Mount Sinai, we now possess a preliminaryreportfrom the hands of a reliable scholar, ProfessorJ.H. Charlesworth(1981).There can be no doubt that the discoveryof several thousand fragments,including at least 8 of the Codex Sinaiticus, is a spectacular one, not only for paleographersand theologians, but for historians as well. It is as an historian that I would like to raise a question or two with regardto statements in the preliminary reportregardingthe Codex Sinaiticus and a fragmentof the "Ladderof Paradise"of St. John Climacus. It is true that we are dealing with a preliminaryreport and can anticipate further refinements of the views put forwardby ProfessorCharlesworthand, as reportedby Charlesworth,those of ProfessorL. Politis. However,unless exceptions are taken to some of these views at the outset, we run the risk of having them accepted prematurelyas hardfact. I also recognize that the reportis almost exclusively paleographical,but paleographicalconclusions must fit comfortablyinto a reasonable historical context. I find that some do not. With regardto the Codex Sinaiticus, ProfessorCharlesworthprovides us with a translation of a news release preparedby Professor Politis, a well-known paleographer. ProfessorPolitis, in describingmanuscripts of the uncial style, makes this statement (Charlesworth1981: 36): The uncial script was used, as we said, for books (codices) chiefly from the 4th century and later. An exceptional example of a codex of the uncial script (more specifically of the style which we call "biblical uncial"), which itself also originates from Sinai, is the Sinaiticus Codex of the Bible (Old and New Testament), which specialists date to the third quarter of the 4th century.

Codex Sinaiticus: An Historical Observation by Philip Mayerson 54

BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

Unless ProfessorPolitis' statement has been garbledin the translation, we are given to believe that a form of uncial script, and the Codex Sinaiticus itself, originatedin Sinai in the 4th century.ProfessorCharlesworth appearsto agreewith this statement in his appreciationof a fragment of Genesis from the new finds, which he says is "in a very early uncial script, which probably dates from the late 4th century." He goes on to say: "The script is, therefore,almost as old as the Codex Sinaiticus. Both date from approximately the same time and possibly were producedin the same monastery" (Charlesworth1981: 11). The bones of contention, as I see them, are the attribution of the Codex Sinaiticus and the style in which it is written to the late 4th century,and the claim that these originatedin Sinai, presumablyat the present site of the Monastery of St. Catherine. I raise no objection to the date of the manuscript, but I do to the place, namely Mount Sinai, that is claimed to be its fons et origo. The major question to be askedis whether conditions at Mount Sinai in the late 4th century were such that would stimulate the creation of a style of script and that would facilitate the production of codices on vellum of the size and quality of Sinaiticus. The answer must be strongly in the negative. If our sources give us a reasonably accurate picture of life at Mount Sinai late in the 4th century,the monastic community-that is, the organizedmonastic community, such as it was-was small and scattered. Life itself for the Sinai solitaries was a struggle to provide the means for keeping body and soul together and to survive the periodic attacks of marauding bedouins, whom they referred to as Saracens. In the late 4th or early 5th century, there was, as we learn from the report of the traveler Egeria, a small community of monks scattered about the environs of Mount Sinai. When the peripatetic nun Egeria made her celebrated visit to the Holy Mountain, she found no monastery but a community of

solitaries living in cells (monasteria, i.e., hermits' quartersof a kind in which solitaries lived). After spending a night in a church (most likely in Wadiel-Lejaand very much like the one that at present can be seen at the foot of the mountain), Egeriawas escorted to the top of Mount Sinai, as she says, "by the presbyter(orpriest) of the church and the monks who lived there" (CorpusChristianorum 175: 39). Upon descending from the Mountain of God, she came to the church at the site of the Burning Bush, the site of the present Monastery of St. Catherine. Some time later,afterbeing given a tour of the biblical places associated with the Exodus,Egeriaset off for Egyptby way of Pharan,some 35 miles from Mount Sinai. "Most of the holy men," she says, "who live at the Mountain of God or in its environs were good enough to escort us all the way to Pharan-at least those who were strong enough" (Corpus Christianorum 175: 45). Egeriahas told us something about the size of the monastic community about Mount Sinai. Wehave an indication of the character of the church and the community at the site of the BurningBush from Eutychius, patriarchof Alexandria.In his Annales he informs us that priorto the construction of the Justinianmonastery in the 6th century,the church at the site of the BurningBush, dedicated to St. Mary,was situated in a tower,and that "therewas no monastery in which monks could congregate,but they were scattered in the mountain and the wadis aroundthe Bush..." (Migne 1863: 1071; Mayerson 1978: 33-38). Hence, not only was the community a small and scattered one in the 4th century,but it held no monastic structure or church of a size that would be suitable for the production of biblical manuscripts or codices. Egeria's brief stay at Mount Sinai was a peaceful one. But all was not peaceful at the Holy Mountain. We possess two other accounts of the late fourth or early fifth century that not only describe the harsh ascetic life pursued by the

Sinai solitaries, but also document in vivid detail the dangersresulting from periodic raidsby the local Saracens.One account, attributed to a certain Nilus, an inhabitant of the eremitic community, tells of a raidduringwhich a number of solitaries at Mount Sinai and its environs were killed (Migne 1865: 589-693; Mayerson 1975: 51-74). The other account, reportedby an Egyptianmonk, Ammonius, who like Egeriawas on a tour of holy places and happenedto be at Mount Sinai when the Saracens attacked, tells of yet another slaughter of monks (Combefis 1666: 88-95). Leavingaside the question of the accuracyof the description of the atrocities committed by the bedouins, both accounts leave no doubt that life at Mount Sinai duringthe early years of the monastic community was, at best, precarious. It was so even into the 6th century when the monks, as we learn from Eutychius, petitioned EmperorJustinianfor protection against the ever-presentmisdemeanors and felonies of the Saracens (Migne 1863: 1071).The deaths of monks in this region have been commemorated as a holy day in the Greek Orthodox Church, and its currentcalendarcarriesthe notation for January14th, "Fatherskilled in Sinai and Raithou" (Mayerson 1976:375-79). The Nilus narrativeis more informative. It contains the following statement, an interpolation of a somewhat later date: "They (the holy fathers)died on the 7th day after the Epiphany,which is the 14th of January.Pious men are very interested in learning the time and the names, since they want to check this information with the memories of holy men. Others were killed some years before, the memory of whom they celebrate on the same day because of the length of the journey and the size of the assemblage" (Migne 1865: 640c; Mayerson 1975: 64).

Under these conditions it is

difficult to imagine Mount Sinai, or any other site in the Sinai Peninsula, as a center for the production of manuscripts of the kind represented by the Codex Sinaiticus.

1983 ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER BIBLICAL

55

The historical considerations cited aboveshould be taken together with the paleographicalobservations made by H.J.M.Milne and TC. Skeat:that "copies of literaryworks were multiplied commercially by groupsof scribes working simultaneously from dictation";that the Codex Sinaiticus was producedby the same method; that it was the productof at least 3 hands; and that from internal evidence Caesareain Palestine was most likely its provenance (1979: 29, 55-59, 66-69). It would, therefore,be more reasonableto account for the presence of this renowned codex of over 700 pages of vellum in the Monastery of St. Catherine as having arrivedthere at some unknown date, either as a gift or accompanying a new member of the monastic order.This would apply not only to the Codex Sinaiticus but also to other prime codices. In effect, we should think of these codices as being no differentfrom the celebratedicons of the Monastery of St. Catherine in the sense that they

were producedin other parts of the Byzantine empire and then were brought to Sinai, where, fortunately, they have been preservedto this very day. With respect to a fragment in uncial script of St. John Climacus' "Ladderof Paradise,"Professor Charlesworth- relying on Professor Politis, who dates the piece paleographicallyto the 7th centuryconsiders the text to be contemporaneous with the author himself. "It could have been written," he states, "by St. John Climacus himself or perhapseven be the autographof the klimax tou paradeisou" (1981: 11, P1.II). It is hardly conceivable, in my view, that John Climacus, whether composing the "Ladderof Paradise" in a cell near Mount Sinai (where he spent a part of his life), or whether doing so in the newly-constructed Justinian monastery,would write a majorwork of this kind on vellum and in uncial script. Further,since the fragment is dated paleographically-it could easily be off by a

century more or less-we have no assurancethat the text is contemporaneous with the author himself. Above and beyond these considerations, the fragment appearsclearly to be the work of a skilled scribe. A brief word concerning the "periodof great silence," the period from the mid-7th to the 9th centuries, from which so few Greek manuscripts have been preserved (Charlesworth 1981: 10, 37). That period of silence has been brokensomewhat by the discovery at the site of Nessana, 150 miles or so north of Mount Sinai, of remains of literary,biblical (New Testament), theological, and legal manuscripts (Casson and Hettich 1950). These manuscripts written on papyri date to between the 5th and 8th centuries--8 of the 13 pieces can be placed between the 7th and 8th centuries -and are probablyrepresentative of the kind of manuscripts that were on hand in the Monastery of St. Catherine duringits early years.

Bibliography Casson, L. and Hettich, E. L. 1980 Excavationsat Nessana. vol. 2. LiteraryPapyri.Princeton:Princeton University Press. Charlesworth,J.H. 1981 The New Discoveriesin St. Catherine'sMonastery:A Preliminary Reporton the Manuscripts.ASOR MonographSeries3. Cambridge, MA: AmericanSchools of Oriental Research/WinonaLake,IN: Distributedby Eisenbrauns. Combefis,E, ed. 1666 Christimartyrumlecta trias. Paris:

56

FredericumLeonard. CorpusChristianorum. 1965 Series Latina.vol. 175. Turnholti: TypographiBrepols. Mayerson,P. 1975 Observationson the 'Nilus' Narrationes.Journalof the American ResearchCenterof Egypt 12: 51-74. 1976 An Inscriptionin the Monasteryof St. Catherineandthe Martyr Traditionin Sinai. Dumbarton Oaks Papers30: 375-79. 1978 Procopiusor Eutychiuson the Con-

1983 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER

struction of the Monasteryat Mount Sinai: Which is the More ReliableSource?Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 230: 33-38. Migne, J.-P.,ed. 1863 PatrologiaGraeca.vol. 111. Paris: J.-P.Migne. 1865 PatrologiaGraeca.vol. 79. Paris:J.-P.Migne. Milne, H. J.M. and Skeat,T C. 1979 Scribesand Correctorsof the Codex Sinaiticus. London:The BritishMuseum.

Oldwalls Old wall

SHECHEM JERICHO

Middle

A Earthworks: Evaluation Engineering Contemporary Bronze

Age

by ErnestPennells intheformsof arthworks,

find it necessary to compact the soil heavily.This process requiresthe soil to be deposited in uniform playedan important role in the fortifications of cities layerscalled layeredfill, the thickness of the layersdependingon the in Palestine and other parts of the effectivenessof the compactingequipancient Near East in the Middle ment used andthe soil's condition and Bronze(hereafterMB)era. Published structure (particularlyits moisture evidence shows variation in the skills applied to construction, the GEZER content). materials used, and the nature of Layeredfill construction may the sites. Inthis paperwe will look at a also be used to increase drainage, especially in soils that contain a sampling of the MB sites to examine the engineering techniques used as high proportionof fine particles(inthe conearth modern with rangedesignatedsilts and clays). compared Such soils, naturally cohesive, do not struction techniques. One of the allow easy movement of water sites, Tel Dan, warrantsparticular within them. They hold tenaciously to attention, for it shows sophisticated such moisture as is present, drying and somesurprisingfeatures. techniques Civil engineers of the present slowly even under an intense sun. They also resist the penetration of dayuse earth to construct massive water and absorbit slowly; once dams for electric generation or saturatedtheir strength can be drairrigation,and much more commatically reduced.Wherecohesive monly in highway construction. TA'ANNEK soils must be used in modern Highwayembankments compare earthworks, engineers usually interclosely to glacises, for they are of a similar height with the attendant sperse layersof more open-textured, porous material that will allow problems of soil stability. Most much of the moisture trappedwithin modern embankments have side Comparisonof fortifications at fourimporthe earthworksto drainout. the of 27 degrees (or 1:2); slopes tant Palestiniansites. Inadditiontoits uses in controlling slope of most MB glacises was a compaction and aiding drainage, steeper 40 degrees,requiringhigh standardsof design and construction layeringsometimesinvolvesthe addition of strongermaterials from other to control erosion and soil slippage. terrainto improvestructuralstability. To achieve real increases in stability LayeredFill: Modern Techniques To eliminate soil slippage engineers requiressubstantialthicknesses of the

E

ramparts, walls and glacises,

1983 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER

57

horizontal beds of material varying in particle size dependingupon the strength of the flood that deposited them. It could be that MB builders simply imitated this pattern. It was certainly no accident, for continuous bands of one kind of soil LayeredFill: Ancient Practices the full width of a section can only Layeredfill has been repeatedly arise where a single layerhas been describedin MB earthworks.John VanSetershas describeda characdepositedfromone source of material. teristic MB rampartas follows: If that layeris completed and "Fillwas put down in layers compacted beforework commences of various kinds of material Terre on the succeedinglayerusing different Pisee fashion. In orderto prevent material, the selection of the soils must have been deliberate (the erosion and to bond the fill together the outer face was coated with a hard, same argument holds if the work limestone plaster,with tongues of continues in parallel, with lapping). the plasterrunning back into the fill." If deliberatechoices had not been Although archaeologists have made, we would find mixed rather than continuous bands of fill. only been using painstaking stratiThe separatelayers of fill can be graphicalmethods in recent decades, layeredfill construction is known readilyidentified where the materials from an early date, as is clear from differwidely. Whereone kind of Woolley's description of the Fortifi- material has been used and has cations at Carchemish: "So they been uniformly compacted, identificast up a mount, not haphazardbut on cation, while difficult, can still be a system; they took the material achieved, for in practice natural which came to hand, but they used it variationoccurs with respect to size and distribution of particles, color, scientifically. Between layersof moisture content and compaction. A shingly gravelor soft limestone practicedengineer can make these chippings were spreadlayers of brick clay." distinctions accurately,for he will Can the layeredconstruction as be dealingwith freshly constructed reportedby many different invesmaterials, and have tools to conduct a carefulexamination. The archaeoltigators be accidental? We know for example that natureprovidesa parallel ogist examining the evidence after to layeredfill. A trench cut in the severalmillennia faces a much floor of an alluvial plain will reveal more challenging task. The processes strongermaterial. In the MB era, transportationproblems would ordinarilyhaveprohibitedsuch apractice. Layering,we can conclude, would not have been done for this purpose.

Stonecore

of settlement and changing overburdenhave been addedto the effects of long term compaction to obliteratelayerboundaries.Migration of water through the soil has changedthe distribution of fine particles. In these circumstances, only the most painstaking stratigraphicalmethods can revealthe nature of the layering.Below we can see a sampling of a variety of sites.

BeerSheba Thepublishedsectionthrough the glacisat BeerShebaclearly indicateslayersof fill followingthe slopeof the glacis.The processesof destruction,erosion,repairand additiongivingriseto sucha section arereadilyimagined.Slopinglayers, extremelyvulnerableto failureby slippage,havethe one meritthat theymaybe simplybuiltbytipping freshmaterialfromthe topof the moundandlettingit slitherdownto findits ownrestingplace.Such minimaleffortin constructionalso allowseasyunderminingof the work.

It wouldbe harshto judgethat the inhabitantsof BeerShebawere jerrybuilderson the strengthof one publishedrampartsection,butit is interestingto note thatYohanan Aharonifoundarchshapedstructures builtinto the laterlayersto prevent slippage;eventsprovedthe original designhadseriousdefectscallingfor

Pallisade • •

Granular drainagelayers Claylayers \

_,

_,

,,_,

Groundtevel ,i

Schematiccross sectionthroughrampart(Notto scale)

58

BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

,

remedial action. There remains the possibility that there are layers within the thicknesses indicated on the section, particularlyat the thicker portions. However,we are entitled to conclude that the resultantstructureof the Beer Shebaglacis is not only weak in terms of theoretical design, but also failed in performance.The engineering philosophy suggested by the evidence is one of "make do and mend" ratherthan any deep insight into the performanceof earthworks structures. Gezer The ordered,horizontal layersof the upperglacis at Gezer contrast strongly with the Beer Sheba construction. The regularhorizontal layersand the consistency of the construction method indicate without question that a single team built the whole of the earthworksof the upperglacis. They exploited well the availability of chalk at Gezer,and used variablefill materialin the bulk of the structure.After each layerthey built a wedge shaped ridgeof chalk which defined the outer limit of the earthworksat that level. A layerof fill was then placed up to the top of the chalk ridge,andthe cycle of operations repeatedfor the next layer.A final blanketof chalk was then addedto the sloping face, to complete the glacis. Chalk is not an easy material to work with, for it is tough to dig and difficult to handle when wet. But it compacts firmly and, after wetting, has cementing characteristics that make it tough and water resistant. In summary,the upperglacis reveals a methodical approachto construction, working layer by layer, with careful control of the geometry of the glacis by means of chalk ridges. No evidence of the same systematic approach to construction exists in the lower glacis. Shechem The Cyclopean Wall at Shechem is a substantial retaining wall. Excavation in the fill immediately behind the wall has yielded clear evidence of a controlled operation

of depositing and compacting the fill in thin horizontal layers. The forces exerted on a wall retainingsoil arenotoriouslydifficult to evaluate.Wellcontrolledcompaction of the fill material makes a major contribution to the stability of the completed structure, partly as a result of minimizing the force applied to the wall, and partlyby contributing significantly to the strength of the total construction of wall and soil together.Additionally,good compaction reduces ingress of water at the back of the wall, which otherwise could add substantially to the forces threatening stability. We may conclude that the builders at Shechem were knowledgeable about and skilled in the use of layeredfill. Ta'annek The picture at Ta'annekis more complex. P.Lapphas identified three distinctive constructions, two of which show evidence of layeredfill as made clear by the use of "Huwwar" and "brown earth."The third construction, an extension orrepairof the second, consists of "a single layerof yellow white Huwwar over a meter thick, laid againstthe disturbed slope of the second glacis; laid on the slope...."No recordexists as to whether this fill was deposited in layers, though the uniformity of the material may have obscuredevidence of the method used in construction. Jericho The detailed stratigraphicrecords of excavations at Jerichoshow that as the glacis was extended to raisethe level of the defensiveramparts the additional fill was placed on the existing face in roughly horizontal layers. By doing this the builders created a serious hazardto the new ramparts. The old glacis face had been baked by the sun until it was impervious to water. Wear and exposure to the elements also smoothed the surface, creating a perfect slippage plane. As water filters down through the newer fill it is stopped by the old face, which, now lubricated, allows the added construction to slide off. The frequency of additions and repairs to glacis earthworks without first opening the old face shows that the

builders either were unawareof the hazardor were unwilling to cut into the slope of an existing glacis to provide a stepped interface. The recordsfrom Jerichoalso give a clearpicture of the wayin which the glacis slope was faced. '"Aseach tip line of fill was added the plaster facing was carried a stage higher, anda tongueruns backfromthe facing interleavingwith the fill, and forming a series of sandwich layers."The feature which Dame Kenyon describes is visible in Plate 43B. But although there is some similarity between this feature and the use of a chalk ridge at Gezer, the function of the tongue at Jericho is evidently concerned with bonding the facing plaster to the body of the earthworks ratherthan giving temporarysupport to the outer edge of each layer of fill. Hence, the thickness of the tongue is not determined by the thickness of the associated layer of fill. The plaster face of the glacis provideda hard surface to slow the ascent of an attacker; the face also protectedthe integrityofthe earthworks, reducing erosion by shedding rain waterquickly,and therebypreventing large amounts of water from penetrating the fill. The face also slows down the dryingout process,reducing fluctuations in the wetting and drying cycles and further improving resistance to erosion. Tel Dan Investigations of the site of the Canaanitecity of Laish,biblical Dan, have been in progressfrom 1966. The rampartsforming defenses for the MB city have been studied at three points aroundthe fifty acresite, at locations designatedAreas B, K and Y. A massive trench cut through the ramparts in Area Y opened a cross section of the earthworks with clear evidence of layered fill. There is clear variation in the materials used, and interleaved tongues of paving material bond each layer to the main body of the fill, as at Jericho. The geometry of the tongues differs: at Tel Dan the uppersurface of the tongue is horizontal, and the taper cuts into the thickness of the layer below; at Jericho it appears that the underside of the tongue is

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

59

horizontal, indicating it was built up abovethe alreadydeposited layerin a mannersimilar to the chalk ridgesat Gezer. The pavingtongues give a precise indication of the thickness of the individuallayersevenwhere no change in soil type was involved. At Dan andJerichoit seems the plasteredface of the glacis slope must have been addedaseachlayerof fillwas completed so that the steeply slopedearthworks, with 40-degreesides, couldbeprotected from the weather while the rest of the construction was underway. At AreaB on Tel Dan, near the city gate, a surprisingfeatureof the earthworksshows up. At this point the fortifications have a stone core oversix meters thick, with an unexpected but quite decisive lean inwardtowardthe city. The lean cannot be explainedby uneven settlement on its foundation,as that would haveproducedsystematic distortions in the adjoininglayeredfill; none of the sections show disturbances. It would make more sense, at least to an engineer,if the core "leanedagainst"a single earthenslope on the city side. The opposing forcesof stone andearthwould balance to create a stable structure.A two partrampartof this kind would leave the outer face open; a batteredface of unhewn stone would offeran easy climb to invaders,and worse, it would be an easy task to dislodge the stones. Then the earth backfill wouldhelp to bringthewhole structure down. Toprotect the outer side of the core the builders designed a nonstructural,steeply slopedsurfacemade of ruggedmaterial. It did not help to supportthe structurebut it didreduce the chances of undermining and erosion, and left the attackers more open to arrows and spears than they would be at the bottom of a vertical wall. A second surprising feature shows in up the excavations around the core. On the inner, or city, side, the layers of fill material form a steep slope downward away from the core, and roughly parallel to the glacis slope. These sharply angled layers return to the horizontal after a few meters and then continue straight on

60

to the face (seeDiagram1).Inspection of the diagramshows how precisely the angled breakfrom the horizontal was constructed.Wecan eliminate the hypothesis that the angle was an accident of construction. It could not have been createdby droppingfill from the top of the core because the thickness of the layersis consistent from core to face. Nor is this feature producedby the difficulty of compacting the soil nearest the core, because we would then find uneven pockets. Insearchingforthe purposebehind the slanted layers,we must consider the rest of the structure. The bulk of the material in these rampartsis cohesive clay soil. When sun-baked the clay is very difficult to dig, and thereforeis ideal for protecting the outer face and is probablythe reason for choosing it. There were many other soils availableto the builders, as Tel Dan was built on a valley floor coveredwith alluvial deposits rangingfromcoarsegravelsto fine grainedsilts and clays. The coarsermaterials would have been much easier to work with, but would not have resisted attacks or the weather as well as clay. Ifthey chose clayforits toughness, they must also have known how susceptible to collapse clay becomes when wet. Good compaction minimizes water penetration, but the best workmanship could not have providedcomplete protection from rainandincidental moisture, especially as construction must have extended over several seasons, leaving the clay open at least some of the time to rain. A relatively impervious clay exterior combined with a stone core would have spelled disaster for the structure in a short time. The core would serve as a natural reservoir for the accumulation of storm water. As it filled, the surrounding clay would have become saturated, losing its strength. The rising water level would have added massive forces acting to demolish the earthworks, causing the collapse of the structure. The builders at Tel Dan avoided this danger by adapting the drainage layers within the earth fill. These are thin layers of Travertine which in

1983 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER

their present, weathered state appear as a dense material, but when laid down to providedrainagewill have beenopentexturedpebblesized,crushed limestone. The solubility of the material and the function of drainage combine to account for this change of character. The sloping of these drainage layersat the point where they reach the stone core is a vital clue to the builder's intention that part of their function should be to drainthe core as well as the earthfill. The outlet end of the Travertinelayers stands more than a meter below the core end. This differencein level would greatly increase the effectiveness of drainsin keeping the core dry,just as lowering the outlet end of a syphon pipe increases flow rate. In Diagram 1 we can see that the benefit in increased effectiveness comes from the angled layernearest the core. Most of the fill remainedhorizontal, no doubt to simplify the placing and compaction of the clay layers. This thesis meets a serious difficulty on the outer slopes of the rampartwhere the third surprising featurecan be noted: The drainage outlets were plasteredover!Even though a plasteredsurfaceis not entirelywaterproof,it surelyimpedes the flow of moisture, andwould seem to contradict the purposein placing limestone layers among the clay,and in going to the extra trouble of installing the angled layers.Perhaps the builders believed the intense solar heat would evaporatemoisture reachingthe under-surfaceat a rate equivalenttothemoistureaccumulation in the core. It seems more likely that there are as yet undiscoveredfeaturesof the TelDan ramparts.The site should be examined for evidence of the following alternatives, any one of which could explain the paradox of plastered-over drain outlets. a. Trenches of granular material laid along the sloping face under the paving, spaced along the glacis and discharging near ground level. b. Periodic discontinuities in the paving, broken by a cluster of stones or pipes. c. Narrow bands of stone running down the slope to break the paving

Whatever

the

role

future

the investigations, application of modern engineering principles to evaluate Middle Bronze earthworks shows the unquestionable sophisticationof their designs. into bays.

in

ally indicates that stone for the core was placed beforethe earth was builtup.However,if coreandearthworks Summary Wehave seen clear evidence that were being built together,access earthworkswere constructed by the with the stone would be simplest method of layeredfill. The methods while the two forms of construction for creatinglayeredfill must have were at the same level. A leaning core beenbasedon intelligent understanding as at Tel Dan would certainly be of earthen structures, including the precariouson the overhangingside if its height increased significantly problems of drainage,resistance to attackers and characteristicsof abovethe supportingearthworks. various kinds of soils. Wehave seen The workforcewould be divided that MB builders understoodthe into modest sized groups,each containneed for continuous layersof drainage ing workerswith the skills demanded material, and that they devised a by the section of work they were method for enhancing draineffective- completing. The leading gang would ness. tackle groundpreparationandfoundaWherethey used tongues to tions for the stone core. Each bond the glacis paving to the main subsequent group,workingonly from body of the earthworks,they probably the top, would add to the height of completed the sideslopes as the work the work achieved by the earlier gained in height, calling for the groups.By keeping the gangs well conclusion that the sides were left spaced,the sun could bakethe plaster untraffickedonce the pavinghad hardbeforethe next gang reached been laid. Access to the work was that point. Limiting trafficto the thereforealong the length of the alreadybakedtop surface,rather thanallowingit on the morevulnerable ramparts,with each layerleading the one on top of it. It is inevitable that sides, may have slowed the rate of work would be in progresson layersof construction but clearlypaiddividends differingfunctions at various points by reducingerosion and the need for along the length. Deliberate choice of rebuilding. the differingfill materials thus FutureInvestigation demandedsegregationof soils at the In orderto provideinsights to the point of delivery. Evidencefromexcavationsgener- thinking behind the work of MB

buildersit is essential that painstaking stratigraphicalmethods be applied in excavation, even for massive earthworks structures. Pinpointing the location from which the various materials used in construction were taken would providea valuable indication of the consciousness of choice in their selection. Ease of access and degreeof difficulty in working would be majorconsiderationsin the willingness of any supervising engineer to use particularmaterials. The science of soil mechanics may have a valuable contribution to make to an understandingof thinking behind earthworkstructures. It has found an established place in civil engineeringworks, but would need to be tempered with considerable wisdom in probingevidence which has been modified through a long time lapse. The methods of soil mechanics might usefully determine the characteristics of layeredfill materials, adding to the objectivity of the record. Whateverthe role in future investigations,the applicationofmodem engineering principles to evaluate MBearthworksshows the unquestionable sophistication of their designs.

1983 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER

61

Book

Reviews

BOOK PUBLISHERS PeterMachinist of The University of Arizona is the new Book Review Editorof Biblical Archaeologist. Please send all review copies to the following address: Dr. PeterB. Machinist Department of Oriental Studies The University of Arizona Tucson, Arizona 85721 Thank you for your cooperation.

Excavatingin Egypt.The EgyptianExploration Society, 1882-1982, edited by T G. H. James. 192 pp. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1982; $22.00 (Cloth). This handsomely producedvolume was issued to celebratethe centenary of the EgyptExploration Society.Nine authors contributed to it, each describinghis or her specialty within the Society, and the result is a historical perspective of past years' researchas well as an archaeologicalanalysis of various sites in Egypt. Forexample, B. Kemp evaluates the activity at Abydos,Saqqarais tackled by G. Martin, and Nubia by H. S. Smith--each having workedin the respective areaand each being an authority on it. The origins of the Society, together with the intermittent disputes within and without, are ably presented and, although no major stone is left unturned, the separatechapters do not delve too deeply into past rancor.Forthe reviewer,the most intriguing aspect of the book is the description and various interpretationsgiven of the Society's origins and initial aims, as enunciated in its first meetings and first excavations. Description is providedmainly in M. Drower'sopening chapter. Significantly,the impetus for the organizationlay in the biblical tradition. The excavations at Goshen, San (= Tanis),and Xois, all illustrate the need of the Society in its early stages to gain a generalpublic awarenessof its work. Yet at the same time we read of Birch's attack on such "emotional archaeology" and A. Edwards'analysis of the European"desecration of Egypt."The search for monuments inauguratedby late 19th-century archaeologists in Egypt (e.g., Naville) continues to this day,and many of the criticisms heard in that time are still sounded. I

noted with some degreeof amusement Schliemann's remarkon the lack of support shown to archaeology by the wealthy,and his more realistic proposals for funding digs. In like manner,M. Drower continues with Petrie'sdebates within the Society and his eventual resignation--an action which that forthright(if overly determined)man based on the "muddle"within the Society. That the questions raisedby the founders of the EESare still with us, is evidence of their timelessness. Forexample, in the third chapter, which is devoted to Thebes, V Davies covers Naville's work at Deir el-Bahari.In this section, he notes that Naville was opposed to any "anthropological method" and thereforeignored the Christian additions to the Hatshepsut temple, much to our loss. Interestingly,we readthat Hogarthwas later sent to keep an eye on Naville, which suggests that despite its internal differences,the Society ably respondedto criticism of its site supervisors,no matter how important and famous they were. Another problem that the EESfaced throughout its early years-and still faces today- was that of money. In this regard,Davies observesthe advancesmade by Mond and Gardinerin their work on the Theban Tomb Series, for which the early American involvement, financial as well as institutional, was essential. This was followed by American supportfor the excavations at Amarnaand the Seti I temple at Abydos. The figure of Petrie crops up in all sections of this volume. Fromhis animosity towardsNaville overthe latter's excavations in the Delta, to his rescue of the Umm el-Qa'abat Abydos,Petrie stands out from all of his archaeologicalcolleagues. That he was no god is noted by Kempin the chapteron Abydos,for despite his intuitive work at the Osiris temple, his dig failed to recorda series of section drawings.Hence, the properstratigraphy of the temple was not determined. Peet, too, is praisedfor his work at Abydosby Kemp,although most Egyptologists tend to identify him with philological work on texts of the Late New Kingdom. Two sites still being mined for information are Amarnaand Saqqara.Aldrednotes how the former was a paradisefor archaeologists owing to its simple stratigraphy,and how the high point of the excavations was reachedunder Pendelburyin the 1930s. G. Martin, who remarkson Emery'scrucial excavations of Saqqara, also covers the Society's discoveries of the First Dynasty mastabas and the Serapeum. The most recent work of Martin is mentioned, and it is a welcome addition to read of the rediscovery of the tomb of Horemheb with its evidence for the early demise of Mutnodjemet, that

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

63

Pharaoh'swife. The Society's work at Nubia is coveredby H. S. Smith, who participatedin the archaeological expeditions there in the 1960s. The sites of Sesebi, AmarahWest, Buhen, and QasrIbrimare all discussed. The author does not dwell on quality of those-expeditions although, as a whole, the Society's archaeologicaltechniques in the Nubian campaignof the 1960s were the most advancedof their kind. In the chapterby T G. H. Jameson the Archaeological Survey,the figure of E L. Griffith comes to life. His early emphasis on accurate recordingand his desire to preservefor posterity the slowly disintegratinginscriptions were boons for the Society.Moreover,his impetus led to the Bibliography,which founding of the Tobpographical was and still is a revolutionaryprogramin its attempt to recordthe original locations of all texts, reliefs, and paintings pertaining to ancient Egypt. The work of Davies and Newberry is also covered, as well as the more recent epigraphicalresearchof Caminos in Nubia.

Books

Foran Egyptologist, this commemorative volume belongs in a special category.Plaudits are given out in it, but so are brickbats. The raison d'etre of the Society- its original aims and the methods employed to gain public support-are as important today as they were a full century ago. Many of the quarrelsrevealedby the authors, insofar as they stemmed largelyfrom methodological differences, seem remarkablycurrent. The seminal figures of Petrie, the archaeologist, the two Davieses, artists and epigraphers,and Griffith, the skilled philologist and copyist, are broughtto the fore. Nor are their successors ignored, and even the firm of Th. Cook and Son is given due credit by Jamesin the foreword.Excavatingin Egyptis not a bland account of past figuresand a simple list of their achievements. Rather,it is a thoroughly successful attempt by the EgyptExplorationSociety to rediscoverits roots and to remind us that the problems of 1882 are still relevant, one century later. Anthony J. Spalinger

Received

Yves Christe,TaniaVelmans,HannaLosowska,and RolandRecht,Art of the Christian WorldA.D. 200-1500. A Handbook of Styles and Forms. New York:Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1982, 504 pp. $35 (Cloth).

J. J. Coulton, Ancient Greek Architects at Work.Problems of Structureand Design.

Ithaca:CornellUniversityPress,1982, 196 pp. $9.95 (Paper).

Stevan L. Davies, The Revolt of the Widows. The Social Worldof the Apocryphal Acts.

Carbondaleand Edwardsville: SouthernIllinoisUniversityPress,1980, 139 pp. $12.95 (Cloth).

Jack Finegan, Archaeological History of the Ancient Middle East. Boulder: Westview Press, Inc., 1979, xxv + 456 pp. $25 (Cloth). Arthur Gibson, Biblical Semantic Logic. A Preliminary Analysis. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981, xii + 244 pp. $27.50 (Cloth). Kenneth C. Gutwein, Third Palestine. A Regional Study in Byzantine Urbanization. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, Inc., 1981, xiv + 416 pp. $15.50 (Paper),$25.75 (Cloth). Wilbur Devereux Jones, Venus and Sothis. How the Ancient Near East Was Rediscovered. Chicago: Nelson-Hall Inc., Publishers, 1982, xvi + 155 pp. $8.95 (Paper),$18.95

(Cloth).

Kathleen M. Kenyon, The Bible and Recent Archaeology. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1978, 105 pp. $6.50 (Paper). Bruce M. Metzger, Manuscripts of the Greek Bible. An Introduction to Palaeography. New York/Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1981, ix + 150 pp. $17.95 (Cloth). P. R. S. Moorey, Ur 'of the Chaldees.' A Revised and Updated Edition of Sir Leonard Woolley'sExcavations at Ur. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982, 272 pp. $24.95

(Cloth).

JeffreyH. Tigay, The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982, xx + 384 pp. $30 (Cloth).

64

BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

AND THEOLOGICAL

SPIRITUALITY AND HUMAN

EERDMANS' HANDBOOK TO CHRISTIAN BELIEF Edited by Robin Keeley In the traditionof the best-sellingHandbookto theBible, here is a clear and lively presentation of basic Christianbeliefs. Cloth, $24.95, November

MORE DIFFICULT SAYINGS OF JESUS by William Neil and Stephen Travis Brief but insightful discussions of 31perplexing statements made by Jesus. Paper, $5.95, August

THE WORSHIPOF GOD Some Theological, Pastoral,and Practical Reflections byRalph P. Martin

A compact guide to some of the main themes of the worship of Gotd.Paper,S7.9s, September

MERE MORALITY WhatGod ExpectsFrom OrdinaryPeople

by Lewis B. Smedes From the author of LoveWithinLimitscomes a brilliantand searchinglook at the role of commandments in Christianmoral decision-making. Cloth, si5.95, January

ON BEING HUMAN Essaysin TheologicalAnthropology

byRay S. Anderson Provides a biblicaland theological understanding of the natureof human personh(xxi. Paper,$9.95, December A Biblical-Historical ORDINATION View byMarjorie Warkentin Stimulating and provocative, this stud\' challenges basic assumptions about the rite of ordination. Paper,$6.95,October

THE LIGHT HAS COME An Exposition of the Fourth Gospel

by Lesslie Newbigin Interpretsthe message of the GospelofJohnfor modern-dayreaders.Paper, $8.95,August

THE NIGHT HE WAS BETRAYED by R.E.O. White A devotional commentaryon the conversation of Jesusin the upper room. Paper, $5.95, January

inter.

Sfal/

01982 A NEW ENGAGEMENT Evangelical

Political Thought 1966-1976 by Robert Booth Fowler A detailed, timely compendium of the development of political and social attitudes within evangelicalismin the decade from Vietnam to Carter.Paper, $12.95, November

UGARIT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT by Peter Craigie This book relatesthe discover' and subsequent findings of the remainsand librariesof the ancient citn of Ugarit. Paper, 5s.gs, February

A LATE FRIENDSHIP The Letters of KarlBarthand Carl Zuckmayer

Translated by GeoffreyW. Bromiley Chronicles a remarkablefriendshipbetween theologian Karl Barthand poet-playwright Carl Zuckmayer.Cloth, S7.95, •ovember

LIVING WITH DEATH by Helmut Thielicke/Thanslated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley Theological probings into the meaning of death by world-renowned theologian Helmut Thielicke. Cloth, s15.95,February

THEOLOGYOF THE NEW

TESTAMENT, Vol. 2 The Varietyand Unity of the Apostolic Witnessto Christ

by Leonhard Goppelt/Translated by John A lsup The last volume of a two-volume work by a majorGerman New Testamentscholar. Cloth, $1S.95,January%

EMOTION byRobert C. Roberts Psvchological, theological, and ethical themes are brought to ether in this constructive reflectionof what emotions are and how can be educated. Paper,$6.95,January they'

THE ORIGIN OF PAUL'S GOSPEL by SeyoonKim This scholarlyexaminationsuggests that the basis of the apostle Paul'stheology lies in the Damascus road event. Paper, S13.95, October

NEW CENTURY BIBLE

COMMENTARY

ForthcomingReleases: EZEKIELbyJohn WeversPaper, 56.95,August I PETER b ErnestBest Paper,S5.95,August JAMES, JUDE, 2PETER byE. M. Sideottom Paper, $5.95,September

THE BOOKSOF EZRA AND NEHEMIAH (New International Commentary on the Old Testament) byF. Charles Fensham This latest volume in the NICOT series examines two books which cover the last century of Old TestamentJewish history and markthe beginning of Judaism.Cloth, $12.95, December

A CONCORDANCE TO THE APOCRYPHA/DEUTEROCANONICAL BOOKS OF THE REVISED STANDARD VERSION The firstconcordance availableto the Revised StandardVersionApocrvpha.Cloth, $30.00, December For more complete descriptions on these and other recent publications, write for a copy of the latest hecologistCatalog. Examination copies of most publications are availableto qualifiedprofessors. Pricessubject to change.

FOUNDATIONS OF

Vol. 2 by Otto Weber/ DOGMATICS, Translated by Darell L. Guder The first English translationof a monumental classic in systematictheology. Cloth, $31.00, December

Karl Bath

40

STUDIES

BIBLICAL

BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

At your bookstore, or write: 27

K

WM.B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING CO.

a55JEFFERSONAVE.S.E. / GRAND RAPIDS, MICH. 49503

Discover

Yesterday Today

The AmericanSchools of OrientalResearch is an organizationdedicated to helping scholars and amateurs alike discover the ancient Near East of yesterday.Youcan participate.Youcan benefit fromASOR'sresearch in archaeology, anthropology, history,literatureand art....

ASORDigs

ASORhelps scholarsputtogetherhigh qualityresearchand fieldprojectsin the MiddleEast.Thereare dozens of ASORaffiliatedprojectsin Cyprus,Egypt,Israel, Jordan,Syria,Tunisia,Turkeyand North workcoverseveryperiodof Near Yemen.This Easternprehistoryand history,fromPaleolithictimesthroughthe Islamicera. ASOR Teaches Symposia,lectureseries, studytours, field fieldtrips,seminars,slide presentations, schools,and annualmeetingsall contribute to ASOR'sextensiveeducationprogram. These events, whichtake place in the U.S. andat ASORcentersabroad,serve boththe scholarlycommunityand the interested amateur. ASOR Researches ASORmaintainsthreepermanentoverseas researchinstitutes- the AlbrightInstituteof Archaeological Research(AIAR)in Jerusalem(founded1900),the American Centerof OrientalResearch(ACOR)in Amman,Jordan(founded1968),and the CyprusAmericanArchaeologicalResearch inNicosia,Cyprus(founded Institute (CAARI) residenceand 1978).Eachhas a library, meetingfacilities,and referencecollections of artifacts,photographsand maps.Visiting scholars,fellows,professors,studentsand excavatorsassure a constantflowof activity at the institutes. in ASOR'snew centerin Philadelphia, additionto servingas an administrative headquarters,offersmanyof the same services.

ASORSponsors

ASORsponsorsa programof fellowships,studyand travelgrants,and visiting Some enableundergraduates professorships. in ASOR-affiliated to participate digs. Others supportgraduatestudentsand post-doctoral scholarswho wishto travel,excavate,or do researchat ASORoverseas institutesor on ASOR-affiliated excavations.

istrativeoffice,publications office,and overseas institutes. Bulletinof the AmericanSchools of OrientalResearch-A quarterlyreviewfor the professionalscholarand the determined the fullydocumented amateur,providing resultsof researchin NearEasternarchaeology andacrossthe widerspectrumof ancient NearEasternstudies. Journalof CuneiformStudies--A scholarlyreviewdevotedto the languages, and culturesof ancientMesopoliteratures, tamia,Syria,Anatoliaand Iran.

IndividualMemberships

Individual membershipinASORis availableto anypersonfromanycountrywhohas an interestinthe ancientNearEast.There are twotypes of individual memberships in ASOR:

Membership Form Yes,I want to help support ASOR's work in the Middle East. I have checked below the categories that interest me. in ASOR AnnualMembership Individual General(includesBiblicalArchaeologistand ASORNewsletter).Taxdeductibleif used forprofessionalpurposes.Annual dues: O $22 (U.S.and Canada) O $27 (Overseas) 0 $14 forstudentsand retiredfaculty(U.S.and Canada) 0 $19 forstudentsand retiredfaculty(Overseas) Professional (includesBiblicalArchaeologist,ASORNewsletter,and Bulletinof ASOR).Taxdeductibleif used forprofessionalpurposes.Annualdues: 0 $45 (U.S.and Canada) 0 $50 (Overseas) 0 $30 forstudentsand retiredfaculty'(U.S.and Canada) 0 $35 forstudentsand retiredfaculty(Overseas) Send checkor moneyorderinU.S.dollars,madepayableto AmericanSchoolsof OrientalResearch.Toqualifyforstudentor retiredfacultyrates,enclose a copy of yourcurrentstatus document.

ASORPublishes Publication of resultsis an integralpart of any research.ASORpublishesthree journalsand a newsletter,as well quarterly as a varietyof monographs,excavation reports,archaeologicalsurveys,and dissertations.Eachoccupiesa distinctiveand respectednicheinthe worldof NearEastern studies. BiblicalArchaeologist-An illustrated quarterlymagazine,BiblicalArchaeologist combinesreliability withreadability, presenting news of archaeologicaldiscoveriesand the resultsof ongoinghistoricalresearchin clear,nontechnicallanguageand an attractiveformat. ASORNewsletter--Issued eighttimes a year,providingnews and notes about ASOR'sarchaeologicaland researchactivities, memberservices,fellowshipand study andreportsfromtheadmingrantinformation,

62

Address State

Zip

0 PaymentEnclosed O BillMe Later O My/Our giftmaybe usedto helpmatcha NationalEndowment forthe HumanitiesChallengeGrant. Send to: ASORAdministrative Office 4243 SpruceStreet PA19104 Philadelphia, OrtelephoneASORtollfree (800) 523-3777 foradditional or to place an order. information The AmericanSchoolsof OrientalResearchis a nonprofit, scientificand educationalorganization, foundedin 1900 and in 1921inWashington,D.C.ASORis an equal incorporated opportunity organization. on any ASORprogramthat Foradditionalinformation interestsyou, write AmericanSchools of OrientalResearch Administrative Office 4243 SpruceStreet PA19104 Philadelphia, Telephone(215)222-4643or 222-4644 Tollfree (800) 523-3777

BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST/WINTER 1983

1. Identification card. 2. Annualmembershipfees are tax deductible,when eligible. 3. Subscriptionsto periodicalsas describedabove. 4. 20%discounton new ASORpublications. 5. 20%discounton backissues and olderASORpublications. 6. 15%discountin hostels at ASORoverseas institutes(AIAR in Jerusalem,ACORin Amman,and CAARIin Nicosia), space available.Use of libraries. 7. Travelbenefits(emergencycheck cashing,use of mailing address,emergencyuse of telephone)at the ASORoverseas institutes. 8. 15%discountat the ASORresidencein Philadelphia, space available. 9. Eligibleduringfirstyear of membershipto applyfor predoctoralZionResearchFoundationSummerTravelGrants, if yourinstitution is a corporatememberof ASOR. 10. Eligibleduringfirstyear of membershipto applyforASORand post-doctoralfellowshipsand sponsoredpre-doctoral at the ASORoverseas institutesandat ASOR appointments in Philadelphia, if yourinstitution is a corporatemember.If not,eligibility begins in thirdyear of individual membership. 11. Eligibleto havepapersconsideredforpresentationat ASOR annualmeeting. 12. Workas a volunteeron ASOR-affiliated fieldprojectsinsuch countriesas Israel,Jordan,Cyprus,Syria,Egypt,Turkeyand NorthYemen. 13. Eligibleto attendASORannualmeeting. 14. JoinASORregionalsocieties. 15. AttendASOR-sponsoredlectures. 16. JoinASOR-affiliated toursto the MiddleEast.

Friends of Near East Archaeology, Individual Life Memberships, and Institutional Memberships

Name

City

General(IncludesBiblicalArchaeologist andASORNewsletter,and all otherbenefits listedexcept9, 10, and 11). Annualdues are $22.00 (U.S.and Canada) $27.00 (Overseas) $14.00 forstudentsand retiredfaculty(U.S. and Canada) $19.00 forstudentsand retiredfaculty (Overseas) Professional (IncludesBiblical Archaeologist,ASORNewsletter,Bulletinof ASOR,and all benefitslistedbelow). Annualdues are $45.00 (U.S.and Canada) $50.00 (Overseas) $30.00 forstudentsand retiredfaculty(U.S. and Canada) $35.00 forstudentsand retiredfaculty (Overseas) Individual arenotavailable memberships to subscriptionservices. AnnualBenefits

Friendsof NearEastArchaeologyare a veryspecialgroupof ASORsupporters. Throughgenerousannualcontributions, they supportall of ASOR'sactivitiesin the United States, Canada,and abroad. to Itis also possibleforan individual become a LifeMemberof ASOR,fora onetime,tax-deductible giftof $1,000. Finally,colleges, universities,professionalschools, seminaries,museums,and researchinstitutesanywhereintheworldcan applyforannualcorporatemembershipin ASOR. Forinformation on these categoriesof membership,please writeto the ASOR Administrative Officeat the addresssupplied (orcall ourtoll-freenumber).

It is unnecessary to use any kind of formal referencesciting scholarly literature.If you like, you may note two or three sources as "Suggestions for FurtherReading." If you wish to do an article for "BAPortrait," please dropus a line. Give us the name of the person you've selected and sum up your proposed treatment in a paragraphor two. We'llreply promptly to let you know whether the subject is suitable for BA.

BA

GUIDE TO ARTIFACTS

Essayswill examine the variedtypes of artifacts and other material evidence with which Near Easternarchaeologists are concerned. The projected length of each essay is 1500-2500 words. Authors are asked to discuss either a general category(examples: glass, mosaics, lithics, sarcophagi, metal objects, bones, seeds), or a specific "sub-species"within one of the largercategories (examples:the coinage of a particularregion or period, a peculiar or unusually significant type of ceramic ware or glaze, a kind of tool, cylinder seals). Tryto convey your own vigorous enthusiasm for the subject. (Whatis so fascinating about ancient lamps? Do your best to let the readerknow.)You may mention that a heated scholarly debate exists regardingthis or that artifact, but please do not take a polemical stance or furnish a detailed recapitulation of the controversy.Explain, in jargon-freelanguage,how this type of artifact or material evidence assists us in the overallreconstruction of the Near Easternpast. Why,in other words, is it an important piece of the historical puzzle? It is unnecessary to use any kind of formal referencesciting scholarly literature.If you like, you may appenda short (fewerthan ten items) list of "Suggestionsfor FurtherReading." If you wish to do an article for "BAGuide to Artifacts," please drop us a line. Tell us which artifact you've chosen. Sum up your proposed treatment in a paragraph or two. We'll reply promptly to let you know whether the topic is suitable for BA.

THE

TRAIL

MUSEUM

Withthis column,we hopeto drawattention unherto someof the lesser-known,comparatively aldedmuseumcollectionsandspecialexhibitsin whichNearEasternartifactsaredisplayed.The projectedlengthis 750-2000words. Weareinterestedin hearingaboutthose municipal,university,seminary,andothermuseums thathouseimpressive-but not necessarily huge- collectionsof ancientNearEasternobjects. The authorshouldmakethe readerfeel that a particularcollectionorexhibitis indeedworth travelingout of one'swayto view. Forthe time being,we will restrictour coverageto museumsin the UnitedStates,Canada, Jordan,Israel, Cyprus, Egypt, Syria,GreatBritain,

andIreland.Eventually,coveragemaybe worldwide.

If you wish to do an article for "The Museum Trail,"please dropus a line. Tell us a little something about the museum or exhibit you're interested in profiling. We'llreply promptly to let you know whether the proposedsubject is suitable for BA.

Please send all queries, proposals, and manuscripts to:

Biblical Editor,Archaeolog ASOR Publications Office S

P.O. Box HM

Duke Station Durham, NC 27706

qATTjOG t 4S Tre a

9

' .toYM . -~,Lt

4"

l ue. ,g

.n e."t'

e, ra

Mr-I-* *04Two61

tef

t.4

H

,

t

oA. oso

0

-

L

-

.

..

.,y,-,-Y

69 ,'Cator sM

-'

. . -o

.t

-•

-

-

-o

-rc raIe vb JuAut

Teo-

-

o lei

ww-"AYeM-t*-'r

Te e'•e"p,i' rrr ",I o. ITT, rrclertw? Ey vcit -t

S

tr.'

N*mXA

oceE'9

4* nzl w?m*

astpageotheGospeo-

arity andChristianity

..

.rr *MAe

tW•s.a" "

i hs

diply

.

No title

No title

No title

No title

No title

No title

No title

No title

No title

No title

No title

No title

No title

No title

No title

No title

No title

No title

No title

No title

No title

No title

No title

No title

No title

No title

No title

No title

No title

No title

Recommend Documents