The N. T. Wrong Blog

What’s sexy in the latest Review of Biblical Literature?

Douglas R. Edwards and C. Thomas McCollough, editors, The Archaeology of Difference: Gender, Ethnicity, Class and the “Other” in Antiquity: Studies in Honor of Eric M. Meyers (2007)

The second of two Festschriften for Eric Meyers, following Religion and Society in Ancient Palestine. The first third of the collection covers the neolithic to Persian periods, while the second two-thirds covers the Hellenistic to Byzantine periods. How’s that for coverage? Amongst the 32 articles is “Ethnicity and the Archaeological Record: The Case for Early Israel” (William Dever), and in a different vein, something on linguistic variation by Raymond Person.

Avraham Faust, Israel’s Ethnogenesis: Settlement, Interaction, Expansion and Resistance (2007)

His theory on the ethnogenesis of Israel involves (1) settlement in the highlands versus Canaanites and Egyptians, primarily involving nomadic Shashu, (2) sharpening of ethnic identity through conflict with Philistines. Sounds familiar? Yes - it’s another Bible-paraphrase.

Jon L. Berquist, editor, Approaching Yehud: New Approaches to the Study of the Persian Period (2007)

The essays in this volume include a mixture of historiographic and literary approaches to the Persian period, now firmly established as the most productive period for the writing of texts which appear in the Hebrew Bible. Melody Knowles writes about pilgrimage to Jerusalem and Greek evidence; Richard Bautch writes about intertextuality; Donald Polaski examines inscriptions as sites of power; David Janzen examines Ezra 9-10 and mixed marriage; Christine Mitchell develops a Bakhtinian examination of the genre of historiography, with comparison to Greek historiography; Brent Strawn compares Isa 60 and the Apadana Relief from Persepolis; Jean-Pierre Ruiz makes a postcolonial reading of Ezekiel; John Kessler examines the golah in relation to demographic studies and Zech 1-8; Herbert Marbury examines Proverbs 7 in relation to Persian control; Jennifer Koosed reads Ecclesiastes via Derrida and Lacan; Jon Berquist introduces post-colonial considerations to the study of the function of the Psalms in the Second Temple period.

There’s some interesting reviews in the latest Review of Biblical Literature:

Gregory W. Dawes, Introduction to the Bible, New Collegeville Bible Commentary (2007)

Do you ever get asked, by a general non-specialist reader of the Bible, for an introduction to the Bible that you would recommend to them? Faced with a choice of thrusting a lengthy JJ Collins Intro on them, or the like (which would be too long, and will drown their enthusiasm), or some shorter work (which they will read, but which you cringe about), the question can be a problem. But now Gregory Dawes’ 80-page introduction to the Bible provides a robust and thoroughly readable book that will stimulate beginners while not shirking the deeper issues involved. This book is perfect for its target audience! From the book’s own blurb: “To rescue Bible readers and students from turning their initial enthusiasm into boredom, Gregory Dawes gives us this Introduction to the Bible, the indispensable prologue to the entire series of the New Collegeville Bible Commentary. Dividing the contents into two parts, the author first describes how the Old and New Testaments came to be put together, and then explores how their stories have been interpreted over the centuries.”

Maria Gorea, Job: ses précurseurs et ses épigones ou comment faire du nouveau avec de l’ancien
(2007)

Gorea explores the complex relationship between other ancient Near Eastern traditions about the just sufferer and the book of Job. Crenshaw likes it very much, considering it does a fine job of setting out the issues, engaging mainly with the primary texts rather than the secondary literature: “For me, this book was a pleasure to read. Every student of the biblical Job should keep it close at hand, for it beautifully traces a compelling philosophical theme through three millennia.”

Cheng, Jack and Marian Feldman, editors, Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context: Studies in Honor of Irene J. Winter by Her Students. Culture and History of the Ancient Near East, 26 (2007)

Contains 21 essays from 20 authors, in honour of Irene Winter.
- Cheng and Feldman provide 3 introductory chapters
- I Ziffer on crowns from Nahal Mishmar
- Ö Harmansah on orthostats in MB, LB, IA
- S Reed on the depiction of enemies in Assyrian art, esp Ashurbanipal’s relief
- A Shaffer on the ideology of Assyrian royal monuments at the periphery
- T Ornan on the increasingly godlike imagery for Sennacherib
- E Denel on how IA Charchemesh reliefs reinforced the status of rulers
- T Tanyeri-Erdemir on the relation between Uraritian temple architecture and royal ideology
- J Aker on hierarchical portrayal of workers in Ashurbanipal’s lion hunt relief
- M Feldman on the Mesopotamian roots of Darius I’s ‘heroizing’ style
- M Atac on Akkadian ‘divine radiance’ (mellamu), with parallels from Greece
- C Suter on how to detect high priestesses in Mesopotamia
- T Sharlach on how to identify an archive of texts as belonging to a woman
- J Assante on Middle Assyrian pornographic depictions of foreigners
- A Cohen on barley in Mesopotamia
- A Winitzer on melilot (Deut 23.26) as “eating one’s fill”, not the usual “grain of wheat”
- J Cheng on objects (vases, etc) which depict themselves
- A Gansell on bridal adornments in ancient Mesopotamia and modern Syria
- B Studevent-Hickman on the 90-degree rotation of the cuneiform script

Maeir considers, all up, their quality is such that they provide a fitting tribute to Winter.

New Scientist No. 2658 ( May 31, 2008 ) offers what it calls an “interview” with Israeli archaeologist Israel Finkelstein. It is much more of an article piece than a interview, though, as Israel Finkelstein’s comments are heavily edited by the article’s author, David Cohen.

The article describes Finkelstein as “something of a revolutionary” in the field of archaeology:

Over the past decade he has spearheaded a movement in biblical archaeology that flies in the face of the interpretation of the Bible as a largely historical document. He argues that the traditional dating of many archaeological finds relating to biblical events is out by up to one-and-a-half centuries. His conclusion is uncompromising: many famous biblical stories are probably pure fiction. The exodus of the Israelites from Egypt never happened, and Joshua never attacked Jericho, let alone brought its walls down. “There is no evidence that Jericho even had city walls at that time.” Finkelstein says. David and Solomon were not great kings who ruled over the ancient land of Canaan in the 10^th century BC from a palace in Jerusalem, as the Bible portrays; at best they were minor chieftains of some small-time tribe in that area. Their memory was later inflated and mythologised in the 7^th century BC to serve particular political and military agendas, he says.

After a bit about Finkelstein’s credentials, the article gets into the substantial content. The first shocking revelation from Israel Finkelstein is that he denies sleeping with William Dever. The article continues:

In this part of the World, where the ancient and the modem meet in everyday political discourse, his findings can be inflammatory – and, much to his annoyance, have been used by some as ammunition against the right of a Jewish state to exist in the area. Others dismiss his work as ideologically motivated. In one barbed attack, William Dever, a specialist in the region’s archaeology at the University of Arizona, accused him of being a fashion-led “Post-Zionist” who is caught up in a race to push the writing of the Bible into more recent times. This incensed Finkelstein “What does he know about me?” he says indignantly. “Is he with me and my wife in the bedroom? In the beginning I used to be furious when people made such accusations, now I’m only amused.”

Why the anger? Despite being firmly on the left of Israeli politics (“I am prepared to swap land for peace with the Palestinians”) Finkelstein considers himself to be “an oldguard, conservative Zionist, which means I strongly believe in the right of the Jewish people to have a state and homeland in the historic land of Israel”.

Mrs Humphrey Ward once wrote, “If the Gospels are not true in fact, as history, I cannot see how they are true at all, or of any value.” However, Israel Finkelstein rightly does not share her sentiment at all:

What really gets to him is the response from his own secular end of Israeli society. “It’s the beach bums in Tel Aviv who say ‘I always knew the Bible was not important, and now Finkelstein has proved it’ that make me depressed.’ As Finkelstein sees it, the Bible does not have to be a historically accurate document for its handed-down set of stories to be “the root of my identity”.

Finkelstein also notes that archaeology should be, but usually is not, done separately from one’s convictions about religion and nation. What a great idea!!

Finkelstein is about as Israeli as they come. Born in the small town of Petah Tikva dose to Tel Aviv, he can trace his family’s roots in the area back to 1850, almost a century before the foundation of the Jewish state. “My family arrived in the mid-19^th century from Grodno [in what is now Belarus] to Hebron. I don’t need any more legitimacy than that, nor does the state of Israel need the Bible to justify its right to exist,” he says. He has lived in the country all his life and counts himself a traditional Jew. “I’m not a believer, but we keep kosher at home, and I celebrate all the festivals.” Even the Passover festivaI, which celebrates the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and their journey to the promised land – biblical stories he believes are pure fiction. “Of course! Why not? This is my identity. I do it gladly.”

“Isn’t that a contradiction? “Not at all. I can separate my convictions about my culture and my identity on the one hand from my research on the other. I think this is critical for archaeology. If you cannot make this separation you are finished. Unfortunately, most people who work in biblical archaeology fail to make this separation. It’s a serious problem.”

The article ends with a few Indiana Jones-like episodes in Israel Finkelstein’s archaeological career, such as surviving bombs and mob attacks.

According to the news reports, Egyptian archaeologists have firmly identified a fort at Tell Heboua (ancient Tharu / Tjaru) as the Egyptian Army Headquarters in the Sinai from ca. 1500 BC to the Ptolemaic period. It’s 500 metres (547 yards) by 250 metres, with towers four metres high.

The identification follows last year’s announcement of the finding of the site.

“The fortress and adjoining town, which they identify with the ancient place name Tharu, lies in the Sinai peninsula about 3 km (2 miles) northeast of the modern town of Qantara, Egyptian archaeologist Mohamed Abdel Maksoud told Reuters. The town sat at the start of a military road joining the Nile Valley to the Levant, parts of which were under Egyptian control for much of the period”
- Reuters Africa

“The ancient military road, known as “Way of Horus,” once connected Egypt to Palestine and is close to present-day Rafah, which borders the Palestinian territory of Gaza.”
- Associated Press

According to the statement from the Egyptian government’s Supreme Council for Antiquities, the identification has been secured on the basis of various inscriptions found this year at Tharu. The inscriptions mention three Pharaohs—Tuthmosis II, who ruled from about 1512 BC and who built one of the military installations along the route, Seti I and Ramses II, who between them ruled Egypt from 1318 to 1237 BC. The photo is of one of these newly released inscriptions, and another photo is included below.

“”The archaeological features of this fort confirm the inscriptions on ancient Egyptian temples showing the shape of the city of Tharu, which lay at the start of the Horus military road,” the statement added. The statement said the site contains the first New Kingdom temple ever found in northern Sinai, and warehouses where the ancient Egyptian army stored grain and weapons, as well as ovens, seals and earthenware vessels.”
- Reuters Africa

“A collection of reliefs belonging to King Ramses II and King Seti I (1314-1304 B.C.) were also unearthed with rows of warehouses used by the ancient Egyptian army during the New Kingdom era to store wheat and weapons, he [Archaeologist Mohammed Abdel-Maqsoud, chief of the excavation team] said. Abdel-Maqsoud said the new discoveries corresponded to the inscriptions of the Way of Horus found on the walls of the Karnak Temple in Luxor which illustrated the features of 11 military fortresses that protected Egypt’s eastern borders. Only five of them have been discovered to date.”
- Associated Press

Apparently the inscriptions mention Tharu. See:

Tharu has sometimes been identified with biblical Succoth (the setting for the legendary first stop by the ‘Children of Israel’ after leaving Rameses). This depends on the particular reconstruction of the route from the books of Exodus and Numbers. The news stories haven’t got onto this angle, yet. They will, though …

“Over a century ago, Max Müller recognized the importance of Tjaru [Tharu] in ancient Egypt and realized that it must have played a role in the movement of the Israelites; he declared that “no town of the eastern Delta frontier has a greater importance than Tharu [i.e. Tjaru], which was not only its largest town, but also the principle point for the defense of the entrance to Egypt, therefore also for the military and mercantile roads to the East.” He also felt that the route of the exodus could not be fixed with any certainty until Tjaru was positively located.”
- James K. Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition, 1997: 184.

Tom Levy introduces William Dever as “The Bad Boy of Archaeology”, in this interview on UCTV’s Dig This, February 2008. Dever gives an overview of Palestinian/Israeli archaeology:

“There has grown up in Europe, particularly, a new school of biblical scholars - they call themselves ‘revisionists’ - who think the Hebrew Bible is a collection of fairy tales, basically - there’s no history at all to be derived from it. I wouldn’t go to that extreme. The Bible is not history in the modern sense, doesn’t purport to be, but I think the Bible contains a lot of historical information about the Iron Age of ancient Palestine or ancient Israel.”

On those, unnamed minimalists, who suggest the Tell Dan inscription may have been a fraud:

“What kind of scholarship is it that discredits the inconvenient evidence? This is the extent to which extremists will go to argue that there was no ancient Israel. And if you think perhaps there is an ideological agenda there, you’re quite right … There are some people who - let’s put it gently - are not friends of Israel, ancient or modern, some people who believe that archaeology can be used to settle competing clams between Israelis and Palestinians today … And there are always people who don’t like the Bible, and enjoy Bible-bashing. I don’t think that’s honest scholarship.”

I should add, there’s nothing new here (it’s a general overview interview), but I was amused by the description of Dever as “The Bad Boy of Archaeology”. Very Indiana Jones. William Dever seemed chuffed.