The Latest from Khirbet Qeiyafa

Something really really big that has finally and totally proven the historical reliability of the Bible has once more been found. But first, some perspective:

The idea that a single, spectacular finding can reverse the course of modern research and save the literal reading of the biblical text regarding the history of ancient Israel from critical scholarship is an old one. Khirbet Qeiyafa is the latest case in this genre of craving a cataclysmic defeat of critical modern scholarship by a miraculous archaeological discovery.[1]

Khirbet Qeiyafa has proven to be a very newsworthy archaeological dig. First, there was the pretty cool ostracon announced in 2008. Then there was the sensational, unofficial, buzz-generating interpretation of that ostracon announced by Prof Gershon Galil. Professional epigraphers and archaeologists are still debating the reading and significance of the inscription (see the May/Jun 2012 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review). 

I admit that I haven't really been following the excavation since early 2010 (background from early 2010 here), but this morning Yosef Garfinkel, the lead archaeologist from Hebrew University excavating at Khirbet Qeiyafa, has announced the discovery of artifacts interpreted as proof of King David's ancient Israelite kingdom in the 10th century BCE. The announcement was highly anticipated but the news conference (as with many such announcements) has the ring of an attempt to head off the battle over interpretation of the finds before it's even begun. Once again, I find myself stuck between wanting to cheer on the maximalist interpretation and recognizing the valid questions raised by those of a more minimalist leaning.  

Image: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

In short, clay and stone boxes were discovered in connection with three large rooms interpreted as having cultic (religious) significance. The site is interpreted as Israelite based on the absence of pig bones and the absence of graven images. The boxes and related artifacts are being interpreted as scale model versions of the "Ark of God." 

However the artifacts are interpreted, it is a significant find which highlights the continuing importance of this site for reconstructing the history of the region in the 10th century BCE. In addition to reading the major press release version of the story, I recommend balancing your understanding with George Athas' observations on the discovery. I imagine the rest of the biblioblogosphere is exploding with the story even as we speak...let's take a look...here's a post on the subject by Todd Bolen; Jim Davila; Brian LePort; Jim West; Duane Smith. Of course, I'm really waiting for a response from biblioblogger archaeologist-in-chief, Bob Cargill.

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[1] Israel Finkelstein and Alexander Fantalkin, “Khirbet Qeiyafa: An Unsensational Archaeological and Historical Interpretation” Tel Aviv 39.1 (2012), 58. From G.M. Grena’s quote in a comment onAren Maier’s blog. 

2011 Archaeology Scholarships from BAR and ASOR!

I'm a little behind on announcements and other blog updates, but here are some notices I received about scholarships or volunteer opportunities if you're interested in participating in an archaeological dig in the summer of 2011. The Biblical Archaeological Society scholarship deadline is April 1st and the ASOR deadline is February 15th. Participating in a dig and getting that firsthand archaeological experience is something I've always wanted to do. I encourage those like-minded Bible scholars/armchair biblical archaeologists like myself to check out these opportunities.

Biblical Archaeological Society

WASHINGTON D.C. (January 3, 2011)—Dig Opportunities and Scholarships Available for Volunteers

The Biblical Archaeology Society is pleased to announce the publication of the Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR) Dig Issue (January/February 2011), which features a listing of excavation projects that are looking for volunteers for the upcoming 2011 season. Although an archaeological dig may not have all the glitz and glamour of a TV police drama, the clues you’ll gather and the evidence you’ll examine will have a real-life impact on our understanding of ancient cultures. In “DSI: Dig Site Investigation,”BAR’s annual guide to excavations will help volunteers find the dig that’s right for them. Extensive information on these volunteer opportunities and more can also be found online at www.digs.bib-arch.org. For more than two decades, BAR has been connecting people with the experience of a lifetime on an archaeological dig, and the upcoming season promises to be an exciting one, with opportunities available in both Israel and Jordan.

Students and applicants of all ages and levels of experience are welcome to apply to participate in an excavation this summer (minimum age requirements vary). Some programs offer course credit for participation. Applicants are encouraged to visit BAS online to explore the “Find a Dig” section of our Web site at www.bib-arch.org/digs. Whether you’re interested in the worlds of Kings David and Solomon or want to walk in the footsteps of Jesus and the apostles, we’ve got an archaeological dig for you. For each dig, we provide an in-depth description including location, historical and Biblical significance, and what the goals are for the season. You can also learn all about the dig directors and professors who will lead your summer adventure. Check out our comprehensive online guide for more about the exciting dig opportunities coming up this summer.

The Biblical Archaeology Society is proud of its ongoing Scholarship Program, which offers funding for selected applicants who wish to participate in an archaeological excavation. Quotes from some of the 2010 scholarship winners can be found in the current January/February 2011 issue of BAR, recounting what it is like to discover history firsthand. More information about our Scholarship Program, including application instructions for 2011, can be found at www.digs.bib-arch.org/scholarships.

American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR)

ASOR offers excavation scholarships for 2011

ASOR is pleased to announce that it will once again offer scholarships for individuals to participate in excavations during the 2011 summer field season. ASOR anticipates awarding approximately 30 scholarships through its Heritage and Platt Fellowship programs. Fellowships will typically be for $1,000 each. Applications are due by February 15, 2011.

In order to apply, individuals must be student, retired, or professional members of ASOR or students enrolled at an ASOR-member school. Applicants are encouraged to apply for both Heritage and Platt Fellowships. While two applications must be submitted, applicants may use the same information on both applications. Details on the fellowship programs can be found at the following URLs:

Heritage fellowships: http://www.asor.org/fellowships/heritage.html

Platt fellowships: http://www.asor.org/fellowships/platt.html

Q&A with Seth Sanders, Part 2

As I sit here in WI reading the many blog, Facebook, and Twitter updates from the 2010 Great Bible Scholar Gathering in Atlanta (also known as the SBL Annual Meeting), I keenly feel my absence with the WI temp around 30 degrees on a bright sunny day and the high in Atlanta predicted around 70. As promised, here is the second part of my interview with Seth Sanders, author of The Invention of Hebrew (part 1 here).

4. How does your work compare to other recent work on writing and scribal practice in the ancient world? 

There's been a series of great books asking what larger-scale scribal institutions in Israel and Judah would have looked like: An important one people may not have heard of is Nadav Na'aman's Hebrew book The Past that Creates the Present, the most in-depth look at how history-writing began in Hebrew. Bill Schniedewind's How the Bible Became a Book, crucially, looks at history-writing from the point of view of material culture, avoiding the circularity of taking scribes' own accounts as the truth. Van der Toorn's Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible and David Carr's Writing on the Tablet of the Heart use our richest sources of data: Mesopotamia and Egypt, where they could afford to pay thousands of people to spend their lives copying texts. 

I part ways with them in not trying to reconstruct a big scribal culture. Because when you base your reconstruction on the existing late Iron Age evidence you get a different picture than when you go from either Mesopotamia or the Bible. There may have been really different approaches to writing in the alphabet and the Levant. One clue: at Ugarit, where we have tons of texts, we don't have a single verbatim duplicate text. Now, what does that have to do with the fact that in biblical narrative, nobody ever quotes anyone verbatim? 

BTW I'm glad you didn't use the word “literacy” in that question. [For why, see more from Seth here.] 

5. How have recent discoveries in Iron Age archaeology and epigraphy such as the Qeiyafa ostracon affected your view of the development of Hebrew? 

Surprisingly, they seem to be confirming it. Those hundreds of new excavated uninscribed seals and bullae from the 10th and 9th centuries suggest ever more strongly that nobody was using Hebrew seals as logos or legal devices til the Iron Iib. Qeiyafa is also a wonderful example of what I was imagining because it shows such a crisp break between the Iron Iib and what came before: the script is left to right or top-down and resembles 12th or even 13th century forms. So paleographically it has no direct connection with Iron Age Hebrew. The content is even more ambiguous, since good scholars read it as either a letter or a name list. And the dating is the most remarkable thing: if it's late, as the excavators argue based on limited radiocarbon data, then you've got a big fortress in the 10th century with a writing tradition pretty far from Hebrew as we know it. Which would suggest a big change during the 9th century, maybe an invention? But Lily Singer-Avitz's interpretation of the pottery conforms with the paleography and suggests it's earlier, more what we'd expect from the Iron I. I wasn't expecting evidence like that to pop up right when I finished the book!

If you're in Atlanta, don't forget to catch the book review panel tomorrow morning at 9:00 am!!

Q&A with Seth Sanders on The Invention of Hebrew, Part 1

I've spent quite a bit of time over the past year with Seth Sander's insightful book, The Invention of Hebrew. (See earlier post here). A few days from now, there will be an SBL panel discussion devoted to the book.

S21-121

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Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
11/21/2010
9:00 to 11:30 
Room: Piedmont - Hyatt RegencyTheme: Book Review: Seth L. Sanders, The Invention of Hebrew (University of Illinois Press, 2009)
Matthew Suriano, University of California-Los Angeles, Welcome (5 min)
John Hobbins, United Methodist Church, Presiding (10 min)
Avraham Faust, Bar Ilan University, Panelist (20 min)
Bruce Zuckerman, University of Southern California, Panelist (20 min)
Simeon Chavel, University of Chicago, Panelist (20 min)
Steven Grosby, Clemson University, Panelist (20 min)
Seth Sanders, Trinity College - Hartford, Respondent (30 min)
Discussion (25 min)

I wish I could make it to the book review panel, but unfortunately, I won't be at SBL this year. The issues raised by Seth's book are supremely important for the future of biblical studies (IMO) and deserve a broader audience, so I spent some time interviewing Seth about the book over email. The first part is below and the rest will be posted in the next day or so second part has been posted here.

1. The central question of your book – why did the Israelites start writing in Hebrew at all – seems so fundamental to the study of biblical literature, yet studies on the origin and composition of biblical texts rarely consider it. Why?

They don't realize it's a question you can even ask. I didn't realize it was a question I could ask. But once you realize that for 2,000 years most Semitic speakers just wrote Babylonian and never showed any interest in writing their own language it starts to look like there's something weird about Hebrew and Ugaritic. Why did these people start to produce literature in a Semitic language? And why did Hebrew survive?

It started to feel like there was a huge elephant in the room nobody was talking about. But I didn't realize there was an elephant until I ran across an article by Sheldon Pollock, “Cosmopolitan and Vernacular in History.” Pollock makes a very basic point: in most times and places people didn't read or write the language they spoke. The norm is for there to be a universal, supposedly timeless, written language, what he calls a cosmopolitan language, one implicitly intended for everyone no matter who or where they were. Latin is an example.

So why does Israel's language and literature outlast its polity? What Pollock points out is that local literatures are actually invented, usually in reaction to these cosmopolitan literatures. A light bulb goes on and people say, “Hey, why don't we write about our place, our culture?” And what's so remarkable is it seems to have happened in Western Europe around the 10^th century CE when people moved from Latin and invented written German, French, and Spanish and in South Asia, when people moved from Sanskrit to Tamil and Javanese. I realized that maybe Hebrew was part of a similar movement but almost 2,000 years earlier. It means that the Bible may have a different historical significance than we've assumed.

2. What ramifications could your conclusions have for the ongoing debate over the origin of biblical literature?

It gives us a secure place on which to stand; it certainly doesn't conclude the debate about when and why the Bible was written, but it may provide the most solid jumping-off point for discussing it. Whatever else you may want to believe, we know that people in Israel and Judah are writing substantial prose texts between the 8th and 6th centuries B.C.E. We can't be sure before that, but there's no reasonable way to dispute that by 800 people are writing in a skillful, standardized form of Hebrew: they're writing prayers and letters and putting their names on seals. But just as importantly, it is not the case that “'twas ever thus;” earlier, it wasn't. We know that something changed for this to happen: they were not putting their names on seals in the 9th or 10th centuries, and the two texts we have from 10th-century Israel are really very different in their level of standardization from the texts from Kuntillet Ajrud. The alphabetical order of the Tel Zayit stone is closer to that of the earlier Izbet Sartah ostracon than it is to the Kuntillet Ajrud abecedaries. Maybe they're doing sporadic or experimental writing in Hebrew in the 9th century, but it hasn't become a standard—you don't need it on a seal to identify yourself or make a document legal. 

What bothers people about the debate on the origins of biblical literature is how extreme the positions can get without any external anchor. One person may say biblical literature started in Solomon's court because it's plausible that you have a serious kingdom with serious intellectual activity in the 10th century. Another person may say biblical literature really started in the Persian period because they see a post-exilic perspective in parts of Deuteronomy. But those two positions are based mainly on exegetical choices--how you choose to read the Bible. Without clear external evidence, both positions run the risk of being just things you choose because they make you feel better about yourself. Unless we can share a common starting point in evidence it's not much more than a shouting match.

 3. Scholarship is a collaborative ongoing effort. Can you name several scholars or schools of thought that were most influential as you developed your thoughts for the book?

The Sanskritist Sheldon Pollock really gave me the idea because he asked such a simple, powerful question, “What makes a literature even possible?” I never saw anyone else dare to ask that. He has a massive, rich book on these issues now, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture and Power in Premodern India. The Classicist Gregory Nagy, who along with Frank Moore Cross was the reader of my undergrad thesis, was the first person I saw who let social theory really play together with ancient texts: he didn't impose theory on Homer to show he was more sophisticated than Homer, but to bring out dimensions of Homer's distinctiveness and, if I can say this, blood—the disturbing, rooted vitality of an ancient document that our careful, pristine treatment can bleed dry. 

The first person to show me how to read language as culture was a linguistic anthropologist named Robin Shoaps. She guided me to a few of the best articles and scholars, where I got ideas for how to rigorously pursue this stuff: the idea that how you speak is as important as what you say, not just a bunch of grammar to decipher in order to get to the “real meaning.” She just did an amazing piece on a very obscene, but theoretically significant, Pseudepigraphon in modern-day Guatemala called “The Testament of Judas.” 

And I would never have been able to even approach any of these texts without my academic grandfather and father, Frank Cross and Kyle McCarter. Both of them have an unusual combination of technical rigor, sensitivity to the material's subtle nuances, and openness to ideas. That Hopkins training gave me some amazing colleagues in my generation like Christopher Rollston, who continued Cross and McCarter's tradition of epigraphic work, but took a huge step forward by using it to make systematic arguments about how scribes were trained in IAIIb Israel and Judah, and Ryan Byrne, who did what I think was the most incisive article on the social life of Levantine writing between the LBA and IA. Even beyond the academic training Cross and McCarter gave, they made it feel like true discovery was always possible, just around the corner, if you kept your eyes open and kept at it.

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Seth L. Sanders is Assistant Professor of Religion at Trinity College, Hartford, CT.

Dilettante Access to the Dead Sea Scrolls

In a move that has DSS dilettantes everywhere bursting with excitement, the Israel Antiquities Authority has announced a partnership with Google to bring their archive of DSS fragments online in high resolution images.

The contents and origin of the DSS have been the source of decades of speculation for conspiracy theorists (and scholars) who just really really really wanted to know what the Scrolls said. Despite the fact that virtually everything has finally been officially published, a few dedicated crackpots continue to comb through the contents for clues to support their crazy theories linking Christianity to the DSS sect.

Now those crazy crackpots can go ahead and learn ancient Hebrew and decipher the scrolls for themselves once the collection is put online for everyone to see. It is indeed a great day for dilettante Qumran specialists.

But seriously, this is part of a larger effort by the IAA to preserve the scrolls which are becoming increasingly difficult to read due to decades of handling, light exposure, and poor preservation techniques. Transparency of the contents and free access are side benefits of the greater goal - making such high quality images that the image can take the place of the original for scholarly access. Well done, IAA. Keep up the good work!

"This is the ultimate image of the scroll you can get get," explained IAA project manager Pnina Shor, as she showed reporters an example of the imaging. "It presents an authentic copy of the scroll, that once online, there is no need to expose the scrolls anymore."

...

"We have succeeded in recruiting the best minds and technological means to preserve this unrivalled cultural heritage treasure, which belongs to all of us, so that the public, with a click of the mouse, will be able to access history in its fullest glamour," [IAA General Director Shuka] Dorfman said. (Via CNN)

HT: Agade mailing list w/ link to ABC News.

Honorable Mentions: Historical or Literary?

Back in 2008, I wrote a post dealing with the issue of whether the New Testament references to Old Testament characters can be taken as evidence for their historicity. My conclusion was that, in general, the NT writers were referring to the characters known from Jewish literature and not trying to claim historicity. I don’t believe they were concerned with those types of questions. It may have been assumed, but it didn’t matter for their theological point whether Jonah or Job really lived. What mattered was the story and the example it provided.

Before I go any further, I need to clarify that I am not questioning the real historical existence of all biblical characters. I am also not reducing the Bible to the level of pure fiction. T.C. recently questioned that ambiguity in my previous post, so I want to be clear. I believe archaeology provides strong circumstantial evidence for the existence of certain biblical people, like David, for example. The best explanation of the Tel Dan inscription is that it refers to a real Davidic dynasty. Certain biblical characters like Abraham, Moses, Aaron, Joshua, David, and Solomon are central to the story of salvation history. I’m not questioning their existence, even though I can’t prove it definitively.

The issue is whether an “honorable mention” by another biblical writer is a reference to a historical person or a literary figure. The default position seems to be to take the reference historically. Earlier I dealt with NT references to OT characters, but what about OT references to other characters?

A few days ago Jeff posted “Was Job a Real Person?” His answer:  “Of course he was!” with appeal to Ezek 14:14 for confirmation.

I realize that Ezekiel is filled with dream-like imagery, but this message from the Lord (and the rest of the section) certainly confirms to me that they were real individuals. Not that I needed any more convincing.

I’m not criticizing Jeff’s conclusion. It is a valid answer to the question, but I don’t think it’s the only reasonable answer. A commenter on his post also drew in James 5:11 to support Job’s existence and commented how he believed Jonah historical as well for similar reasons. But why jump to conclusions? Why assume the biblical writer meant to allude to a historical personage? As a 21st century reader, do you follow the reference because it’s historical or because you know the literary text that it alludes to? That’s easy . . . you know the text. You know the story.

Let’s look closer at the references in Ezekiel 14:14 (repeated in v. 20).

even if these three men, Noah, Daniel[1], and Job, were in it, they would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness, declares the Lord GOD.

Commentators often take this as a reference to 3 non-Israelite “saints.”[2] The non-Israelite identity is important for the larger theme of general or universal retribution in Ezekiel 14.  The connection of righteousness or virtue with these three is also key. Gen 6:9 reads “These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.” Job 1:1 says “There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.” Noah and Job are clearly held up as ideal paragons of virtue. (More to come on "Daniel.") Their righteousness is known not from history but from literature. Does the point of v. 14 require their stories to have actually happened or does it simply require one knows the story - much like a parable teaches a point?

The details given about Job’s status, wealth and family don’t prove the story is not a parable or folk tale. We don’t know where the land of Uz is. Job is identified by his character, not his patronymic (that is, no “son of SO & SO” to give a family identification). The circumstances of his suffering and restoration have all the ring of the classic West Semitic epics like Aqhat or Kirta. The fact that the reference to “Daniel” is almost certainly to a character from a non-biblical West Semitic epic further strengthens the conclusion that Job and Noah are evoked here for their literary significance, not their historical existence. (Was there a historical Noah and a worldwide flood? Still thinking that through, but I knew you’d ask.)

Acknowledging that some OT characters, like Jonah[3]  and Job, might simply be literary figures with no historical existence in no way undermines the accuracy or inerrancy of the biblical text. The issue is with the reader, not the text. The reader is demanding something of the text it never intended to give. Searching for a historical Job is, in my mind, about as likely to turn up solid results as a quest for the historical Prodigal Son (Luke 15).

Comments and discussion are welcome. My thoughts on this issue are continually in process.

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[1] Daniel in this text presents a special problem that I’ll address in another post.
[2] See Leslie C. Allen, Ezekiel 1-19, WBC, and Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 1-20, AYB.
[3] Jonah, of course, was known from the historical books - 2 Kgs 14:25. But his literary fame comes from the book of Jonah and his fish story - a story, IMO, borrowing the character of an otherwise little known prophet.

Michael Wise Interview - Minnesota DSS Exhibit

Michael Wise

Michael Wise, master of ancient languages and my first Hebrew and Latin teacher, was interviewed by The Catholic Spirit about the Minnesota Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit (reviewed here). If you haven't yet had a chance to see the exhibit, I highly recommend it, and this interview is a good introduction on what you can expect to get out of it. Here are a few quotes:

What would you recommend that visitors take more time viewing?

There’s a portion of the exhibit given over to explaining how scribal processes work. I think it’s important for people to spend more time looking at that.

We just don’t understand how differently book culture worked in the ancient world compared to how it works today.    . . . We don’t understand how texts got made and how they got passed on. It’s well explained in the exhibit. . . .

[...]

What do you think the scrolls prove about Christianity?

My own view of Christianity is that it can’t be proven or disproved by archaeology. Every artifact we uncover . . . always requires interpretation. It’s at the sifting level that people of faith or people who want to argue against faith can always find some kind of grist for their mill. . . . The texts can’t prove Chris tia nity. Can they prove that the things we’re told about Christianity and Judaism in the Bible really were being said 2,000 years ago? Yes, they can prove that. . . .

Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, we couldn’t prove, in a scientific sense of having tangible evidence, that the Bible was any older than about 1,000 or 1,200 AD. . . . Today, we can say these texts show us that the Bible is as old as the time of Jesus and more . . . there is evidence, scientifically.

Photo via The Catholic Spirit

HT: Jim Davila

Hobbins, Finkelstein, and Khirbet Qeiyafa

After a blogging vacation of 11 days (an eternity for Ancient Hebrew Poetry but due to his move, no doubt), John Hobbins has returned to the blogosphere with a vengeance, posting six positively powerful pieces in a paltry period of perhaps 24 hours.

For my part, I perceived the primary project of John’s four posts posing Khirbet Qeiyafa as a possible problem for Finkelstein and his preposterous posturing on the probability of a puny Israelite polity in the 10th century BCE to be a precise paragon of perspicacity. 

1. Finkelstein on Khirbet Qeiyafa
2. Public building activity in the early monarchic period of a polity named Israel
3. Khirbet Qeiyafa: The Kiss of Death to the David-and-Solomon Naysayers
4. Khirbet Qeiyafa and Finkelstein’s Low Chronology

Here are a few quotes from part 3 that illustrate what’s at stake in this debate and why Khirbet Qeiyafa has proven to be such a key find.

Khirbet Qeiyafa poses a challenge to Israel Finkelstein’s hypothesis that the basic outline of the biblical narrative found in 1 Sam – 1 Kgs 11 is a figment of the imagination of much later writers who manipulated inherited tradition in order to place legendary figures of a distant past in a sequence and a set of historical contexts of their own devising (Finkelstein 2006).
…
Regardless, how can KQ be reconciled with Finkelstein’s oft-defended revisionist synthesis? Once again, in Finkelstein’s mind, the kingdom of David, the bare historicity of which he does not deny, was a polity with (1) a limited administrative capacity at most, encompassing a territorial domain spanning a few neighboring villages; and (2) a weak capability of force projection, offensive and defensive, relative to neighboring external polities.
If so, one would never have expected to find what Garfinkel and company have found at Khirbet Qeiyafa. KQ, a site by all accounts in the Judean Shephelah, was a massively fortified late Iron I/early Iron IIA settlement with public structures at its heart and on its perimeter.

Finally, the concluding paragraph from part 4. I agree that these finds should put all minimalists to shame, but I’m sure John realizes that Davies, Thompson, Van Seters, and Lemche have proven themselves remarkably resourceful in promoting their puerile premises without regard for proof or the proper presentation of logically sound arguments.

If KQ poses a challenge to Finkelstein’s chief theses, it buries those of the minimalists. Israel in Transition Volume 2, edited by Lester Grabbe with contributions by Philip Davies, Niels Peter Lemche, and John Van Seters, is due to hit the bookstores in September. One cannot help looking forward to its contents with singular anticipation. In my view, the Davies-Lemche-Van Seters-Thompson approach is equivalent to whistling in the dark. They can hope against hope that nothing turns up that discredits their conclusions. I can’t help thinking: it already has.

Understatement of the Day

The understatement of the day comes from National Geographic News in an article about their upcoming documentary on the Dead Sea Scrolls. It sums up almost all research ever on the DSS.

"I have a feeling it's going to be very disputed," said Lawrence Schiffman, a professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University (NYU).

The article places this quote in response to Bob Cargill's comments:

"Jews wrote the Scrolls, but it may not have been just one specific group. It could have been groups of different Jews," said Robert Cargill, an archaeologist who appears in the documentary Writing the Dead Sea Scrolls, which airs Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET/PT on the National Geographic Channel.

I agree with Bob and I think the new consensus is moving more in this direction in regard to the origins of the scrolls. Of course, almost everything's been disputed in Qumran research. I wish I got cable so I could watch the documentary. Oh well . . .

14th Century BCE Akkadian Chicken Scratches Found in Jerusalem

I'm a bit late on this news that broke while I was on vacation, but apparently the big archaeological news of the week was the discovery of a 14th century BCE cuneiform tablet found in Jerusalem. 


From the Jerusalem Post:

Hebrew University excavations recently unearthed a clay fragment dating back to the 14th century BCE, said to be the oldest written document ever found in Jerusalem.

The tiny fragment is only 2 cm. by 2.8 cm. in surface area and 1 cm. thick and appears to have once been part of a larger tablet. Researchers say the ancient fragment testifies to Jerusalem’s importance as a major city late in the Bronze Age, long before it was conquered by King David.

The minuscule fragment contains Akkadian words written in ancient cuneiform symbols. Researchers say that while the symbols appear to be insignificant, containing simply the words “you,” “you were,” “them,” “to do,” and “later,” the high quality of the writing indicates that it was written by a highly skilled scribe. Such a revelation would mean that the piece was likely written for tablets that were part of a royal household.

Now this find has little bearing on biblical archaeology per se, but since it was found by Eilat Mazar's excavation in Jerusalem, a biblical tie-in somewhere in the article was required. The article closes with this completely unrelated tidbit.

In February, Hebrew University excavations led by Mazar in the Ophel area found ancient stone fortifications dating back some 3,000 years to the time of King Solomon and the First Temple.

Archeologists said that the 70-meterlong and 6-m.-high wall indicated that there had been a strong central government in Jerusalem at the time, which had the manpower and resources to construct large-scale fortifications.

Also, a quick perusal of the 400+ as-yet-unread posts in my feed reader reveals that several other blogs have also commented on these Akkadian chicken scratches. There may be more, but here's what I've seen so far: Christopher Rollston, Robert Cargill, Jim Davila,  Duane Smith, Todd Bolen, and Chip Hardy . 

Beyond the Qumran Community

John J. Collins
Beyond the Qumran Community: The Sectarian Movement of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2010

A few months ago, I was convinced that the Essenes had no clear connection to the Dead Sea Scrolls and that the site of Qumran was most likely not a religious sectarian settlement. (Background here.) Now I’m not totally recanting my earlier skepticism, but after reading John Collins’s latest book, I’ve realized my hard-line denial of the possibility was clouding my objectivity and hindering my understanding of consensus arguments. Yes, many of the consensus positions require a speculative leap at some point to bring evidence and theory together, but the connections are not as completely implausible as I’d thought. Since I value going where the evidence leads more than defending a particular point of view, I have to admit that Collins has done a fine job in presenting the most nuanced and balanced account of the Qumran sect that I have ever read.

The material is organized in 5 chapters:

1. The New Covenant. The community described in the Damascus Document (CD) is discussed in depth. The laws and the distinctive elements about sectarian life are compared with evidence from other sectarian documents like 4QMMT and other Jewish literature from the period such as Enoch and Jubilees.

2. The Yaḥad. The sectarian community described in the Community Rule (1QS) is compared with that in the Damascus Document. The surprising conclusion (that seems obvious once it has been presented) is that they do NOT describe the same group. This is important because most scholarship on the DSS sect takes all sectarian texts together as describing a single sect that dwelled at Qumran.

3. The Historical Context. Here Collins reviews the evidence for the historical setting of the sectarian movement. Consensus had previously placed the origins of the sect in the early 2nd century BCE (i.e., Jonathan Maccabee was the Wicked Priest). I have long found the arguments for a 1st century BCE setting compelling especially as laid out by M.O. Wise (“Dating the Teacher of Righteousness and the Floruit of His Movement,” JBL 122 (2003):53-87). Collins points out how the pillars that had supported a 2nd century dating have eroded as a result of recent research.

4. The Essenes. Much scholarship on Qumran and the sect described in the DSS ignores or minimizes the contributions from scholars such as N. Golb. The fact that Collins will at least mention Golb and cite him when appropriate is surely a sign of his respect for hearing all sides in the debate. The Essene hypothesis identifying the sect described in the scrolls with the Essenes described by Josephus and other ancient writers has been one of the most controversial issues in DSS scholarship. Collins treats all sides fairly and accurately represents the strengths and weaknesses of each argument. His chapter lays out the problem and the possible solutions clearly without overtly favoring one side until all the options and evidence have been discussed. It is typical of Collins in this book to avoid coloring the reader’s perceptions of the issue by giving away his preferred interpretation up front.

5. The Site of Qumran. In this final chapter, Collins discusses the archaeology of Qumran and the possible connection between the site and the scrolls. He gives a full account of the major interpretations of the site and concludes that at least in the final period of settlement before the First Revolt in 66-68 CE, the site likely housed a sectarian settlement. However, he believes the group at Qumran was small and one of many settlements of the sect described in the scrolls. This theory explains the data much better than claiming a single large sect lived at or near Qumran and composed all the scrolls. It allows for many of the scrolls to be brought from elsewhere during the upheaval of the First Revolt. It also explains the multiplicity of sectarian documents such as different copies of the Community Rule that differ slightly. Other theories such as Golb’s idea that the collection of scrolls came from a Jerusalem Temple archive hidden in the area have trouble with the fact that the library lacks the diversity often attributed to Second Temple Judaism. Where are the Sadducean texts if this was a temple archive? Where are the scrolls written by the Pharisees?  The theory that these scrolls were brought together by members of one larger group makes better sense. It explains the fact that most of the sectarian literature has an overarching unity (i.e., calendrical and purity issues) that fits with the larger parent group and a diversity (i.e., celibate or married) that can be explained by the subgroups.

I am still not convinced that the scrolls found in 11 caves near the Dead Sea are necessarily connected to anyone who inhabited Qumran or to the Essenes. However, Collins has convinced me that the consensus is not totally implausible. The straightforward way that he engages and deconstructs consensus and non-consensus scholars alike shows me that he is more concerned with giving an honest interpretation of the evidence than defending any theory in particular. His careful method of debunking mistaken assumptions and conclusions on all sides is a quality I admire, not least because I felt that I would have approached the problem in much the same way.

The book is well worth reading and quite affordable at $25 paperback. If/when I teach an introductory class on the Dead Sea Scrolls, this will be required reading. The bibliography is substantial and Collins’s familiarity with the immense secondary literature on the DSS is a model of good scholarship.

To close, as required in book review posts now, I must disclose that I have NO material connection to the publisher. Yes, that’s right. I did not receive a free review copy for saying nice things about the book. I actually bought this book for myself and found his treatment of the issues so compelling that I was compelled to recommend the book to all of you.

The Minnesota Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit

I had the opportunity a couple of weeks ago to see the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul. Last week, I viewed the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible exhibit at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Counting my trip to the San Diego exhibit in 2007, I have now had the “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity to see the scrolls three times. The Minnesota exhibit’s advertising urges you to:

Experience a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness one of the greatest archaeological finds of the 20th century—the Dead Sea Scrolls, which include the earliest known Biblical writings.

I will comment on the Milwaukee exhibit in a separate post. For a much more thorough review than I intend to do, see John’s post here.

If you are in the Twin Cities any time between now and October 24th, I highly recommend you take a few hours to go see the exhibit at the Science Museum. Of the three exhibits I’ve seen, the scope of the MN exhibit is the most comprehensive in terms of background information related to the Scrolls and the site of Qumran. I’m more familiar than the average person with the various theories and debates related to the DSS, and the main thing that impressed me about the MN exhibit was how it laid out all the options related to the identity of the sect and the possible uses of the site without privileging any particular angle. The exhibit does not play up a simplistic either/or dichotomy of Jerusalem origins vs. Qumran Essene origin that might have been assumed from some of the media coverage. While past exhibits have mentioned the existence of multiple theories, this is the only one I’ve seen that incorporates the information on multiple theories throughout the exhibit and doesn’t “spin” the evidence in favor of any particular perspective. (Concerning the San Diego exhibit, Bob Cargill pointed out that his documentary at the exhibit laid out the options. While that may be so, I saw the exhibit but not the movie and the exhibit itself was very much oriented toward the “Standard Hypothesis” of Qumran Essene origin for the scrolls.)

Now I have a theory for why museums and other popular presentations of controversial issues like this present one theory as stronger and more certain than it really is. People like certainty and proof (just ask Scott). They’re uncomfortable with uncertainty, ambiguity, and tension between competing interpretations. They also don’t like to think for themselves. So while multiple theories and raw data might be presented, they’re usually told which one is the “right” answer. Not so at the MN exhibit. All the options are laid out and you’re left to decide for yourself who makes a stronger case. (In case you want someone to tell you what to think: The scrolls were not composed at Qumran by a monk-like group of Essenes. Pick any other theory and it makes more sense of the data.)

The flow of the exhibit works well and the free audio tour was a definite plus. (The Milwaukee exhibit charges an extra $6 for an audio tour which I did not purchase.) Most of your time at the exhibit won’t be spent in the Scrolls room. There are only 5 scrolls on display at a time at the Science Museum. But the Scrolls display is really just the climax to a very comprehensive exhibit of artifacts from Second Temple Judaism and the archaeology of the Dead Sea region. One of my favorite parts of the exhibit was on how Israel is working now to preserve the scroll fragments, contrasting current methods of preservation with the “what-were-they-thinking” techniques from the 1950s (involving scotch tape, plate glass, and cigarettes – you can see the plate glass and the tape still in use on the DSS fragments displayed in Milwaukee).

As an added bonus, 28 pages of the Saint John’s Bible are on display in an additional exhibit at the end of the DSS exhibit. The Saint John’s Bible is a hand-written illuminated Bible, the first of its kind since the invention of the printing press. Scribal culture is getting a mini-revival of sorts! The artwork and script is amazing and well worth seeing.

If you get the opportunity, the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota is well worth the trip. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!

Inscription of the Day: Yehimilk

The Yehimilk inscription dating to the mid-tenth century B.C.E. was discovered in 1929. It consists of seven lines of text inscribed over the top of a previous pseudo-hieroglypic inscription that was written within registers dividing the lines (Gibson 1982, 17). The language of the inscription is Old Byblian, an early Phoenician dialect used primarily in the city of Byblos.

The text is a royal dedicatory inscription by a king of Byblos. Several similar inscriptions also dating to the tenth century B.C.E. have been found at Byblos – Abibaal, Elibaal, and Shiptibaal. The basic pattern throughout these inscriptions is:

The object which PN king of Byblos, son of PN, king of Byblos built/brought for DN. May DN prolong the days of PN and his years over Byblos. (PN = proper name; DN = deity name)

This pattern was not limited to the inscriptions from Byblos but should be seen as a common formula for dedicatory inscriptions in the Canaanite dialects. The formula has even been found in a seventh century BCE inscription from Ekron, a prominent Philistine city (Gitin 1997).



Translation:

¹ (This is the) temple which Yehimilk king of Byblos rebuilt. ² He restored all the ruins of ³ these temples. May Ba’al-shamem and Ba’alat ⁴ of Byblos and the assembly of the ⁵ holy gods of Byblos prolong the days of Yehimilk and his years ⁶ over Byblos. For [he is] a legitimate king and a ⁷ good king  before the h[oly] gods of Byblos.

The fact that Yehimilk doesn’t give us his lineage (i.e., I am Yehimilk, son of Abibaal, son of . . . ) but stresses that he is a good and legitimate king of Byblos suggests that he is a usurper (like Zakkur in an Aramaic inscription that we’ll get to later).

References:
Gibson, John C. L. 1982. Textbook of Syrian Semitic inscriptions: Volume III: Phoenician Inscriptions. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Gitin, Seymour, Trude Dothan, and Joseph Naveh. 1997. A royal dedicatory inscription from Ekron. Israel Exploration Journal 47, : 1-16.

Pondering the Qeiyafa Ostracon

After refreshing my amateur paleography skills by revisiting the Gezer Calendar and the Siloam Tunnel inscriptions, I thought I'd have another look at the Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon.

So I looked and attempted to transcribe what I could see from both Misgav's and Yardeni's line drawings and the photos from the Hebrew University. Even so, I was still unable to make heads or tails of Qeiyafa. My transcription has many blanks where I was uncertain of the letter and couldn't even hazard a guess.

I set the Qeiyafa ostracon aside again and went looking for information on 'Izbet Sartah, recalling that I was told it would make a better paleographical comparison than Gezer, for example.

The 'Izbet Sartah inscription 

(drawing via www.andreascenter.org)

The Qeiyafa discovery is important because of its 10th century dating. But the script appears much less developed than a 10th century inscription like Gezer. The better paleographical analogue is a 12th century text - 'Izbet Sartah. All of that is introduction to this one idle musing. What if the 10th century archaeological context for the ostracon merely provides a terminus ad quem for a possibly earlier text? If Qeiyafa is more like 'Izbet Sartah than Gezer (left to right writing, more primitive letter forms, etc.), then isn't it more likely that Qeiyafa is a 12th or 11th century text? And if that's the case, is it really even a possibility that we could call the language of the text Hebrew? Any thoughts from those of you more learned in paleography than I? 

Inscription of the Day: Siloam Tunnel

Very rarely does archeological evidence connect closely with the biblical account. This inscription (if one accepts the dating) may be one of those times.

The Siloam Tunnel inscription dates to around 700 BCE during the reign of Hezekiah. The date is based on paleographical analysis of the inscription which shows features typical of 8th century BCE Hebrew.[1] The inscription seems to commemorate the completion of the Siloam Tunnel connecting the Gihon spring to the pool of Siloam inside Jerusalem, a public work attributed to King Hezekiah in 2 Chronicles 32:30 and necessitated by the Assyrians’ impending siege.

2 Chr 32:30 This same Hezekiah closed the upper outlet of the waters of Gihon and directed them down to the west side of the city of David. And Hezekiah prospered in all his works.

The language is very similar to biblical Hebrew, and the spelling (orthography) fits the late 8th century with final but not internal matres (vowel letters). It was found on the wall of the tunnel in 1880.

Transcription

[הנקבה וזה היה דבר הנקבה בעוד [ההצבם מניפם את

הגרזן אש אל רעו ובעוד שלש אמות להנקבה נשמע קל אש ק

רא אל רעו כי היתה זדה בצר מימני . . . ובים ה

נקבה הכו החצבם אש לקרת רעו גרזן על גרזן וילכו

המים מן המוצא אל הברכה במאתים ואלף אמה ומא

ת אמה היה גבה הצר על ראש החצבם

Translation

(1) The breach.  And this was the record of the breach.  While [the workmen were swinging,] (2) the pick-axe, each man toward his companion, and while there were three cubits to be tunneled, a voice was heard- each man called (3) to his companion because there was a crack in the rock from the right…and on the day of (4) the breach the workers struck, each man to meet his companion, pick-axe against pick-axe.  And the waters flowed (5) from the source to the pool: one thousand and two hundred cubit[s].  And one hundred (6) cubit[s] was the height of the rock over the head of the workmen.

Reference: The line drawing above is from J. Renz and W. Rollig, Handbuch der altehebraischen Epigraphik, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1995.

1 This dating was famously (and foolishly) challenged by J. Rogerson and P. R. Davies (“Was the Siloam Tunnel Built by Hezekiah?” Biblical Archaeologist 59:3 (1993), 138-149) who argued the inscription was Hasmonean. An international dream team of paleographers and philologists (including Jo Ann Hackett, Frank Moore Cross, P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., Ada Yardeni, André Lemaire, Esther Eshel, and Avi Hurvitz) administered a massive smackdown in the pages of BAR a few years later (“Defusing Pseudo-Scholarship: The Siloam Inscription Ain't Hasmonean.” BAR (Mar/Apr 1997), 41-68).

Comments on the Gezer Calendar Script

In my previous post on the Gezer Calendar inscription, I didn’t go into too much detail about the script in which it was written. That’s because I’m not really trained as a paleographer. I’m a biblical studies person who dabbles in Northwest Semitic inscriptions. I enjoy epigraphy and paleography, but I’ve never had a chance to study with a specialist in Semitic inscriptions and scripts.

In comments on the previous post, I was asked whether the Gezer Calendar shows any evidence of being a distinctly Hebrew script (i.e., not Phoenician). Here I offer my non-specialist evaluation of the script. I rely heavily on Yardeni and Cross for my quasi-expertise.

Yardeni (1997, 15) identifies the script as Phoenician. Gibson (1971, 1) calls it the “Old Hebrew script” but goes on to point out close parallels with characters from Old Byblian texts (i.e. Phoenician). Since the Phoenician script served as an international script until the 8^th century BCE (Yardeni 1997, 15), a Hebrew inscription in Phoenician script would not be unusual.

There is some debate over whether the language of the text is Hebrew or Phoenician. The dividing line between the two languages is not very distinct at this stage. An important feature identifying the language of the inscription as Hebrew is the reconstruction of {h} in the name in the margin, making a Yahwistic theophoric element. One isogloss indicating a northern Hebrew dialect is the diphthong reduction with קץ .Cross believes Gezer shows initial tendencies marking the emergent Hebrew script (1980, 14).

The identification of the script as Phoenician is an indicator of the age of the inscription, placing it earlier than the Hebrew texts of the mid to late 9^th century BCE. According to Yardeni (1997, 17), Hebrew inscriptions from the later time period show tendencies distinct from the Phoenician script such as a cursive leftward curve to the long downstrokes. In the Gezer script, the downstrokes on the “long-legged” letters tend to be straight. However, the Gezer script also has other features which Yardeni identifies as Hebrew tendencies including the waw with a concave top (though inconsistent in this text) and the x-shaped taw (ibid.). The elongated vertical strokes of ‘aleph, waw, kaph, mem, and resh are also rudimentary features of Hebrew script (Cross 1980, 14). The abcedary found at Tell Zayit exhibits similar archaic features and has also been identified as Hebrew and dated to the mid-10^th century.

The paleographical evidence for dating the Gezer Calendar to the 10^th century is strong. The ‘aleph, waw, and zayin are more advanced than 11^th century, but the script lacks the cursive tendency indicative of Hebrew scripts of the 9^th century and later (Cross 1980, 14, 18 n. 16).

It may be best to identify the Gezer script as transitional Hebrew between the standard Phoenician from the 10^th century and the earliest Hebrew from a century later since it shows features of both scripts.

References

Cross, Frank Moore. 1980. “Newly Found Inscriptions in Old Canaanite and Early Phoenician Scripts.” BASOR 238: 1-20.

Gibson, John C. L. 1971. Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions. Vol. 1: Hebrew and Moabite Inscriptions. Oxford: Clarendon.

Yardeni, Ada. 1997. The Book of Hebrew Script. Jerusalem: Carta.

Inscription of the Day: The Gezer Calendar

The Gezer Calendar is a Hebrew inscription on limestone found at excavations at Gezer in 1908 by R.A.S. Macalister. (Technically, a visitor to his excavation found it sitting atop his trash heap. Macalister was not that great of an archaeologist.) It is one of the earliest Hebrew inscriptions, dating to the late 10^th century BCE (ca. 925 BCE). I made the line drawing below in 2007 for a class on Hebrew/Canaanite inscriptions.

  ירחו אסף

ירחו זרע

ירחו לקש

ירחו עצד פשת

ירחו קצר שערם

ירח קצר וכל

ירחו זמר

ירח קץ

אביה

Its (two) months of harvest.

Its (two) months of sowing.

Its (two) months of late growth.

Its month of cutting flax

Its month of barley harvest.

Its month of harvest and measuring.

Its (two) months of pruning.

Its month of summer (fruit).

'Abiyah

Issues

What kind of a text is this? An agricultural calendar? A school text? Is it poetry? I like to think of it as poetry because of the assonance and terse lines, but it's one odd poem if that's the case. There are two main issues with this inscription besides figuring out what it actually means.

First, the waw on ירחו is unusual. It likely reflects a 3ms suffix on a dual noun (Albright 1943). It can't be singular because the waw has to be consonantal at this stage of Hebrew. Other explanations have been offered such as waw as a case ending (Tropper 1993). Vocalization is uncertain. In Tiberian, I would vocalize it as יַרְחָיו.

The other primary uncertainty with this inscription is the phrase עצד פשת. Most likely it says “cutting flax” but עצד is a rare root in Hebrew. The main problem is that if the activities are in sequence, then the flax harvest would be out of place. Attempts to find another meaning for פשת, however, have been less than convincing (Dobbs-Allsopp 2005, 161).

This is an important inscription for the development of Hebrew as a written language. Oh, and one more thing, the last line is usually read as a personal name, perhaps the scribe or poet or whatever (in case you were wondering).

References & Resources

Albright, W. F. 1943. “The Gezer Calendar.” BASOR 92: 16-26.

Ahituv, Shmuel. 2008. Echoes from the Past: Hebrew and Cognate Inscriptions from the Biblical Period. Carta.

Cross, Frank Moore, Jr. and David Noel Freedman. 1952. Early Hebrew Orthography: A Study of the Epigraphic Evidence. New Haven: American Oriental Society.

Cross, Frank Moore. 1980. “Newly Found Inscriptions in Old Canaanite and Early Phoenician Scripts.” BASOR 238: 1-20.

Dobbs-Allsopp, F. W., et. al. 2005. Hebrew Inscriptions: Texts from the Biblical Period of the Monarchy with Concordance. Yale University Press.

Gibson, John C. L. 1971. Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions. Vol. 1: Hebrew and Moabite Inscriptions. Oxford: Clarendon.

Lidzbarski, Mark, et. al. 1909. “An Old Hebrew Calendar-Inscription from Gezer.” PEFQ.

Tropper, Josef. 1993. “Nominativ Dual *yarihau im Gezer-Kalendar.” ZAH 6/2: 228-231.

Yardeni, Ada. 1997. The Book of Hebrew Script. Jerusalem: Carta.

Biblia Hebraica: Top 5 Threads from 2009

My two year blog anniversary came and went a month ago. In recognition of that event, I’m posting links to some favorite posts from 2009. These are either my favorites, popular posts with good reader feedback, or big topics in biblioblogdom from last year. I had 164 posts, so this is just a small sampling.

1. Genesis Rabbah

Thoughts on Intertextuality

Creation in Rabbinic Literature

The Pre-Existent Torah

First Things First

Identifying Insertions in Rabbinic Texts

Which Came First?

2. Apologetics and Critical Scholarship

Apologetics, Logic, and Critical Bible Scholarship

Faith & Intellectual Honesty

Apologists & Bible Scholars

What Does It Mean to be “Critical”?

Religion and Biblical Exegesis

Go Where the Evidence Leads

3. Bizarre Bible Stories

Judges 17-18: Micah the Levite, His Shrine, and the Tribe of Dan

Judges 19-21: The Levite and His Concubine and Its Aftermath

Exodus 4:24-26: YHWH Shows Up to Kill Moses

2 Kings 2:23-24: Elisha and the Bears

4. Essenes, Qumran, and the Dead Sea Scrolls

Curiouser and Curiouser … No Essenes?

Challenging the Essene Hypothesis

Shockwaves Blast Qumran Consensus

Bringing the DSS to Life in MN

5. Book Reviews

Legal Revision and Religious Renewal in Ancient Israel

Alter: Book of Psalms

NLT Mosaic

On Punic Child Sacrifice

A study has been released claiming to debunk the millennia-old belief that the citizens of ancient Carthage regularly sacrificed their children to their god Baal (a version of the Canaanite deity mentioned in the Bible). This has biblical significance because the Old Testament is one of the ancient sources used to connect the discovery of burial urns with cremated infant remains with the Canaanite practice of child sacrifice. [Aside: Carthage is in North Africa. What does that have to do with the biblical world? Carthage was a Phoenician colony. The Phoenicians were nearby Canaanite neighbors of the Israelites based mainly in the Tyre and Sidon area.]

The article is, in my opinion, scientifically objective and their conclusions make sense. For those of you concerned about the integrity of the Bible as a historical document, their study leaves open the possibility that some of the burial urns were from live child sacrifice. This is the practice chronicled by the Bible and other ancient sources. If you read closely, you'll notice their evidence accounts for 20-50% of the cremated infants being stillborn, miscarriages, or deaths within the first two weeks after birth A high rate of infant mortality was not uncommon in the ancient world.

Researchers examined 348 burial urns to learn that about a fifth of the children were prenatal at death, indicating that young Carthaginian children were cremated and interred in ceremonial urns regardless of cause of death. [...] "The idea of regular infant sacrifice in Carthage is not based on a study of the cremated remains, but on instances of human sacrifice reported by a few ancient chroniclers, inferred from ambiguous Carthaginian inscriptions, and referenced in the Old Testament. Our results show that some children were sacrificed, but they contradict the conclusion that Carthaginians were a brutal bunch who regularly sacrificed their own children." [Jeffrey Schwartz] 

 Via Agade

Hebrew University Responds to Khirbet Qeiyafa Buzz

Now it's always nice to have lots of media attention aimed at archaeological excavations because it raises public awareness of the kind of research that's being done. However, there's a tendency with finds related to the biblical world to get carried away in interpreting those finds to "prove" the Bible is true, historical, etc. This is evident most recently in Gershon Galil's very gratuitous and sensationalized reading of the ostracon from Khirbet Qeiyafa. I was browsing the official excavation website today, and I found that they've published an open letter to Galil regarding his findings and the methods he used in reporting them. Apparently, he was taking credit for readings and conclusions that weren't originally his. Tsk tsk. On top of that, his reconstructions were entirely speculative. Already knew that.

Here is the letter, reproduced in full from the "Khirbet Qeiyafa Ostracon Project" website of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Open Letter to Prof. Gers[h]on Galil, Haifa University

The Khirbet Qeiyafa expedition would like to draw your attention to a number of problematic statements that appeared in the Haifa University press release, dated January 10, 2010 (http://newmedia-eng.haifa.ac.il/?p=2043). These statements raise several problems of ethics and scholarship, which unfortunately have created a serious public misunderstanding concerning the Qeiyafa ostracon.

Ethics

1. While the expedition is run by two directors, only one (Yosef Garfinkel) is mentioned. This is surprising, as last year co-director Saar Ganor spent some time on guiding a tour of Khirbet Qeiyafa for you and other members of the Department of Biblical Studies of Haifa University.
   

2. The letters that appear on the ostracon were deciphered by the epigraphist Dr. Haggai Misgav, who has published his reading in Hebrew and English. In the press release, however, you are presented as the person who deciphered the inscription, taking full credit for the entire reading. Again, this is surprising, as last year Haggai Misgav gave a presentation on the inscription at the Department of Biblical Studies of Haifa University.
   

3. In a few cases you give alternative readings of the inscription that were published by Dr. Ada Yardeni. These, again, are presented as your original reading.
   

4. From the very first reading of the inscription, the words אל תעש were understood by Haggai Misgav as an indication that the language of the inscription is Hebrew. In the press release this understanding is presented as your original contribution.
   

5. Prof. Shmuel Ahituv suggested in his publication that עבד (worship) is another indication for Hebrew. In the press release, however, this is presented as your own contribution.
   

6. When you examined the ostracon, you requested permission to take a few photographs for your personal use only. One of these photographs appears in the press release.
   

   Scholarship
   

Your contribution consists not of reading or deciphering the inscription, but rather of speculative reconstruction of "missing" letters and words. Most of the third line and the center of the fifth line of the ostracon are illegible and the letters you suggest are entirely speculative. The main words that support your thesis (אלמנה, יתום, אביון) are reconstructed and do not appear as such in the legible parts of the ostracon.

On the basis of your own reconstruction, you draw conclusions, among others, about when the Bible was written. Does this sound like a scientific methodology?