The title of this post is also the title of a Catholic Online article dated yesterday, another in the long line of articles debunking Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code. Actually, the article is an interview with Mark Shea, who co-authored The Da Vinci Deception, a book debunking the novel. I encourage you to read the whole article. Shea speaks intelligently to why debunking The Da Vinci Code is important:

The longer answer is that “The Da Vinci Code” has become the source for what I call “pseudo-knowledge” about the Christian faith.

Pseudo-knowledge is that stuff “everybody knows,” such as the “fact” that Humphrey Bogart said “Play it again, Sam” — except he didn’t. Pseudo-knowledge doesn’t matter much when the issue is the script of “Casablanca.”

It matters greatly when it adversely affects the most sacred beliefs of a billion people, and when it levels the charge that the Catholic Church is essentially a vast “Murder Incorporated” network founded on maintaining the lie of Jesus’ divinity and resurrection.

When that happens, very nasty genies get let out of bottles, as when the lies recorded by 19th-century czarist secret police forgers in the “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” became the basis for what “everybody knew” about the Jews in the terrible anti-Semitic persecutions of the 20th century.

“The Da Vinci Code” has sold close to 30 million copies. In May, it will appear as a major film and will acquire even more unquestioned authority among millions of historically and theologically illiterate viewers — unless Christians state the facts and help viewers recognize just how badly they’ve been had.

The Da Vinci Outreach initiative, led by Catholic Exchange and Ascension Press, will equip Catholics and all people of good will with resources to help them respond to this movie.

Those who say, “It’s just a story,” simply do not understand that this deception is part of the book’s power. People often receive through fiction what they would be on guard against in reasoned debate.

And this is particularly true as Dan Brown, the author of “The Da Vinci Code,” has actually stated he would not change any of his basic assertions if he were writing nonfiction. Brown means for us to understand that his claims about the origins are Christianity are true.

There are dozens of basic factual inaccuracies in Brown’s book. In the interview, Shea highlights a few. Go see for yourself.

Hat tip to Jim Davila for the link.

I ran across the early forms of Tim Bulkeley’s hypertext Amos commentary several years ago. It looks like Tim is now ready to officially launch a peer-reviewed version 1.0!

Prompted by a presentation at the recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Inside Higher Ed today takes notice of the Clergy Letter Project, an effort spearheaded by Michael Zimmerman, Dean of the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, to gather signatures from clergy who believe that affirming the modern scientific understanding of biological evolution is compatible with Christian faith. Among the signatories are Lutherans, Catholics, Quakers, Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians, Disciples, Congregationalists, and a Baptist or two. There are a notable number of academics on the list, though I assume they’re all ordained ministers in their denomination.

The IHE reporter solicited comment on the CLP from the Discovery Institute, and reported:

Rob Crowther, director of communications for the Discovery Institute, the group that has organized much of the intelligent design movement, scoffed at the new campaign on behalf of evolution. Crowther said that intelligent design supporters see the issue as “purely a scientific debate” so the views of clergy members are irrelevant. “Can you imagine if the Discovery Institute issued a list of clergy opposing Darwinism?” he asked.

The views of clergy “don’t make any difference,” he said. “We don’t think there is anything religious at all to the theory of intelligent design.”

I’ve described elsewhere why I believe statements like Crowther’s to be disingenuous at best, if not outright deceptive. But even if Crowther were telling it straight and there were nothing religious about ID, the Clergy Letter Project would still serve an important function. A very large number of Americans believe that there is a fundamental conflict between Christian theism and the modern theory of biological evolution. The Clergy Letter Project aims to show that this belief is characteristic of only a part of American Christianity, not the whole, and perhaps not the majority.

Update: It appears that even while dismissing the Clergy Letter Project as irrelevant, the Discovery Institute touts its own list of dissenters from Darwinism, according to the New York Times.

Note: This post has been sitting on my hard drive for several days, as I originally composed it during one of Blogger’s recent maintenance outages. I trust that it will be taken in the spirit of vibrant intellectual interchange for which Jim West’s and Joe Cathey’s exchanges are so famous.

In the course of my comments on Joe Cathey’s, Keith’s Schoville’s, and Walter Kaiser’s “top n archaeological finds related to (Hebrew) biblical studies,” I wrote, pace Jim West, that “It is perfectly possible for a narrative text with a theological motive and purpose to communicate reliable historical information, whether incidentally (as when Isaiah 20 dates a particular oracle to the reign of Sargon II) or as a major strategy for making its theological point.” Joe praised this statement, but Jim’s assessment was “of course he is incorrect.” Jim characterized my statement as “That seems to me to be the great, overarching, a priori presumption that is always made when we discuss historiography and the Hebrew Bible. But is it supported by the texts themselves[?]”

In order to test my thesis, Jim proposed a test case: Genesis 1. He put the case this way:

Let’s take an example, and let’s focus on it (and stay with me here Chris and Joe- don’t wander off into some rabbit chasing Tel Dan stuff). Genesis 1. Given Joe’s predisposition towards the text he may well assert that we have here historical remembrance mixed with theological intent. Chris, on the other hand, would suggest, if I read him aright, that in this text we have no historical memory whatsoever. Here we have, for Chris, pure theology.

Jim correctly remembers that I do not believe that Genesis 1 records any sort of historical memory. Never mind that there were no humans around (until the very end of the process) to “remember” anything; I have given adequate reasons for not taking Genesis 1 as a literal, historical account elsewhere. Please note, however, that my reasons for thinking that Genesis 1 do not include “The text has a theological motive.” Like Jim, I think the primary motive of Genesis 1, and all the other biblical texts as well, is theological. However, a primary theological motive does not automatically exclude other, secondary motives, nor does it exclude the incidental performance of unintended nontheological functions.

Now, having addressed Jim’s question directly, without chasing rabbits across Tel Dan, I would like to offer the following three thoughts for consideration along these lines.

1. Let’s change the logic just slightly to see if it holds. Jim seems to be saying that if a text has a theological motive, it cannot—purposefully or incidentally—contain or communicate accurate historical information, precisely because the intention that produced it was not historiographical. If this description of Jim’s challenge is inaccurate, I trust that he will correct my error and show, very clearly, why he is not saying what I have just attributed to him here. Going by appearances, however, I’ll trudge on and evaluate Jim’s claim in the possibly imperfect form I have expressed it here. Jim, what if we substitute the word “philological” for historical? Would you say that, if a text has a theological motive, it cannot—purposefully or incidentally—contain or communicate accurate philological information? That would entail that we can learn nothing about the Hebrew language from reading the Hebrew Bible, a claim that is patently absurd. But if a theological text can incidentally provide accurate philological information, why can it not incidentally provide accurate historical information?

2. Jim, why do you apply your exclusionary principle (theological texts cannot, incidentally or purposefully, communicate accurate historical information) to biblical texts, but not the writings of Luther or Zwingli, Bultmann or Bonhoeffer? Why—be precise—do you so often claim that a biblical writer’s theological narrative cannot contain accurate historical information, but accept that, say, Bonhoeffer’s references (obvious or oblique) to National Socialism do reflect historical reality? Since Luther was a theologian, should we therefore conclude that when he ranted about the peasant revolt, this shows that the peasant revolt never happened, because his sermons and writings are theology rather than history?

3. Most telling, let’s replace Genesis 1 with a different test case: Isaiah 36-37. The primary motive of Isaiah 36-37 is clearly theological. The writer wishes to affirm God’s (miraculous) care for and defense of Jerusalem—a theological claim if there ever was one. Yet in the course of reading through this theological narrative, we find the implicit historical claim that King Sennacherib of Assyria made an incursion into Judah during the reign of King Hezekiah, successfully besieged several Judean cities, and besieged Jerusalem but withdrew. To be sure, the text embellishes this sparse outline with many details, such as attributing the Assyrian army’s withdrawal from Jerusalem to the miraculous deaths of 185,000 Assyrian soldiers. Nevertheless, “not even” Niels Peter Lemche (in his response to Joe Cathey’s list) doubts that Sennacherib did indeed make an incursion into Judah of the sort mentioned in Isaiah 36. Now Jim, is it incorrect to say that this narrative, which has a patent theological motive, cannot incidentally communicate accurate historical information? Clearly, we have to know how to sift the genuine historical data from unhistorical embellishments, but is it really impossible for the narrative to communicate accurate historical information? And if it’s not, then how can you claim that I am “of course … incorrect” when I claim that “It is perfectly possible for a narrative with a theological motive and purpose to communicate reliable historical information”? This particular narrative clearly does exactly that, establishing beyond question that it is possible.

Now, I hasten to add that what is possible is not always true. Just because it is possible that a theological text can, purposefully or incidentally, communicate accurate historical information does not mean that any particular text actually does so. That has to be judged on a text-by-text basis (though certain trends may emerge that suggest likely outcomes).

Thus far my discussion has been dispassionate and reasoned. But I have to confess that the next-to-last paragraph of Jim’s post made me hopping mad, and so at this point I’m going into rant mode. You have been warned.

Jim opens that paragraph as follows:

The problem, as I see it, with a simplistic, literalistic reading of the text is that, at the end of such a reading one may presume that one has a genuine historical reconstruction in hand. So what? What can Joe, or Chris, or anyone do with such information?

“So what?” Jim, what is so all-fired wrong with being curious about the past? Let’s imagine, just for a moment, that someone reads a biblical text and believes that they have managed to extract from it some genuine historical data. This can be done, by the way quite critically, and is not inherently either simplistic or literalistic. (Even Provan, Long, and Longman, who in their Biblical History of Israel edge pretty close to an extreme “maximalism,” allow for hyperbole and chronological displacement in biblical narrative.) Suppose further that they put that data to use in an overall reconstruction of, let’s say, the history of Judah in the Iron Age. What’s wrong with wanting to do that? Jim, you seem to imply that reading and studying the Bible for non-theological purposes is somehow illegitimate. Why should that be the case? Are you really saying that there is something wrong with studying the Bible for nontheological motives? Come on, Jim, you’ve actually shared fondue with someone who has made a distinguished career of doing exactly that!

But it’s the next part that really gets my goat. Jim continues (actually, let’s repeat a couple of sentences to get a running start):

So what? What can Joe, or Chris, or anyone do with such information? Will they be able to use it when they visit friends in the hospital? Will it be comfort to them when they stand at a graveside? Will it guide their hearts through difficulties? No. Decidedly not. The Bible’s significance does not rest in some purported historicism- its message, its purpose, its essence is theological. There, in that place, much of value is to be found.

Get real, Jim. Do you really think that if Joe Cathey visited a friend suffering some terrible disease in the hospital, he would pull out his dog-eared copy of ANET and say, “Millie, I realize that you are wracked with terrible pain and fear as the cancer eats away at you, but I just have to share with you this cuneiform tablet that details the rations that King Jehoiachin really did receive while in exile in Babylon!” Of course he wouldn’t. I have every confidence that Joe would show appropriate sensitivity when visiting a sick friend or relative, conducting or attending a funeral, and so on. But does the fact that historical reconstruction has little or no pastoral value invalidate Joe’s historical curiosity carried on in other settings? I don’t see why it should. And let’s turn the tables, Jim. Do you mean to suggest that “minimalism” is somehow more pastorally sensitive than “maximalism”? Imagine that you went to visit poor suffering Millie in the hospital, Jim, and she said, “You know, I just keep turning my face to the wall and praying like King Hezekiah, hoping that God will heal me as he healed the king.” Would you respond by saying, “Well, Millie, you realize of course that story is pure theology, and nothing like that ever really happened”? Somehow, I just can’t see it.

In the final paragraph, Jim cops to the potential of exaggeration, but then he continues to perpetuate a false dichotomy between history and theology, and to act as if someone who is interested in one cannot be interested in the other. That’s simply false. Theology and history are not mutually exclusive, and Jim’s continued claim that they are is unhelpful.

Oh, and by the way, Jim: you can’t get diabetes from eating sugar. If you won’t take it from me, with my significant family history of blood sugar disorders (my grandfather and mother have adult-onset diabetes, I have hypoglycemia, and my nephew has juvenile diabetes), read this.

Duane has pointed to today’s Los Angeles Times article on Ken Ham, co-founder of the creationist organization Answers in Genesis. I honestly don’t have time this morning to comment point-by-point. Duane has some very helpful things to say, and I think I’ve made my judgment of young-earth creationism abundantly clear on this blog over the last several months, so there’s no need to repeat myself. I do want to add, however, that I’m disgusted by Ham’s attempts to turn grade-schoolers and middle-schoolers into an army (”We’re going to arm you with Christian Patriot missiles”) out to attack their teachers and disrupt their classrooms—especially since Ham’s “ammunition” is so theologically and exegetically weak, never mind the science. Perhaps later I’ll come back to the article and go into more depth, perhaps not.

If you are coming late to this series and aren’t sure what it’s about, please review parts 1, 2, 3, and 4. Those posts are commentary on Joe Cathey’s list of “Top Five Archaeological Finds - For Hebrew Bible,” Walter Kaiser’s “Top Fifteen Finds from Biblical Archaeology,” Keith Schoville’s “Top Ten Archaeological Discoveries of the Twentieth Century Relating to the Biblical World,” and Jim Davila’s suggested additions to Joe’s list.

In this post I’d like to engage in a little bit of “meta-analysis” of the lists, stepping back from the actual items listed to ask about the purpose and parameters of the lists themselves.

Joe Cathey opens his list with the comment, “more data about the nature of life in the Late Bronze and Iron Ages is becoming clearer to the sound minded interpreter,” but then he characterizes his list as “top five finds in field of archaeology of the Hebrew Bible.” Now while I appreciate Joe personally, and am largely sympathetic with most of what he wrote in his list (though I tend to state things more cautiously, as you can see in part 1 of this series), I’m afraid I have to take Joe to task just a little bit here on his mixing of categories. To begin with, there is no such thing as “the archaeology of the Hebrew Bible.” The Hebrew Bible is not a thing in which one can dig to find archaeological remains (although the search for literary and oral sources behind the text has sometimes been described using archaeological metaphors). What Joe is really talking about is archaeological investigations in Egypt, Syria-Palestine, and Mesopotamia (to move from west to east—as unattractive as that might be to a Californian) that in some way illuminate the background of the Hebrew Bible and its narratives. Also, while Joe writes of “the nature of life in the Late Bronze and Iron Ages,” none of his top five items actually tell us much of anything about daily life in those time frames. Rather, Joe’s five “finds”—all of them epigraphic (that is, textual)—are of a sort that, when interpreted in certain (sometimes heavily disputed) ways, tend to reinforce the impression that the Hebrew biblical narratives preserve, in more or less detailed or distinct ways, some genuine historical information.

By the way, I feel a need to comment on Jim West’s oblique critique of Joe’s focus. On his own blog, Jim wrote: “Joe’s purpose is, I think it safe to say, to ‘prove’ the historicity of the Hebrew Bible (forgetting for the moment it’s [sic] theological purpose).” Joe’s list does indeed lend itself to Jim’s characterization of “trying to ‘prove’ the historicity of the Hebrew Bible,” as I noted above. However, I don’t see that as a reason for criticism. Joe may or may not succeed in any such endeavor, but it’s his list and I don’t see any reason to dump on him for choosing that focus instead of another. What I do think needs some tweaking are Jim’s assessment of Joe’s memory, and Jim’s underlying, implicit claim about theology and history. First, I don’t think that Joe has in any way forgotten that the biblical texts, including those narratives that look to us like historiographical narratives, have theological motives and purposes. He just happens to have focused this particular list on a different dimension of biblical studies. Second, I don’t think Jim’s binary opposition between theology and history holds water. It is perfectly possible for a narrative text with a theological motive and purpose to communicate reliable historical information, whether incidentally (as when Isaiah 20 dates a particular oracle to the reign of Sargon II) or as a major strategy for making its theological point. (I should rewrite that sentence so that it has people rather than texts as the active agents, but I’ll just trip on for now.) When working with historical reconstruction, the question is not whether the text is “theological” or “historical,” but whether it communicates reliable historical information even if it wasn’t intended for that purpose. That question must be answered largely on a case-by-case basis, not by some a priori decision that theology and history are inimical to one another.

Walter Kaiser’s “top fifteen” list exhibits a similar kind of “split personality.” In the introduction, Kaiser says that the items on his list “will be listed here because of the way each has affected the interpretation of Scripture.” However, several of the finds he lists—e.g., the Sargon II materials from Khorsabad, the Ketef Hinnom amulets, the pool of Gibeon, the Baruch bulla, the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, and the Beersheba horned altar—actually have had no discernible impact on the way any particular passage of scripture is commonly understood. At the end of the article, Kaiser seems to change the parameters of the list items. He refers to the Cyrus cylinder as “our final selection of this large number of finds reflecting on the reliability of the Bible’s witness to its historical accuracy,” and the next-to-last sentence of the article says that “an unexpected surprise has been how unwittingly it has also served apologetically in defense of the Scriptures, even if that had not been its motivating force or its primary objective.” (Actually, that often had been a, if not the, motivating force or primary objective, though not always.) Kaiser’s list thus seems to be composed not chiefly of archaeological remains that help us understand the biblical text better, but of remains that Kaiser believes help to reinforce the impression that the biblical narratives preserve, in more or less detailed or distinct ways, some genuine historical information (or, in a couple of cases, provide background or flavor for biblical texts).

Of the three list-makers whose work I’ve been surveying, Keith Schoville is the most consistent in keeping the list to its initially-stated purpose and parameters. According to the introduction to his list, he wants to focus on “major archaeological discoveries of the last century of significance for understanding the world of the Bible.” He thus attends mostly to contextual illumination rather than specific historical confirmation. Yet even here there is a bit of ambiguity, for it is not precisely clear what Schoville means by “the world of the Bible,” a phrase open to multiple interpretations. Does Schoville mean the “world” that the Bible describes in its narratives? Does Schoville mean the “world” in which the Bible was created? Those are not necessarily the same world (chronologically, I mean) and therefore some additional specification wouldn’t hurt. This ambiguity produces, I think, a bit of slippage in his list, but not as much as in the other two.

It seems to me that lists like Joe’s, Schoville’s, and Kaiser’s would serve better if they represented more tightly focused on the evidential domains within which the items on the list are relevant. That is, within the lists presented, there are at least four distinct “payoffs” in the materials surveyed. I would break down the things that appear on the lists into these four categories:

1. Materials that bear on the reconstruction of the history-of-big-events in the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Persian era, and the Hellenistic era (we could go on into the Roman era if I weren’t limiting myself to materials relevant chiefly to the Hebrew Bible, its narratively-referenced world, and its compositional milieu). The majority of the epigraphic materials mentioned on Joe’s, Schoville’s, and Kaiser’s lists would fall into this category. Examples include almost any stele you could think of (Merneptah’s, Mesha’s, the Black Obelisk, etc.). Materials that refer to events to which biblical narratives also refer—for example, Sennacherib’s account of his siege of Jerusalem—would be a subset of this category.

2. Materials that bear on our understanding of daily life, including cultic life, in the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Persian era, and the Hellenistic era. Some of the items in this category are epigraphic, like the Lachish ostraca and Arad ostraca that Jim Davila suggested adding to Joe’s list. I’d put the Beersheba horned altar and the Beni Hasan painting in this category as well. Such materials can help to illuminate the cultural contexts and presuppositions of the biblical writers, though care must be taken not to overestimate later writers’ knowledge of earlier lifeways (but then again, a later writer’s familiarity with demonstrably earlier lifeways would itself be significant).

3. Materials that bear on our understanding of the history of the biblical text as such. This is a fairly small category, but very important, in my opinion. I’m thinking here of written materials that somehow give us insights into the development of the text of the Hebrew Bible and also into the compositional and canonical processes. Of course, the real standouts in this area—dominating and, indeed, almost monopolizing the list—are the biblical manuscripts among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

4. Materials that bear on our understanding of the Hebrew language and its development over time. This would include virtually any West Semitic inscriptions that can be dated to the Iron Age through the Hellenistic era, especially if they are actually in Hebrew. Many items in categories 1 and 3 would also be appropriately cross-listed in this category.

The making of this post has come to an end, but the series hasn’t. In part 6, I’ll suggest some “finds” that I think ought to find a place somewhere prominent in each of these four categories.

This series of posts was prompted by Joe Cathey posting his list of “Top Five Archaeological Finds - For Hebrew Bible,” which happened at just about the same time that Eric Welch pointed to the latest issue of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary’s Contact magazine, which includes Walter Kaiser’s “Top Fifteen Finds from Biblical Archaeology.” All this reminded me of an article that appeared several years ago in Stone-Campbell Journal, in which Keith Schoville offered his own list of the “Top Ten Archaeological Discoveries of the Twentieth Century Relating to the Biblical World.” In response to Joe’s original list, Jim Davila suggested some additions to Joe’s list. In this post, I’ll take a look at Jim’s suggestions. Please note that, unlike the other scholars mentioned here, Jim didn’t really comment on the items he suggested, nor did he attempt to “rank” them comprehensively in an “order of importance” (though he did say the Dead Sea Scrolls should be #1 and the Ugaritic texts #2).

(By the way, have you ever noticed how those of us in the blogging community tend to refer to each other using given names, but to other scholars—e.g., those whose published works we interact with—by family names? It seems that electronic communication, being more direct than the usual publishing venues, breeds a sense of familiarity and camaraderie. In any event, I see no reason to break with this tradition now.)

Like Schoville and Kaiser, Jim emphasized the Dead Sea Scrolls. He also suggested that the Lachish ostraca should make the “top n” list for the Iron Age. In case you don’t already know (this might apply to students reading my blog), an ostracon (ostraca is the plural) is a potsherd (a piece of broken pottery) that has been used as a writing surface. Since Wal-Mart had not yet expanded into the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel and Judah, notebook paper and fine stationery were in short supply, so broken pottery was re-used as the medium for personal correspondence. The Lachish ostraca are a collection of about twenty such inscribed potsherds, discovered in 1935 and 1938. The letters seem to have been written very shortly before the Babylonian sack of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, perhaps ranging up to three or four years before that event. Several of these letters are addressed to one Yaush, who appears to be a military official. The letters are interesting for quite a variety of reasons. On the philological side, the letters give us great insight into the graphic and grammatical features of early sixth-century BCE Hebrew, and the letters would be of immense value even if they served no other purpose than this. However, they also testify to literacy well beyond the royal court or scribal school, as the letters seem to have been written by ordinary folk, including one Hoshayahu, who is apparently one of Yaush’s military underlings. (I am not sure whether scholars who have studied these in depth think they were all written by Hoshayahu or wheter there were multiple correspondents represented; I know them only in transcription and translation, and don’t have high-quality photographs near to hand, so I can’t judge for myself based on the handwriting.) In one letter, labeled as Lachish Ostracon 3, Hoshayahu writes (quoting Pardee’s translation from Hallo and Younger’s COS):

And now, please explain to your servant the meaning of the letter which you sent to your servant yesterday evening. For your servant has been sick at heart ever since you sent (that letter) to your servant. In it my lord said: “Don’t you know how to read a letter?” As Yahweh lives, no one has ever tried to read me a letter! Moreover, whenever any letter comes to me and I have read it, I can repeat it down to the smallest detail.

Hoshayahu’s protests show that Yaush had insulted him by calling his literacy into question, which suggests that low-to-mid-level military officers—who are hardly to be thought of as “elites”—were expected to be literate in late Iron II Judah. Another interesting thing about the Lachish ostraca is the frequent invocation of blessing using the divine name Yahweh, which shows that the tradition of not using that divine name was not current among ordinary folk in late Iron II Judah, helping us to narrow down the window of opportunity for that tradition to arise. Lachish Ostracon 3 also includes an oblique reference to a prophet, whose name is not given (many interpreters have wanted this prophet to be Jeremiah, but there is no way to tell). Also, Lachish Ostracon 4 includes an intriguing line: “we are watching the (fire)-signals of Lachish according to the code which my lord gave us, for we cannot see Azeqah.” Apparently this letter was written from somewhere else to the military commander in Lachish, but raises the question, “Why can’t the writer see the signal fires of Azeqah?” Azeqah is located considerably north of Lachish, so this may simply be a matter of topography, but it is also tempting to speculate that the reason Azeqah’s signal fires cannot be seen (any more) is that Azeqah has fallen to the Babylonians as they advance toward Jerusalem.

Jim further suggested that the Arad ostraca should be in the top ten. The Arad ostraca are a rather large corpus, somewhere in the range of ninety-one different documents. They range over a long period of time. Several deal with the activities of one Eliashib, who appears to be a kind of “quartermaster” in charge of military or royal stores at Arad. This is a corpus with which I am not especially familiar, and so I have relatively little to say about it. Certainly, the Arad ostraca provide some valuable insights into 8th-6th century Judean bureaucracy. The use of the divine name “Yahweh” in blessing formulae has similar importance to the use of that name in the Lachish ostraca. Another important thing that should be mentioned about the use of the name “Yahweh” in the Arad and Lachish ostraca is that, as far as I know, Yahweh is the only deity invoked in blessing in the Lachish and Arad ostraca—suggesting that Yahwism, indeed perhaps mono-Yahwism (worship of Yahweh only), was regnant in 6th-century Judah, which many biblical scholars would no doubt like to attribute to the seventh-century “reforms” of King Josiah. Interestingly, Arad Ostracon 18 contains an enigmatic reference to a temple of Yahweh, and a temple complex has been excavated in Arad, raising a debate whether the “temple of Yahweh” mentioned on Arad Ostracon 18 is the temple in Arad or the temple in Jerusalem. (I couldn’t find a convenient picture of any of the Arad ostraca on the internet. They may be out there; I didn’t look very long.)

Finally, Jim thinks the Balaam text from Deir ‘Alla should make the top ten. This is a fascinating text, apparently from the 8th century BCE, discovered in the year of my birth, 1967. The text must be reconstructed from the plaster fragments that had fallen to the floor of the building whose wall they had originally graced, and such reconstruction has yielded two separate combinations, both of which the text itself seems to subsume under the heading “The Book of Balaam.” Combination I appears to tell, among other things, of a vision received from the god El by one Balaam, son of Beor. In this vision, Balaam foresaw a coming doom planned by the shaddayin, who were attempting to force the goddess Shagar-and-Ishtar to “sew up the heavens.” Apparently, Balaam then used some sort of magical incantations to rescue Shagar-and-Ishtar from the shaddayin and prevent the doom they had planned. Combination II describes El’s creation of the netherworld (which appears, although the text is badly damaged, to go by the name she’ol) after an act of divine lovemaking. It’s hard to know where to begin in commenting on the Deir ‘Alla text. There is so much to say. Certainly, the text shows that a seer named Balaam son of Beor was known to eighth-century Israelites (Gileadites), and not just from the book of Numbers. This does not demonstrate that Balaam was a historical figure, only that—whether historical or legendary—he was apparently a figure familiar to the Transjordanian Israelites in the eighth century. Some interpreters promote the Deir ‘Alla text as proving that the book of Numbers is historically reliable, but that pushes the evidence too far. Whoever inscribed the “Book of Balaam” on the wall in Deir ‘Alla and whoever wrote the book of Numbers both know of this Balaam; that much seems ungainsayable. To go further and say that this Balaam was a historical figure, and that he did in real life the things described in the Book of Balaam and/or the Book of Numbers, exceeds the available evidence. I do not think a literary dependence between the biblical and Deir ‘Alla texts is likely—in either direction—but it seems clear that both draw on a common tradition about Balaam. It’s worth asking—though I don’t think a definitive answer can be given—whether the Deir ‘Alla text helps us date the composition of the book of Numbers. What’s even more interesting to me, though, are the implications of the Deir ‘Alla text for the history of Israelite religion. The text seems to indicate that in the eighth century BCE, at least some folk in Transjordan were worshiping, or at least telling stories about, El and his divine council, which included a goddess named Shagar-and-Ishtar and which was opposed to a group of malevolent deities called the shaddayin. In the biblical book of Numbers, Balaam calls his own god El, Yahweh, Elyon, and Shaddai. Comparing the use of divine names in the Book of Balaam and the book of Numbers reinforces the idea derived from other evidence that the biblical writers—perhaps following trends in Israelite and Judean culture, or perhaps setting those trends—conflate a multitude of divine names into representing one God. The Book of Balaam thus provides more evidence for reconstructing a history of Israelite religion. In a different vein, on which I am not especially qualified to comment, the Deir ‘Alla texts also give fascinating glimpses into Iron Age understandings of magic. On the philological side, the Deir ‘Alla text holds promise for understanding the relationship between various Iron Age Palestinian dialects, and may provide insight into the Aramaic-like features of northern Israelian Hebrew (that’s just thrown in there for Gary Rendsburg and/or Bob, if they happen to be reading this).

Well, that is enough for part 4 of this series. I’ve got to stop doing this. My posts are getting to be as long as Claude Mariottini’s. Yet I cannot stop just now. In part 5, I will do a little meta-analysis of these lists, and suggest some “finds” that might ought to at least get an “honorable mention.”

The continuing violence in response to the Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad is deplorable, and not at all a laughing matter. Yet I couldn’t help laughing out loud at a sentence from today’s Ha’aretz. The event on which the report focuses isn’t funny in the least. Far from it: rioters attacked the offices of the Temporary Internation Presence in Hebron, prompting the group to withdraw from Hebron completely until the situation settles down. Ha’aretz characterized this as “the most violent West Bank protest yet against Danish caricatures seen as insulting to Islam.” Even with the sobering content, the report provided a moment of unintentional levity with a writing gaffe worthy of inclusion in a sequel to Eats, Shoots, and Leaves:

At one point, rioters forced open a door of the building and entered, and the unarmed observers waved clubs in an attempt to drive them off.

That’s right: according to Ha’aretz, the unarmed observes waved clubs. I’m sure that the Ha’aretz reporter was using unarmed to mean “unequipped with firearms,” but even Joe Cathey would admit that if you don’t have a firearm handy, a club could potentially be an effective weapon. Alternately, we might suppose that the observers were inviting the rioters to a nice game of bridge, and they waved clubs simply because they didn’t grab hearts, spades, or diamonds first.

In part 1 of this series, I offered my own comments on Joe Cathey’s list of the “top five archaeological finds for Hebrew Bible” (and Joe has responded quite charitably). In part 2, I turned my attention to Keith Schoville’s 2001 article in Stone-Campbell Journal, where he offers his own “top ten” list of Bible-related archaeological finds in the twentieth century, surveying the materials related to the Hebrew Bible that Schoville includes in his top ten but that did not make Joe Cathey’s list. Here in part 3, I’ll be looking at the Hebrew Bible-related archaeological finds that appear on Walter Kaiser’s “top fifteen” list (which, like Schoville’s, includes the New Testament) but not on the other two.

I’ve already mentioned that Kaiser’s list is in order of descending importance, and that he places the Ketef Hinnom amulets in first place and the Dead Sea Scrolls in third. Coming in fourth is one of the few non-epigraphic items on any of the lists I’ve been surveying: the Beni Hasan wall painting depicting Asiatic traders in Egypt (the picture is dated to the early 19th century BCE). Kaiser writes, “The kilts of many colors remind us of Joseph’s coat (Gen 37:3; cf. 2 Sam 13:18), and provide a picture as to what the Patriarchal culture and its economic and political contacts with Egypt may have looked like. It is a fascinating picture of life about the time of the Patriarchs.” While I was glad to see something non-epigraphic make the list, I think Kaiser may have vastly inflated the significance of the Beni Hasan paintings for biblical studies. Kaiser’s point about the colored kilts falls flat. The Hebrew text describes Joseph’s special garment as a כתנת פסים, which the Septuagint translator(s) rendered as a χιτῶνα ποικίλον (which was then taken over in the Vulgate as tunicam polymitam and thence into other European languages as the famous “technicolor dreamcoat”). The Greek text unambiguously means “multi-colored tunic” or “variegated tunic,” but not so the Hebrew. In order for the Hebrew description to be rendered as “multi-colored tunic” it would need to literally be “tunic of colors,” and we would need to show that there was such a word in biblical Hebrew as פס meaning “color.” The only פס attested (elsewhere than Gen 37:3 and 2 Sam 13:18) in the Tanakh, however, is an Aramaic word in Daniel 5:5, 24 apparently meaning “the palm of the hand” (it doesn’t just mean “hand,” it seems, because it stands in the phrase פס ידה). The question is whether to take our translational cue from the Septuagint or from the Aramaic portion of Daniel. Very few modern translations render פסים as “multi-colored”:

JPS: “an ornamented tunic”
NET: “a special tunic”
NIV: “a richly ornamented robe”
NRSV: “a long robe with sleeves”
NCV: “a special robe with long sleeves”
GW: “a special robe with long sleeves”
BBE: “a long coat”

Only the WEB and the HCSB still retain “coat of many colors.” It seems me that the JPS, NET, and NIV translators are persuaded that there is little philological support for the “multi-colored” translation, but they don’t want to get too far from the idea of “ornamentation.” NRSV, NCV, GW, and BBE are following the philological evidence internal to the Bible just where it goes, by understanding פס as an Aramaism (or, as Gary Rendsburg might have it, a feature of nortern Israelian Hebrew), understanding כתנת פסים as “tunic of palms/soles,” and then trying to render that in smooth English as something like “long robe with sleeves.” Now, having said all that, the Beni Hasan painting does—though by no means exclusively—suggest something interesting about Joseph’s tunic, even if rendered more plausibly as “long tunic with sleeves.”

Item #4 in Kaiser’s list is tablet 11 of the Gilgamesh epic, which contains the story of Utnapishtim, survivor of the great flood sent by the gods to wipe out humanity. (I am not 100% sure that the photograph here is of tablet 11; however, it is identified as such on K. C. Hanson’s web site.) After briefly summarizing Utnapishtim’s story (and the story of the discovery of the Gilgamesh tablets), Kaiser concludes: “Both accounts seem to reflect a similar event, but the Gilgamesh Epic has numerous legendary additions with a tone that is vastly different from the biblical account.” The phrase “legendary additions” immediately raises the question: “additions to what?” It seems like Kaiser must be thinking either that the story of the flood on Gilgamesh tablet 11 is based on the biblical story of Noah and the flood in Genesis—which some people have suggested by which seems wildly implausible (not least because the Gilgamesh story seems to long predate the composition of Genesis, even if Genesis were to have [again improbably] been written by Moses [in mid-Iron Age Hebrew])—or that the Utnapishtim and Noah stories share some common (folkloric? mythological?) antecedent which the biblical story has reproduced more faithfully. The latter idea—without the caveat about the faithfulness of reproduction—seems more plausible. As shown not just by Genesis and Gilgamesh, but also by the stories of Atrahasis and Ziusudra (which are incredibly similar to the Gilgamesh story, but probably predate it), the idea of a great flood with a single survivor warned by the gods is more or less the common intellectual property of all Mesopotamia, and the biblical writer(s) have picked up on this tradition. Kaiser’s mention of a “vastly different tone” may be exaggerated for rhetorical effect, but it does seem to me that the author(s) of the Genesis flood narrative (in either its J form or P form, if those ever really existed independently, or its canonical form), have adapted the common story in at least three striking ways. In the stories about Ziusudra, Atrahasis, and Utnapishtim (I take this to be the approximate chronological order), the storyline as basically the same, though the name of the human hero, the city in which they live (Eridu or Shurrupak), and the god who warns the human (Enki or Ea) change slightly. In the biblical story, however, the God who sends the flood is the same God who saves Noah, that God has a much more understandable motive for sending the flood (human evil), and the flood survivor is not divinized at the end of his experiences. I think it is far more likely that what we see in the differences between the Gilgamesh epic (and its antecedents) and the Genesis flood story is not a case of “legendary additions” in the Mesopotamian epics but something more like a “demythologization” in the Genesis story.

Kaiser’s seventh slot goes to the Pool of Gibeon, mentioned in 2 Sam 2:13 and Jer 41:12, which Kaiser identifies with the “stepped tunnel” water system at Gibeon (el-Jib). The identification of el-Jib as Gibeon is not in doubt, but there is considerable doubt whether the stepped tunnel water system is the biblical “pool of Gibeon.” For one thing, it’s not clear that the stepped tunnel water system was in use as early as the 10th century BCE, the time frame for 2 Sam 2:13. Clearly, Kaiser is assuming that it was, as he writes, “It was around this pool that 12 of King David’s men, under commander Joab, met 12 of King Saul’s men, under commander Abner, in a wrestling contest in which all 24 died as they grabbed each other by the hair and plunged a sword into one another.” Personally, I’m having a hard time picturing how this “contest” could have played out in the stepped tunnel “pool”; I keep trying to visualize where the men would arrange themselves, and where they would actually do the fighting, and it’s not working for me (but this could just be a failure of my own imagination). More importantly, the existence of a water installation where such a thing could have happened is, of course, no proof that such a thing did in fact happen at that place. The water systems at Gibeon certainly advance our knowledge of daily life in Gibeon, at least for Iron II (whether for Iron I or not is debated), but it actually contributes quite little to debates over the historicity of 2 Samuel. (By the way, the men who wrestled with Joab’s company weren’t “King Saul’s men,” as King Saul was dead; they are in fact described in the text as men of Saul’s son, Ishbaal.)

The #9 entry on Kaiser’s list is not really an “archaeological find” as such, but a person: King Sargon II of Assyria. For a long time, this Sargon was known only from Isaiah 20:1, until the ruins of his palace at Khorsabad (rather than at Nineveh, where it might have been expected) was excavated in the 1840s. While absolutely wonderful for Assyriology, I’m not convinced that the verification that Sargon II was a real king of Assyria does a whole lot for biblical studies. The archaeological discovery of Sargon II certainly does show that the mention of Sargon in Isaiah 20:1—which is really just a “hook” for dating the oracle that follows—refers to a real person, but that’s about all. Sargon isn’t even mentioned anywhere else in the entire Hebrew Bible. I don’t think this one belongs in the top fifteen.

The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III comes in at #10 on Kaiser’s list. Biblical scholars find this item so interesting because it includes an illustration whose caption marks it as an illustration of Jehu, “the man of the House of Omri” (we would say, “king of Israel”), presenting tribute to Shalmaneser III. The relief depicting Jehu is stylized, of course, and probably shouldn’t be considered a precise portrait of Jehu’s face and form. Nevertheless, it is the only visual depiction of an ancient Israelite ruler that survives from the Iron Age (as far as I know), which makes it a treasure for historians investigating the kingdom of Israel. As far as biblical studies goes, the Black Obelisk certainly agrees with the biblical picture that Israel had a king named Jehu, and it helps to fix Jehu in the appropriate time frame. Beyond that, however, there are no contacts between the Black Obelisk and the biblical narrative. That in itself may be significant, for the fact that 2 Kings doesn’t seem to mention Shalmaneser III or Jehu’s tribute to him, or indeed any contact between Israel and Assyria before Tiglath-pileser III (”Pul” in some passages of the Hebrew Bible), even though the Assyrian kings prior to Tiglath-pileser (or, rather, their publicists) considered Israel significant enough to mention in multiple inscriptions. The absence of Shalmaneser III from 2 Kings and the presence of Jehu on the Black Obelisk together point up the biblical writers’ selectivity in reporting, or ignorance of Israel’s international relations in the ninth century BCE, depending on how you interpret the biblical silences. The Black Obelisk does raise the interesting question, “Why didn’t the biblical writers mention Jehu’s subservience to Shalmaneser III?” They have no reticence about mentioning Israel’s subservience to Tiglath-pileser III or later kings of Assyria. Why do they omit any references to Assyrian kings before Tiglath-pileser? It’s an interesting question, open to multiple answers.

Kaiser’s next three entries pertain to New Testament-related inscriptions or locations. He returns to the Hebrew Bible with #14, the Beersheba horned altar. Once again, I was pleased to see something non-epigraphic on the list, and this is a really interesting artifact. The altar was not excavated in the shape or place shown in the photograph here. Rather, it had been disassembled and its stones had been reused in a wall. By piecing the stones together, archaeologists gave us a concrete (well, okay, it’s stone, not concrete, but you know what I mean) image of an altar with “horns,” as the biblical terminology has it. This altar happens also to have an image of a serpent incised on one of the blocks, but as far as I know there is no way to tell whether that incised picture was on the altar while it was in use as such or whether it was only made on the block after the altar was disassembled and put to other uses. Kaiser writes that “all agree it gives us a good picture of an illegitimate place of sacrifice,” though I sincerely doubt that all scholars who have considered the altar would be so quick to apply the word “illegitimate.” That adjective is a reflex of Kaiser’s adoption of a Deuteronomic perspective on cultic centralization (he also criticizes the altar for being made of “hewn stones,” though I seriously doubt that the description of Solomon’s altar implies unhewn stones!), or an assumption about the significance of the incised serpent, rather than a demonstrable historical fact (indeed, adjectives like “illegitimate” are value judgments, not historical judgments). Even so, since the building whose wall held the altar stones in their secondary setting was destroyed c. 701 BCE, it is tempting—though far from “safe”—to speculate that the dismantling of the altar took place under the influence of King Hezekiah’s “religious reforms” (Kaiser himself does not actually mention this possibility).

Kaiser’s list ends with the Cyrus cylinder. The inscription on this well-known artifact describes Cyrus the Great’s policy of “repatriating” the descendants of some groups who had been deported from their homelands by the Babylonians. Kaiser naturally draws a parallel with the “edict of Cyrus” as given in Ezra 1:2-4 and 2 Chronicles 36:22-23, writing: “the cylinder announces the Persian policy of Cyrus toward captive peoples, such as the exiled Israelites. All those exiled peoples would be allowed to return to their homelands where permanent sanctuaries would be established for them.” Kaiser’s wording here is interesting. An unwary reader who did not know the text of the Cyrus cylinder might be misled into thinking that the “exiled Israelites” were actually mentioned on the Cyrus cylinder, which they aren’t. Moreover, the Cyrus cylinder is specific to certain groups of deportees, and is not a blanket order of repatriation for all such groups. Another problem with Kaiser’s wording is that it was the (grand)children of exiled Judeans, not of exiled Israelites, to whom any such policy would pertain. Even with these caveats and corrections, it is true that the Cyrus cylinder demonstrates that the biblical “edict of Cyrus” is consistent with Cyrus’s edicts concerning other similar groups of exiles, which does make the biblical edict that much more believable (though if there was such an edict, the biblical books of Ezra and 2 Chronicles present not the text of the edict itself, but a Hebrew translation of that edict or part of it, undoubtedly with some strong theological editing that makes Cyrus sound like a Yahwist).

Speaking of Cyrus the Great, he was recently added to one of my new favorite games, Anachronism. In Anachronism, warriors from various time periods and cultures meet for one-on-one gladiatorial combat in a small arena. In the game, though, poor Cyrus turns out to be more like “Cyrus the Above-Average.” Almost all the Persians lag behind the warriors from other cultures—though they’re better than the Romans. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you need to rush out to your local strategy games store and pick up some Anachronism cards (and, of course, add my Anachronism blog to your RSS reader).

Thus ends my survey of Joe Cathey’s “top five” list (limited to “finds” related to the Hebrew Bible), Keith Schoville’s “top ten list” (limited to “finds” from the twentieth century), and Walter Kaiser’s “top fifteen” list. But do not mourn, sports fans. This doesn’t mean this series of posts is over. In part 4, I’ll comment on Jim Davila’s suggested tweaks and/or additions to Joe’s list, and then (either in part 4 or part 5, depending on how much blogging time I have for part 4) I’ll suggest a few additions of my own.

In my earlier post, Theophilus, I commented on the items that made Joe Cathey’s list of the “top five archaeological finds for [the study of the] Hebrew Bible.” I also mentioned Keith Schoville’s list of the top ten Bible-related archaeological discoveries of the twentieth century, and Walter Kaiser’s list of the top fifteen such discoveries (with no stated date-of-discovery restriction). In this post, I continue my commentary, starting with the items on Schoville’s list that didn’t make Joe’s.

Schonville and Kaiser both include the Ketef Hinnom amulets on their lists, and rightly so. The Ketef Hinnom (yes, that’s the caves around the Valley of Hinnom, “Gehenna”) amulets were discovered in 1979 in tombs that date to the 7th century BCE. The amulets are silver plaques rolled up sort of like scrolls. They are small (the larger measuring just four square inches) and contain writing that mirrors biblical texts. One amulet bears a text that remarkably resembles Numbers 6:24-25, the other a text that remarkably resembles Deuteronomy 7:9. The use of these sayings on (apparently) apotropaic amulets is itself pretty interesting, but even more interesting is the idea that these particular sayings had in the 7th century basically the same forms in which they appear in the Bible. Kaiser actually puts the Ketef Hinnom amulets as the number one most important archaeological find relating to the Bible, precisely because he thinks they imply a pre-exilic Pentateuch—but as I’ve mentioned, this is probably stretching the evidence too far. Most scholars who date the Pentateuch after 539 are dating the final form of the text then, not its possible, even probable, constituent parts and antecedents. It’s not a big stretch to think that the Aaronic blessing could easily have existed as a standard blessing in Israel and/or Judah for a long, long time before being quoted in the book of Numbers. Deuteronomy 7:9—if that’s what the other amulet contains—is not quite so easily detached from its literary context, but the same thing could easily be true of it. Thus, the Aaronic-blessing amulet don’t show that the canonical text of the book of Numbers is pre-exilic, but it does show that the Aaronic blessing embedded in Numbers 6 enjoyed a pre-exilic life and that the book of Numbers accurately preserves the saying. (I doubt that any “minimalists” would have any objections to this conclusion whatsoever.) The amulet does not, nor could it possibly, show that the saying goes back to Moses’s brother Aaron, however—again, let’s try neither to understand nor to overstate the case.

Both Schoville and Kaiser also place the Dead Sea Scrolls at a very high place in their list. Schoville lists them first, though it’s not clear that his list is in the order of the importance he assigns to the “finds.” Kaiser places them third, after the Ketef Hinnom amulets and the John Rylands Papyrus. In my opinion, Kaiser should have rated the Dead Sea Scrolls higher than the Ketef Hinnom amulets. For the Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls are very important in at least two different ways. The value of the Dead Sea Scrolls for textual criticism—the attempt to understand the history of the Hebrew text of the Bible—is immense. Many biblical manuscripts were among the Dead Sea Scrolls, and these manuscripts testify both to the commonalities and the divergences of the various text-types current in the first centuries BCE and CE. Moreover, the Dead Sea Scrolls include a number of early commentaries on the books of the Hebrew Bible (the photo shown here is a commentary on Hosea 2:8-14). The commentaries give us valuable insight into the process of biblical interpretation within one of the various strands of Judaism around the turn of the Common Era. (Here’s hoping that nobody depends on Dan Brown for information about the Dead Sea Scrolls, however; The Da Vinci Code gets almost everything it says about the scrolls wrong—except that they were found near the Dead Sea.)

The bulla of Berechiah son of Neriah—who is plausibly understood by many scholars to be the same person as the Baruch son of Neriah—comes in at number five on Schoville’s list and at number eight on Kaiser’s. Kaiser also mentions the bullae of Gedaliah and Gemaryahu (Gemariah) son of Shaphan, while Schoville also cites the bulla of Seraiah son of Neriah. The Baruch and Gedaliah bullae were purchased on the antiquities market, while the Gemaryahu bulla was found in the “House of Bullae” in Jerusalem (I am not sure about the Seraiah bulla). There has been a lot of flap about potentially forged bullae, not least because of the (alleged) activities of folk like Oded Golan in forging or doctoring “artifacts” like the “James ossuary” and the “Jehoash inscription” (for more, start with this article. If these bullae are genuine, however, they verify that the biblical passages mentioning these individuals are indeed referring to real people (including their patronymics). These bullae don’t really do much more than that. For example, the Baruch bulla doesn’t prove that Baruch was indeed Jeremiah’s amanuensis, nor does it demonstrate the historicity of any of the events reported for Jeremiah’s life in the book of Jeremiah. However, the demonstrably genuine bullae do show that the narratives in Jeremiah are not complete fabrications of someone’s imagination—they at least feature real people as characters.

Items six and seven on Schoville’s list relate to the New Testament. His eighth entry is an inscription with which I am not very familiar, the Ekron inscription. The Ekron description was discovered in 1996 at Tel Miqne, and the text of the inscription verified that the identification of Tel Miqne as ancient Ekron was indeed correct. The text dedicates to a goddess called פתגיה (Ptgyh) a temple built by the “ruler” or “chief” (שר) of Ekron, one Akish son of Padi son of Yasid son of Ada son of Ya’ir. The Ekron inscription dates to the 7th century BCE. For Schoville, apparently, the importance of the inscription for biblical studies is that it “dramatically confirmed the place name, along with the names of five of its rulers, and two of them are specifically mentioned in the Bible.” I’m not quite sure what Schoville is talking about, though this could be my own ignorance. Certainly the Bible speaks of a King Achish, but this Achish (if historical) was an eleventh-century king of Gath, not a 7th-century king of Ekron. I couldn’t find Padi, Yasid, Ada, or Ya’ir in the Bible as kings of Ekron, but maybe I am looking in the wrong place or spelling their name wrong in Hebrew characters. Some scholars read פתגיה and interpret it in relation to Greek potnia, “lady” or “mistress,” and in turn identify that “lady” or “mistress” as Asherah; Schoville, in turn, seems to take this as proof that the Philistines came from Crete and assimilated to Canaanite culture by the 7th century BCE. I’m not sure that this one dedicatory inscription does all that work, though the general picture seems sound enough. The Ekron inscription doesn’t make Kaiser’s list.

Schoville’s eighth entry is the Mount Ebal “altar.” The excavator of this site, Adam Zertal, advances the interpretation that the installation was an altar built by Joshua upon entering the promised land, in fulfillment of Moses’ command to that effect. The case for the installation being an altar is based on the preponderance of scorched or burned animal bones found in the ash layers. The case for connecting this altar with the early Iron Age Israelites is the lack of donkey, dog, or pig bones in the ash of the burned bones. Zertal’s inference that the installation is an altar used by the same population that occupied the new Iron I villages in the Palestinian highlands—people that Finkelstein and Dever both call “proto-Israelites”—seems pretty reasonable to me, although the accuracy of that inference is hotly disputed in some quarters. Going a step further and identifying the altar as Joshua’s altar is intriguing, but there’s nothing that specifically links the Ebal altar to any specific person—not that we should expect to find a “Joshua was here” graffito on the side of the altar or the wall of the larger enclosure. (Though finding “Joshua + Rahab 4 Ever” carved into a terebinth would really be a gas.)

Schoville’s tenth slot goes to the cuneiform texts from ancient Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra), which contribute to the study of the Hebrew Bible in a couple of different ways. One that Schoville cites prominently (as did John Sailhamer in an article upon which I commented a week or so ago) is comparative philology. This seems to me a bit of a holdover from an earlier era. The value of the Ugaritic texts for biblical philology specifically was probably overstated in the euphoria of the find. Dahood’s commentary on Psalms is a prime example both of the possibilities of Hebrew-Ugaritic comparative philology and of the excesses that could come from that method. The other big contribution of the Ugaritic texts—the mythological epics—is to help us better understand the Canaanite pantheon, and especially a Canaanite view of Baal. As a child growing up hearing about Baal in Sunday school, I thought that Baal was basically the Old Testament equivalent of the New Testament devil. It was the Ras Shamra texts that helped me understand that the reason Yahweh and Baal appear as such competitors in the Hebrew Bible is not because they are so very different, but because they are, in the minds of their devotees, so very much alike. In my estimation, the Ugaritic texts are much more useful as materials for comparative mythology and religion than as materials for comparative philology (though I don’t want to minimize the latter).

It’s less than twenty-four minutes until the next episode of 24 begins, so I’ll draw this post to a close. In part 3, I’ll survey the artifacts that made Kaiser’s “top fifteen” list, but not Schoville’s “top ten” or Joe Cathey’s “top five.”