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THE TEMPLE SCROLL
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Biblical Archeologist is published quarterly (March, June, September, December) by the
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST is published with the financial assistance of ZION RESEARCH FOUNDATION Boston, Massachusetts A nonsectarian Protestant foundation for the study of the Bible and the history of the Christian church
AmericanSchools of OrientalResearch.Its purposeis to providethe generalreaderwith an accuratescholarlyyet easily understandable accountof archeologicaldiscoveriesand their bearingon the biblicalheritage.Unsolicited mss. are welcome but should be accompaniedby a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Address all editorial correspondence to Biblical Archeologist, 1053 LSA
Building,The Universityof Michigan,Ann Arbor,MI 48109.Addressall businesscorrespondence to ASOR, 126 Inman Street, Cambridge,MA 02139. Secondclass postagepaidat Ann Arbor,MI 48106.
The American Schools of Oriental Research is no longer affiliated with the Center for Scholarly Publishing and Services at Missoula, Montana. Effective 30 June 1978, the production and publication of ASOR journals and books will be centered in the Publications Office in Ann Arbor, Michigan. All orders, payments, and other matters concerning memberships, book sales, and journal subscriptions should be directed to our business offices at the following address: ASOR 126 Inman Street Cambridge, MA 02139
Copyright o 1978 American Schools of OrientalResearch.Annualsubscriptionrate: $12.00. Currentsingle issues: $4.00. Compositionby Eisenbrauns,WinonaLake, IN 46590. Printedby PrintingDepartment, The Universityof Michigan.
Editor: David Noel Freedman,The Universityof Michigan
Associate Editor: H. T. Frank, Oberlin College
Editorial Committee: Frank M. Cross, HarvardUniversity John A. Miles, jr., Universityof California Press
Assistants to the Editor:
.
~ C~'~PC ?.
r
P
I~'
Snuis,fro, (I~J
Ronald D. Guengerich,Kent P. Jackson, TerrenceM. Kerestes,KennethA. Mathews, Ann Munster, Bruce E. Willoughby
'.4 1
Credits: The Roots of Restrictionin Early Israel: photo on p. 93 suppliedby the authorwith permission of Hendrik van Dijk, Duke University;photos on pp. 94, 101 used by permissionof LeonardGorelick;balk plan on p. 97 used by permissionof WilliamG. Dever;"Prayerof Mursilis"(p. 97) is from Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the
Old Testament,ed. by James B. Pritchard, 3rd edition with Supplement.Copyright? 1969by PrincetonUniversityPress.Used by permissionof PrincetonUniversityPress. The TempleScroll:all photosand figuresare from The Temple Scroll, ed. by Yigael
Cover: The inner part of the Temple Scroll, cols. 55-57.
Yadin. Copyright ? 1977 by the Israel ExplorationSociety. Used by permissionof the IsraelExplorationSociety. Colophon: "Controversy" by Margaret Avison is from The Dumbfounding.Copyright ? 1966 by MargaretAvison. Used by permissionof W. W. Norton & Co.
SBIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST 91 THE ROOTS OF RESTRICTION: WOMEN IN EARLY ISRAEL
Carol Meyers
In the formative period of Israel's history, a transformation in the status of women occurred which has had an influence on society even into the 20th century.
J0o
AO
O
Jacob Milgrom
105 THE TEMPLE SCROLL The Temple Scroll is the last, but not the least, of the Qumran material to reach the press.
82
LETTER TO THE READERS
84 POLEMICS & IRENICS 89 COLLOQUIA 121 FORTY YEARS AGO
125 BOOK REVIEWS Juel, Messiahand Temple(Brown); Fretheim,The Messageof Jonah:A TheologicalCommentary (Isbell); Wilkinson,Jerusalemas Jesus Knew It: ArchaeologyAs Evidence(Hamrick).
128 COLOPHON
Letter to the Readers Ancient Woman, Future Temple, and Current Study The women's movement of our time has made forceful contact with the religious establishment, as the daily papers and weekly and monthly magazines report in painful detail. As bastions of conservative tradition, churches and synagogues have resisted or yielded, compromised and temporized, according to their doctrines and temperaments. Persistent paradoxes become visible as the debates become public. It is not too much to say that women have historically and to the present been the major constituency, the behindthe-scenes support for much of church life, and an equally indispensable - if less integrally organized group in the life of the synagogue. While women generally have been relegated to inferior official roles, if any, and have served as the foot-soldiers in the armies of the Lord or as the hewers of wood and drawers of water, nevertheless, in the same settings they have also become leaders and prophets, founders and rulers in great religious communities and movements: one need only cite women such as Miriam and Deborah in ancient Israel, or Mary Baker Eddy and Ellen G. White in recent America. With respect to archeological and biblical matters, we can recognize two phases of the movement's impact in these days, though neither represents an entirely new development. The first has to do with women in the field, literally in the case of archeology, academically in the case of both archeology and the Bible. Belated recognition is gradually having an effect, and while actual numbers remain small, percentages are climbing at a respectable rate. While there always have been women at the professorial level and on the firing line and not just at the student level and on the receiving end, the phenomenon is no longer rare, and more and more equality of opportunity will produce commensurate results. As though there should ever have been any question, women have demonstrated repeatedly that they can cope with the subject matter of Near Eastern archeology and biblical studies in all its ramifications: linguistic, literary, historical, philosophical, theological, sociological, anthropological - and can bear up under the rigors of fieldwork, whether sheer physical exertion or survival under adverse climatic and other conditions, at least as well as men, and often better.
82
The second phase, a kind of revisionist view of women's role and experience in the biblical world, is now being pursued vigorously, and not by women only. While biblical religion and its principal surviving offshoots - Christianity, Judaism, and Islam - have been regarded as the principal guardians of male supremacy, providing divine sanction for male arrogance and assertiveness and an unpromising field for revisionist research, surprising (at least to traditional scholars) theories and supporting data have been produced and adduced by a small but growing party of dedicated scholars. Among this group we may identify Carol Meyers, a distinguished archeologist and biblical scholar, whose work has been characterized by excellent training, methodical care, creative insights, and solid supporting evidence. In her work and especially in the article in the current issue of BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST the two phases of the women's movement mentioned earlier come together and are transcended. That a modern woman scholar should call attention to the unusual and remarkable role of women in early and decisive biblical times expresses this confluence impressively and carries with it the confidence and assurance that both factors will have their impact and become typical of the future. A major shift in the pattern of academic life will match a similar adjustment in our view of the biblical record and the participation and importance of women in biblical life and times. Our other major article stands in rather stark contrast with the article by Carol Meyers, although it illustrates one of the points which she is at pains to emphasize: the important shift in the tradition and practice in Israel once the crises of its birth and settlement had been experienced. The necessities of an age of constant emergencies became the narrow and restrictive constraints of a later time. In the account of the Temple Scroll presented by Jacob Milgrom, we see a more typical picture of male-dominated religious ideology and cult practice. Perhaps the last of the Dead Sea scrolls to come into scholarly hands, this may well be the most important, certainly for an understanding of the true nature of sectarian doctrine and the goal of their rigidly disciplined and ascetic behavior. The holy temple in the midst of the holy city within the holy land represented at once a sublime reality and a heavenly objective: to be worthy to live in God's domain and to enhance the holiness of that realm by a life in full conformity with the revealed will of God as communicated and interpreted by his chosen leaders and guides. In these last days (and they are expected to be the last days of all), a new society has been formed to preserve the ancient tradition of divine truth and to embody in its behavior the ultimate values and virtues of biblical religion. Out of this commitment would come the kingdom of God in all its glory, the restoration of the true Israel, and devastation of all its foes. Quite clearly, it is a male-dominated picture: priests and teachers, leaders and followers, models and
SEPTEMBER 1978
emulators, all are there. The holy territory is barred to women, as the special features and requirements of the cult restrict celebrants, participants, and audience to those of the male sex. The rules for priests - a male prerogative firmly established in the Israelite tradition - are extended to cover all members of the sect, thus effectively excluding women. In an excess of zeal for purity, they invoked the stipulations prohibiting sexual contact during sacral celebrations, and especially participation in holy war - an ongoing struggle of cosmic dimensions in which enlistment was for life. Under these compelling circumstances, abstinence and asceticism became the only way of life for those committed to the achievement of perfection. The profound if obvious effects, and the long-range implications for the future of such religion and the respective roles of men and women are still matters for serious contemplation and discussion within the major surviving communities and their traditions. The legacy
of such patterns of thinking and living has left indelible marks on these communities, and the full participation of women in all aspects of religious observances, and at all levels of responsibility and authority, is still a subject of acrimonious conflict. It will serve the essential purpose of this communication if readers of the magazine, and the articles mentioned, will consider the principles and questions discussed and contribute their own wisdom to the subject. In its present form, the debate about the relation of women to religion, and their role in the religious life of community, has a current urgency as newspaper and magazine reports of turmoil in various Jewish and Christian denominations attest. Perhaps an educated and dispassionate look at the ancient data will help us to understand the issues and make wiser decisions than has often been the case in the recent past.
The Tabernacle Menorah
DAVID NOEL FREEDMAN
4
A Synthetic Study of a Symbol from the Biblical Cult by Carol L. Meyers The Tabernacle Menorah is a synthetic study of the menorah which stood in the tabernacle of ancient Israel. By treating it as an artifact, and by bringing the methods of philology, comparative archeology, art history, and phenomenology together in an investigation of the object, the nature of its physical reality and of its symbolic function within the biblical cult can be understood. It is clear as a result of the study of the biblical and archeological sources that the details of form and fabrication alone do not complete our understanding of the tabernacle menorah. Thus, the peculiar seven-branched shape as well as the general vegetative and repetitive characteristics are scrutinized as they appear in other ancient Near Eastern cultures. In this way, the second level of meaning, the thematic identification of the object, can be determined insofar as Israel's history is rooted in these cultures. Finally, at the third level of meaning, the symbolic value of the object within the biblical cult, as a specific historical manifestation of that object, is approached. The concluding chapter deals with the tabernacle menorah within the Israelite cult. As its emotional overtones become clear, the manner and purpose of this integration into the Israelite religious experience can be understood. ASOR DissertationSeries 2 Order from
Cloth $7.50 ($6.00 to ASOR members) Paper $5.00 ($4.00 to ASOR members)
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST
ASOR Publications 1053 LS&A Building The University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109
83
The Earthly and Celestial Temple
Polemics & Irenics Biblical Archeologist welcomes correspondence from its readers and will make every effort to print those letters, particularly, that bring new evidence or fresh opinions to bear on key issues. The editors reserve the right to edit for brevity and clarity. Good News for Modern Editors In two days I have received two issues of Biblical Archeologist (Vol. 40, Nos. 3 and 4). They are both excellent editions. As a pastor in a small church, material for daily continuing education is hard to find. It is either too technical or mere pablum. The BA has a balance which provides professional growth and material which can be passed on to interested lay people. I particularly enjoyed Murphy-O'Connor's review of the Dead Sea scrolls and Bailey's discussion on Noah's ark. JOSEPH CARLE
Superior, Wisconsin The December, 1976, and March issues of Biblical Archeologist arrived last week and were most welcome. I found the article by Meinardus entitled "St. Paul Shipwrecked in Dalmatia" very interesting. I have been active in studying New Testament chronology and geography for some years, as a private hobby, and possess a copy of the article by A. Acworth quoted by Meinardus in his bibliography. L. B. GALBRAITH Christchurch, New Zealand I want to say also what a fine job I think you are doing with BA. I am back to reading it again. JACK R. LUNDBOM
Hilmar, California
84
I was very interested in your editorial article in the current BA [40.2, May, 1977], and especially in your emphasis on the correspondence of the earthly temple with a celestial blueprint. I developed this point at some length in my Myth, Legend and Custom in the Old Testament, pp. 766ff. One point to which I would draw your attention is the pastoral imagery in Exod 15:13, as implied in the use of the words ndhitia["you conducted"] and nihalti ["you guided"], and the double entente in the term ndwd ["enclosure, pasturage"]. (I had a note on this in The Expository Times 47 [1936], 45) I think, too, that tjbibjm6 ["you brought them in"] in v 17 here has the specific nuance of "bring the flock to the fold in the evening" - a sense which also appears in Arabic bd'a ["to come'"]and in some other passages of the Old Testament (e.g., Zeph 3:20). THEODORE H. GASTER Barnard College
How Wide the Biblical World? A Challenge for Recognition and Preservation Students of biblical archeology, by and large, seem only to have concentrated on the lands of the "Anvil of Civilization." Indeed, William F. Albright, foremost biblical archeologist of modern times, includes only the lands from the Phoenician colonies in Northwest Africa and Spain to the Indus Valley. At the time of his writing (1966), printed in New Directions in Biblical Archaeology (1969), he alluded to the fact that the Phoenicians were in Western Spain, but added that trans-Atlantic ship routes were unsafe because of winter storms and summer piracy. He, thus, implied that there indeed were pirate ships more than two thousand years before Columbus, and that the more adventuresome would probably have attempted to sail beyond the Mediterranean. Although an amateur biblical archeologist and student of Near Eastern history, I, nonetheless, often pondered over the seemingly strange origins of American history with the landing of Columbus in 1492. Was the Old World of the Ancient Near East in part responsible for the settlement of American peoples in the New World? The more I read, the more convinced I became, and yet only a dearth of material has been published on the subject by leading biblical scholars and archeologists, except for a handful in recent years. Is it because the "Establishment" feels threatened when challenged by intelligent and educated men? Albright seems to have been aware of this problem when he wrote that, until recently, the legion of skeptics has included most biblical scholars. He goes on to state that this negative approach has led to wholesale rejection of archeological evidence bearing on biblical history. Among the examples he cites are
SEPTEMBER 1978
those who reject the conclusion of epigraphists and paleographers. He states that in order to deny or discount these discoveries, one should first spend some time on the subject. If scholars can accept Columbus and Cabot, why not the Canaanites and Celts? Mesoamerican discoveries include the artifacts of the pre-Columbian melting pot. Alexander von Wuthenau of Mexico City argues in his book, The Art of Terracotta Pottery in Pre-Columbian Central and South America, that Semites, Africans, and even Japanese all reached the New World before Columbus. The Central American Indians, the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayas, all had a tradition of a bearded white man who came from across the Atlantic, from the East, bringing with him his knowledge of agriculture, metallurgy, and other arts. Another proponent of these concepts is Cyrus H. Gordon. His book, Before Columbus (Links Between the Old World and Ancient America), seems to have come and gone, almost unnoticed. He feels that pre-Columbian America was not isolated from the rest of the world but was in contact with the East for thousands of years. Despite the fact that Gordon's ideas were presented almost a decade ago, little has changed. It is not difficult to postulate that in the same way the Egyptians and Persians came to forget their ancestral scripts which had to be deciphered by foreign scholars, so did the ancestors of the American Indians forget the discovery of the wheel, and Europe forgot the discovery of its earlier pioneer sailors who reached New World shores before the 15th century. Further support came to light in 1968 when Gordon first published an article on the authenticity of the Phoenician text from Parahyba, Brazil (originally discovered in 1874), which recorded how Canaanites had set sail from Ezion-geber via the Red Sea, in the 19th year of King Hiram of Tyre. For two years they sailed with ten other ships, but were lost after a storm. Eventually, fifteen souls reached the shores of South America. The text has been dated to the 6th century B.C. The Bat Creek stone from Tennessee, originally investigated in 1894 (now housed in the Smithsonian Institution), was recently discussed as a Judean inscription dating from about A.D. 100 (Occasional Publications: The Epigraphic Society, September, 1976). Epigraphically, it closely resembles Hebrew letters of Jewish coinage from the Bar Kokhba revolt. Were these brave Jews perhaps those who, fed up with Roman domination over Israel, set sail for distant peaceful shores? Further reports appeared in The Courier Journal, Louisville, Tennessee (1953 and 1967) of the inscribed Hebrew coins of Bar Kokhba's revolt against Rome, found also in Hopkinsville and Clay City. But all these discoveries, seemingly genuine, made little impression on archeologists or historians. America's bicentennial year saw the publication of an even more exciting and stimulating book. It was now not only South and Central American discoveries that supported the common bondage of the Old and BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST
New Worlds. Barry Fell, marine biologist turned linguist and epigrapher since 1975, has found artifacts and has deciphered North American inscriptions revealing Egyptian, Celtic, Libyan, and other settlers who established themselves in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Vermont, West Virginia, Ohio, and elsewhere. Is it possible that all these discoveries are a hoax? It brings to mind the thoughts of Albright when he spoke of "the conspiracy motivation of international archeology." America B.C. (Ancient Settlers in the New World) clarifies such problems as Mystery Hill, shows how the languages of some Indian tribes, such as the Auni and Pima, are descended from ancient Mediterranean tongues, and how the Micmac Indians incorporated Egyptian hieroglyphs into their language. Fell's knowledge of ancient scripts is revealed in such problems as the Davenport Calendar Stele, found in Iowa in 1874, which, as important and exciting as the Rosetta stone, was written in three languages: Egyptian hieroglyphs, Iberian-Punic, and Libyan. Replete with numerous fascinating photographs, diagrams, and charts, every reader will find it to be a convincing book. How long will the "Establishment" remain skeptical and silent? Let their voices be heard so that we laymen can learn the truth. For in the wooded lands of Vermont, New Hampshire, and elsewhere, we have our own American-biblical heritage that is much in need of preservation. Artifacts and inscriptions that predate Columbus by hundreds, if not thousands of years, as Fell writes in the closing paragraph of chapter one, are already being vandalized. Will we hear the voices of archeological scholars, students of history, museum curators giving their support? Are we to change the face of our history? Can we accept the challenge? N. ROSENSTEIN, M.D. Elizabeth, New Jersey
Barry Fell Reexamined The Department
of Anthropology
of the
SmithsonianInstitutionoccasionallyreceivesinquiries
regarding the book America B.C.: Ancient Settlers in the New World, by Barry Fell (Quadrangle/New York Times Book Co., 1976). This book attempts to demonstrate that a number of early peoples (including Phoenicians, Libyans, Carthaginians, and Egyptians) had contact with the New World long before the brief visits of the Norsemen about A.D. 1000. The evidence cited includes stone inscriptions found, or alleged to have been found, in the New World; American Indian words, place names, and writing systems claimed to be of Egyptian, Celtic, Norse, Semitic, or other Old World origin; and certain carved stones, stone structures, and artifacts. The statement below has been prepared to explain briefly why Smithsonian specialists in linguistics and New World prehistory consider the conclusions reached in this book to be incorrect.
85
None of the inscriptions mentioned in America B.C. can be accepted as genuine ancient inscriptions carved in the New World. Some appear to be accidental or random markings, while others have been created by hoaxers. In particular, the alleged Phoenician inscription from the Paraiba province of Brazil (p. 111) and the Davenport Tablets from Iowa are not genuine; all evidence indicates that they were made in the 19th century (Cross 1968; McKusick 1970). It is not difficult to carve a message on a rock with modern tools. Scientific tests of the weathering rate of the scratches, the chemistry of remnant tool filings in the grooves, and the shapes of the tool marks are methods available to determine the age of a particular inscription, but for none of the alleged American inscriptions has an ancient age been established scientifically. Even more conclusively, all of the alleged ancient New World inscriptions examined by specialists have been found to contain linguistic or epigraphic errors or anomalies consistent with modern manufacture but inconsistent with a genuine ancient origin. It is claimed in America B.C. that many socalled Ogam inscriptions have been found in the New World. Ogam is an alphabet used to write an early form of the Old Irish language. It was invented no earlier than the 4th century A.D. by someone who had studied the linguistic theories of the Latin grammarians in a Roman school in Britain (Jackson 1953: 151-52). It is not an ancient Celtic script, and the claims that a form of Ogam was used, without vowels, to write various languages in the Old and New Worlds (e.g., p. 64) are without credible foundation. Since Ogam letters consist largely of simple strokes (see the table on p. 52), it is not difficult to give an Ogam interpretation to any random series of marks. And since the alleged Ogam words in America B.C. have no vowels and are assumed to record words from various Celtic and Semitic languages, plus Basque and Old Norse (p. 50, 58, 194-95), it is a matter of little further difficulty to select words from this range of languages to match with the string of consonants which have been read. The claim is made in America B.C. that the socalled hieroglyphics of the Micmac Indians are derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics. However, general resemblances between some individual signs, some of which have been misinterpreted or misdrawn (pp. 25458), do not prove a relationship between the two writing systems, because there is no explanation of their very different structures. The Micmac writing system is a purely mnemonic system used to aid in the reciting of Christian prayers; it cannot be used to write new messages. It was developed by Roman Catholic missionaries inspired by the use of pictographic mnemonics among the Indians, but its principles have never been explicated in detail (Mallery 1893: 666-71). Egyptian hieroglyphics, though employing signs that have the shape of recognizable objects, is fundamentally a phonetically based writing system, with certain elaborations of detail, especially tailored to the writing
86
of the Egyptian language. Any argument for a relationship between these two forms of writing would need to account for the vast differences between them. The superficial resemblance of a few signs in each is of no significance given the complete dissimilarity of the systematic principles of the two writing systems. Furthermore, it has not been shown that there are any unexplained features of the Micmac writing system that an hypothesis of Egyptian derivation would clarify. No prehistoric loanwords of Old World origin have been found in any North American Indian language. The contention is made in America B. C. that there are words of Egyptian, Semitic, Celtic, and Norse origin in certain Indian languages of the Algonquian family, but the alleged evidence is seriously flawed. The discussion does not distinguish clearly among the separate Algonquian languages; ignores basic facts of Algonquian grammar, linguistic history, and etymology; makes many errors on specific facts; miscopies and misinterprets words (or impossible fragments of words) and their translations; and shows no awareness of the basic scientific linguistic procedures that have been used by specialists for over a hundred years to study the history of languages. Some examples will make clear the deficiencies of the evidence presented: (1) Western Abenaki aln6ba "person" is compared to modern Scottish Gaelic allaban, which is said to have the (rather different) meaning "immigrant"but actually means "the act of wandering" (p. 283). Furthermore, the Abenaki word is related to words in other Eastern Algonquian languages such as Delaware linadppe, that have been well known for over 150 years to be derived from native Algonquian elements meaning "ordinary person." Any words borrowed from Celtic in ages past would, of course, not have had the form they have in the modern languages, and there is little sense in making comparisons to words in a modern Celtic dictionary rather than to the forms the words actually had at the time of the assumed borrowing. But since the Abenaki word for "person" is well understood as a native formation, there is simply no point in trying to explain it as a loan from some other language. (2) Eastern Abenaki abasi "tree, stick" (given as "Wabanaki" abassi "tree") is explained as being "a well-known Semitic word," contrasting with the word for "tree" in Algonquian languages further west, which is said to be "very similar to matsu," the word "in the northeast Siberian tongues" (p. 283). Actually, however, both words can be reconstructed from the parent Proto-Algonquian language, the original stems being apanshwiy- "lodgepole" and me'tekw- "tree";the Cree language, for example, has apasoy and mistik with these meanings. In the northernmost Eastern Algonquian languages, the word for "lodgepole" came to mean "log," "cut tree," and eventually "tree" in general. Neither word requires explanation by reference to Semitic or to the language families of Siberia.
SEPTEMBER1978
(3) Western Abenaki pados "boat" is compared to Gaelic bata "boat" (p. 283). These words are actually related, but only because both are ultimately loanwords from Germanic languages. Abenaki pados refers to a European-style boat and is a recent borrowing from French bateau "boat," which is in turn derived from an earlier borrowing of Old English bat (the ancestor of English boat). Gaelic bata is borrowed either from Old Norse bdtr or from the Old English word. The other examples of alleged ancient loanwords in Algonquian languages (pp. 282-84) are equally unpersuasive. It is claimed that there are "many hundreds of other words of clearly Semitic origin, found in the modern Wabanaki language"and "hundreds of roots in Wabanaki and Micmac" from Egyptian, but the cumulative value of incorrect hypotheses is negative rather than positive. No American Indian language is derived from an historically known Old World language. The affinities of the native languages of the Americas (of which there are hundreds, in dozens of families) are presumed to reach back across the Bering Strait. However, these relationships date back to such a remote period that not even the closest of them can yet be demonstrated conclusively, since there have been great changes over the many thousands of years since the ancestors of the Old and New World peoples drifted apart. The claim is made in America B.C. that songs in the Pima dialect of Papago, a language of the Uto-Aztecan family spoken in southern Arizona, can be read using a "Semitic" dictionary. But the analysis that is presented (p. 172) is not consistent with the grammars of either Papago or any Semitic language: the Papago words have been arbitrarily divided or rearranged; the free translation given in the source used has been ignored; and some of the phonetic symbols in the original publication have been misinterpreted. The Pima songs are, in fact, in the Pima language and show the usual conventions of phrasing and pronunciation found in Pima and Papago songs today. The claim in American B. C. that the language of the Zuni Indians of New Mexico is descended from the poorly known ancient Libyan language is also incorrect. Specialists do not accept the interpretation of Libyan as "basically Egyptian combined with Anatolian roots" (p. 174), and the statements made about a "North African group" of languages (p. 175) do not correspond to how specialists view the relationships of the languages in question. The comparisons between "African" and Zuni involve words from various unidentified languages compared with Zuni words that are often mistranscribed. The fact that the methods of investigation employed in America B. C. have led to the conclusion of an Old World origin for Pima and Zuni merely demonstrates the invalidity of those methods. The assertion in America B. C. that certain place names recorded from New England Indians are actually of Celtic origin is without foundation. BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST
Specialists in North American linguistics have generally concluded that it is virtually impossible to interpret Indian place names from those areas where the native languages are known or the names are known only as used by speakers of English. There simply was not enough information recorded when the Indian languages were still spoken to establish the origin, derivation, and interpretation - the etymology - of most Indian place names in the eastern United States. Since the correct original pronunciation of such names is almost always unknown, and primary information on the meaning or the circumstances of the naming is universally lacking, even knowledgable guesses as to their interpretation are impossible in all but a handful of exceptionally clearcut cases. The guesses on the meanings of several such names in America B. C. (pp. 248-51) are from works that are unknown to Smithsonian scholars, but to the extent that the names are interpretable as Algonquian, comparison with Celtic would be superfluous., For example, the New Hampshire place name Amoskeag, interpreted as "one who takes small fish," is compared to Scottish Gaelic Ammo-iasgag, said to mean "small-fish stream" (p. 248). But if the place name has any such meaning, it would have to be the first part (amos-) that designates fish or a variety of fish (according to the patterns of Algonquian word formation) and this does not match Gaelic iasg "fish" very closely. Furthermore, there is no Gaelic word ammo- meaning "stream." In sum, it must be said that the discussions in America B.C. show no knowledge of the correct grammatical analysis of the American Indian languages considered. There is no understanding of the grammars of the Algonquian languages, Pima, or Zuni, and no conception of the existence of strict rules governing the permissible order and shape of elements in those languages. To Smithsonian linguists, the arguments presented in America B.C. are therefore of no value. In addition to the alleged linguistic and epigraphic evidence, archeological data are cited to support the theories of the book. For the most part, this evidence consists of comparisons between various North American and European cultural elements such as the shape of copper tools, pottery vessel forms, artistic design elements, effigies, ritual masks, gravestones, markers, and monuments (pp. 125-50). None of these comparisons can be supported by accepted standards of archeology. Most are taken helter-skelter from different time periods, cultures, and places, and the comparisons are thus meaningless. In each case there is a more probable explanation for the similarity. In many cases, the reasoning utilized disregards unassailable archeological facts and accepted methodology, or is based on data long acknowledged to be fraudulent, such as the Davenport Tablets. If it is claimed that ancient Celts, Iberians, Libyans, and others left inscriptions, place names, and stone monuments throughout much of North America, and
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that the creators of these works influenced Indian languages and cultures and stimulated the development of writing systems, then confirmation should surely be found in the independent discovery in America of artifacts or skeletons of Old World origin. Significantly, there is not a single case of such evidence dating from pre-Norse times, despite the tremendous amount of archeological information available on the geographic areas in question. For these reasons, the arguments of America B. C. are unconvincing. The only accepted case of preColumbian European contact in North America remains the Norse site of L'Anse aux Meadows in
northern Newfoundland. Perhaps some day credible proof of other early European contacts will be discovered in the New World. However, America B.C. does not contain such proof and does not employ the standard linguistic and archeological methods that would be necessary to convince specialists in these fields. Prepared by IVES GODDARD WILLIAM W.
FITZHUGH
Departmentof Anthropology The Smithsonian Institution
REFERENCES CITED (*) AND SUGGESTED FURTHER READINGS Arlotto, Anthony T. 1972 Introduction to Historical Linguistics. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. (A general introduction to the methods used to study the history of languages, in textbook form.) Chadwick, John 1970 The Decipherment of Linear B. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Paperback. (The classic detective story account of the decipherment of an important early Greek script, written for the non-specialist.) Originally published 1958. *Cross, Frank M., Jr. 1968 The Phoenician Inscription from Brazil. A NineteenthCentury Forgery. Orientalia 37: 437-60. (A technical refutation of the alleged genuineness of the inscription by the world's leading Semitic epigraphist.) Friedrich, Johannes 1971 Extinct Languages. New York: Philosophical Library, Inc. Paperback. (Originally published in German, 1957.) (The history of the decipherment of the writing systems used for the major extinct languages of the Old World, with remarks on some scripts which cannot yet be interpreted, by a leading scholar in the field.)
Comingnext in
)
*Jackson, Kenneth 1953 Language and History in Early Britain. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. (History of the Celtic peoples of Great Britain, with technical linguistic sections.) *Mallery, Garrick 1893 Picture-writing of the American Indians. Bureau of American Ethnology Annual Report 10: 1-822. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. (The classic compendium of information on all forms of North American Indian pictographic symbols and symbol systems.) *McKusick, Marshall 1970 The Davenport Conspiracy. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. (The true account of the Davenport Tablets of Iowa.) Wauchope, Robert 1974 Lost Tribes and Sunken Continents. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Paperback. (An account of various nonscientific myths and theories, by a well-qualified archeologist.)
BIBLICAL
ARCHEOLOGIST Editor David Noel Freedman reveals for the first time the true significance of the Ebla tablets for the Bible and patriarchal history in his article, "The True Story of the Ebla Tablets - Ebla and the Cities of the Plain." In light of Ebla, Freedman calls for a new evaluation of the veracity of the patriarchal narratives and remarks concerning Abraham: "We must adjust our thinking about the man, his status and stature, his place in history and culture." Don't miss this latest development in the Ebla story.
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Tell el-Hesi - a redug city: Sir Flinders Petrie - 1890; Philip Bliss - 1891, 1892; Hesi Joint ArcheologicalExpedition(ASOR) 1970, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1977. Valerie Fargo and Kevin O'Connellprovidea wellillustrateddescriptionof the first five seasonsof the Joint ArchaeologicalExpeditionat Tell el-Hesi.
SEPTEMBER1978
Colloquia Temple University Aegean Symposium The Third Temple University Aegean Symposium was held at Philadelphia on March 3, 1978. The theme "Studies of New and Little Known Material from the Aegean Bronze Age" suggested a concentration on objects and aspects of archeology to which little attention had been paid. Four out of seven papers concerned Crete exclusively, and three out of seven dealt with pottery. A doorhinge from the Greek mainland proved to be the high point of the meeting and amply demonstrated how much fundamental knowledge can be gleaned by careful examination and evaluation of any remains from the past, however unimportant or negligible their function may appear. Spiridion lakovides, visiting professor at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study during the past academic year, ingeniously and convincingly established the date of buildings of the Mycenean fortress at Gla through a minute study of the hinge. In his paper, "A Bronze Pivot Shoe from the Residential Building of Gla," he drew attention to the difference between a pivotal shoe found in situ on the threshold of the Little Megaron in Tyrins, as well as fragments of a similar shoe discovered in the anteroom of the Megaron at Mycenae, and that found at Gla in 1960 on the west door of "Room 10, West Wall," as well as four similar ones found previously by De Ridder. The pivot shoes both from Tyrins and Mycenae are larger and more squat than their counterpart from Gla, and they have rounded bottoms with protruding flanges which helped to adjust the shoes in their sockets and to maintain their balance. The shoes from Gla, however, have an uneven, slightly concave underside and "no fixture to keep them turning on exactly the same spot all the time." Therefore, they could not have been very stable, and the doors must have slipped, wobbled, and screeched as the shoes revolved. The fact that the sockets worn into the threshold are wider than the hinge shoes which rotated them supports this assumption. The pivot shoes from Gla are far more primitive and simple and were fashioned at an earlier age than those from the Argolid citadels. Pottery from the site bears witness that Gla was built and in full use by the time the Argolid sites were evolving and that it was BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST
destroyed and depopulated when the latter were expanded for the second time and before the palace of Pylos was destroyed, ca. 1250 B.c. Therefore, the bronze shoes of Gla belong to the first half of the 13th century B.C., whereas those of the Argolid palaces date more than a century later. In the paper "Obsidian from Crete: Problems in Lithic Analysis," Nicholas Hartman reported the results of his examination of two obsidian cores and 27 blades from the island of Pseira, a few miles off the southeast coast of Crete. The analysis attempted "to determine with reasonable precision the function of a particular tool or lithic assemblage within its technological and cultural context" and thus gain some insight into the economy and the stage of technology at the time the tool was fashioned. Examination under a low-power stereomicroscope revealed that the Pseira blades had been produced, in all likelihood, by indirect percussion, since blades and cores were irregular. Direct percussion (hitting the edge of the core with a stone or softer material) produces notable regularity of blades and cores, whereas pressure technique results in regular and sharp blades with absolute parallel sides. The examination also revealed traces of wear on most of the blades, the general orientation and direction of the tool during use, the nature of the material worked, and the duration of use. Micro-flaking furnished evidence that the user held the tool at an angle to the work and moved it in a direction perpendicular to the edge. Direct or macroscopic examination proved that no one had retouched the edges of the Pseira blades, but that the workers had used them as they came off the core. Since fragile, unretouched obsidian edges are very sharp, workers probably used these blades for work where sharpness was of greater importance than either durability, resistance to pressure, or safety of the user. Hartman recommends the use of more powerful microscopes, even the scanning electron microscope, in order to obtain other valuable information. Finally, he proposes that archeologists study all lithic material within the entire archeological context of a site rather than as isolated artifacts. The most important of the papers dealing with pottery concerned the little-known and hithertounpublished collection of Minoan pottery at Mount Holyoke College. Gifts by the Heraklion Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and alumni expanded the collection which traces its beginnings to spoils by female archeologists who explored Crete during the first decade of this century. Early Minoan pottery is especially well represented in this collection of 60 pieces which "now provides a small but significant addition to the corpus of published Minoan pottery." Karen Polinger Foster drew attention to several noteworthy pieces: 1) three Vasilike ware fragments from the Early Minoan I period, all parts of bowls with strong black, vermilion,
89
and orange mottling; 2) a goblet fragment from Chryso-Kamino, whose pedestal bore incised horizontal rings, identical to those on an EM II pedestal from Fournou Korifi; 3) an unusual lug from a bowl found at Knossos; 4) large number of coarse-ware vessel fragments from Sphoungaras, mostly bowls and plates, which provide new material for the study of early household and cooking vessels. Unusual Middle Minoan pieces consist of cups from Knossos with interior drip decorations and part of an egg-shell-ware bowl from Vasilike. Noteworthy examples from the Late Minoan IIIb period are two decorated fragments from Vrokastro which bear quite unusual designs. Foster prepared a complete catalog, describing and numbering all pieces in this collection, together with drawings, photographs, concordances, and tables in Temple University Aegean Symposium Series, ed. P. Betancourt (1978). Karen D. Vitelli proposed that women, in all likelihood, produced Southern Greek Middle Neolithic Urfirnis ware. Her paper, "Thoughts on Prehistoric Potters and Ceramic Change," attempted to find a rationale for the slow evolution of Middle Neolithic pottery which had retained the same shape and the same basic decorations for several hundred years and rarely deviated from the established tradition. Vitelli argued that if women manufactured their own pots at home for home consumption, then, their daughters would have learned the craft from them and carried on the same tradition when they married and moved into other settlement groups. Thus, various "settlement sites come to share a common ceramic tradition which still could be idiosyncratic from site to site." New female potters entering the established (MN Urfirnis) tradition may have caused such different ceramic styles as appear between the Middle Neolithic and the Middle Bronze Age. The Neolithic female was an "exchange item" and in the later Neolithic phases the exchange of women took place at greater distances. Thus, women from outside the local pottery tradition would enter a Greek community and infuse the local pottery with their own style which, in turn, would eventually be incorporated into and become part of the local tradition, thus causing subtle changes and diversions within the local tradition. Change of procedure and different styles only emerged when professional potters, men, created commercial products for the marketplace where they had to compete with other ware. An explanation for the changeover from the manufacture of pots by women to the manufacture of ceramics by professional potters might be found in technological advances, such as the development of the potter's wheel and a kiln with separate chambers for fuel and pots. "These innovations in ceramic technology appear in the Aegean during EB III or MB I." By the Middle Bronze Age, the distribution of ceramics around the Aegean and the increased rate of stylistic change clearly attest the manufacture of pottery for commerce, and the*
90
production of pottery seems to have moved decisively out of the home and into the marketplace. Jean Silverman's study of "The LM IB Painted Pottery of Eastern Crete" demonstrated that this local pottery had two major stylistic divisions: the Polychrome style, used mostly for large or important vases, and the Plain style, reserved for the bulk of the local pottery. The distinguishing features of the Polychrome style are the large dots or band, which separate the decorated zones, with ornaments added in white. "The motifs are conventional, but the vase surface is so elaborated by the different combinations and juxtaposition of design and color that the overall effect is variety." In the Plain style, the motifs have disintegrated into their components, but new variations of linked circles and pinwheels emerge. This development of the two different styles came to an end with the destruction of the towns such as Mochlos and Gournia in the western part of Greece, and the pottery of LM III reoccupation levels follows the tradition of Knossos and mainland Greece. Southwestern Crete was the focus of Joseph W. Shaw's report on the 1977 expedition to Kommos, a major Minoan settlement on the shore of the Messara Plain. The expedition concentrated on two places: the first on top of the hill where the team uncovered two LM I houses, separated by a north-south corridor. A goodly amount of pottery and vases from the LM IIIB period point to the final occupation of the buildings. The second area contained an LM I house (discovered already in 1976), which included the household shrine with the "snake tube." The expedition more clearly defined the limits of the house and recovered many small objects, including animal bones, an amethyst bead, a lapis-lazuli bead, and bronze fishhooks. A third area of investigation in the southern part of the site provided a surprise, yielding a complex of unique classical and Hellenistic buildings, partly set into the prehistoric strata. On the floor were goblets, lamps, plates, and other articles ranging in date from about 250-150 B.c. These well-preserved buildings surround a court which harbors an altar. It is hoped that further excavations and investigations will clarify the function of this complex and establish whether it served religious or civic purposes. Probes into the deep prehistoric level revealed what appeared to be part of a stepped ramp. In view of these monumental constructions, this particular location must have been considerably important in at least prehistoric and Hellenistic times. Kommos, doubtless a major Minoan town during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, remained largely untouched by later invaders. It thus provides a rare opportunity for tracing the stage of buildings and remodeling. The pottery also reveals trade not only with Knossos on the northern coast, but probably also with the distant Cyclades. Sherds from pots of Cypriotic origin are of special importance since very (cont. on p. 123) SEPTEMBER 1978
THE
ROOTS WOMEN
OF IN
RESTRICTION: EARLY ISRAEL
CAROL MEYERS
During the Late Bronze Age, wars, famines, and plagues created a demographic crisis which intensified the role of women in domestic affairs and childbearing. When the crisis passed, the restriction of women to domestic circles was ingrained in Israelite society and ultimately became the basis for their subordination through the remainder of the biblical period and on into modern times.
Perhaps the most significant advances in biblical studies in recent years have come about through scholarly efforts to understand the emergence of earliest Israel in terms of its social dynamics. These studies of the origins of Israel, which benefit from anthropological analyses of group behavior and social change, have made it no longer possible to contemplate the beginnings of biblical tradition as theological history or as a kind of history of holiness. To do so, however pious the motives, becomes instead an ultimately irrelevant and perhaps irreverent exercise because it precludes full understanding. Rather, A member of ASOR's Committee on Archeological Policy and Assistant Professor of Religion at Duke University, Carol L. Meyers spent this past summer as one of the core staff at the Meiron Excavation Project. Her doctoral dissertation on the tabernacle menorah appeared in the ASOR Dissertation Series (1976).
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST
attempts at reconstructing any period in antiquity must involve a sensitivity to and consideration of the entire historico-cultural spectrum which affects human development, individually or in groups. In a sense, the archeological investigation of the Near Eastern past has fostered and facilitated such a contextual approach to scriptural study by making available the nonbiblical materials essential for understanding the matrix of Israelite life. Ironically, however, the very archeological revolution which brought about this new approach also became a serious stumbling block for reaping all its benefits. Archeology, enamored of and elated by its intimate contact with objects of the past, felt itself in possession of the key to that past. For a long time, the exclusive preoccupation with material relics and political history (with little or no attention given to the social dynamics of the people who left these relics) limited the analysis of
the archeological data. But now, aided by the insights of modern social science, archeologists are in a better position to understand how ancient societies operated and what social and ideological changes occurred in the ancient world. Such investigation of the process of social change has been particularly important in the study of ancient Israel's early formation and development.' If the emerging interest in reconstructing all dimensions of a crucial era in human history is to be expressed in thorough and balanced investigation, then it cannot do what so much of social history in the past has done, systematically omit or slight roughly half of humanity. In the natural and social history of any groupings of people, that slighted half - women - controls certain unique and critical functions within society. As the Harvard social historian David Herlihy puts it (1978: 56), women "carry the new generation to term, sustain children
91
in early life, and usually introduce the young to the society and culture of which they will be a part. [In other words,] women begin the processes through which human cultures strive to achieve what their individual members cannot indefinite life, immortality." Moreover, an examination of women's social position, while eminently cogent and important for historical studies of any period of our past, becomes extraordinarily
turned out to be the very force which caused a dramatic turnabout in the history of women. Yet, as more and more material from the ancient world becomes available to us, the realities of the status of women in ancient societies, including their role in religious life, are becoming invisible behind the double veils of time and misapprehension. It is being discovered that the position and role of women in society were very different in some crucial areas
We are conditioned by three thousand years of male dominance. pertinent and imperative in consideration of biblical society, especially in its formative and idealistic period. That specific period is the one in which the biblical community was formed, a community bound in covenant with God through the leadership of Moses and developing its characteristic and radical new way of looking at the world and living in that world in the few centuries after Moses and before the Davidic monarchy. Archeologically, this formative period coincides with the closing decades of the Late Bronze Age and the beginning of centuries of the Iron Age in Palestine. Concern for the evaluation of the social history of women during the early Israelite experience arises from the fact that this is precisely the period in which one of the major - if not the major transitions occurred in the history of the position and role of women in the world. Some three thousand years of male dominance in western civilization, and in particular in religious institutions, have clouded our vision of the prebiblical past and have led to the belief that the exclusion of females from regular leadership, at least in public and/or religious life, has been the norm in human history. Further, it is difficult, psychologically and emotionally, to deal with the fact that the liberating principles of Mosaic Israel and the egalitarian society which it set about to establish
92
than what they became subsequent to the beginnings of Israel. For this reason, historical investigation of women in the formative period is crucial otherwise, it is too easy to fall prey to the same process which has led to the gradual later misogynistic interpretations of early biblical tradition. It is needed to correct anachronistic interpretations as well as statements taken out of context and used dogmatically and authoritatively. Moreover, this investigation is necessary to identify long-ignored functional aspects within a particular setting of what appears in the finished scriptural product as Godgiven sanctions. Perhaps this point should be illustrated before proceeding. The story of the Garden of Eden provides a parade example. The creation and early activity of male and female in the stories of the glorious garden of Genesis 2 and 3 present no evidence for any theory of subordination or inferiority of women (Trible 1973: 35-42; Higgins 1976). If anything, the opposite is true. Read on its own terms, the story shows a primordial male who appears passive and submissive. This ancient tale must have been understood this way for centuries as part of Hebraic literature. Yet somewhere and gradually along the line, complicated sociohistorical processes which cannot be traced here turned the edenic paradigm upside down. By the late
biblical period, a rash of religious literature, produced by Jewish groups and nascent Christianity, took considerable pains to demonstrate that Eve was significant not as the source of life but rather as the source of death and evil (Prusak 1974); and, therefore, women needed to be controlled and dominated by their male relatives. Centuries of such distortions resulting from later interpretations of biblical traditions involving women can come to an end, it seems, only by going back to the very beginnings of Israelite life, where it all began, for it was then that there occurred a shift in sexual roles and meanings that was to have a profound and longlasting impact. In order to appreciate this it shift, is important to consider the Near Eastern cultures from which Israel emerged. The Bronze Age religious ideology against which early Israel rebelled was the product of a millennia-old pattern. The pantheons of divine beings exalted in Near Eastern antiquity represented those forces in nature upon which humanity was dependent
The creation stories give no evidence for the subordination or inferiority of women. but which humanity could not bring under its control. Fertility was an underlying concern. Fertility cults in which mankind could create mechanisms for exerting control of or at least influence over the capricious natural world helped resolve humanity's helplessness and anxiety in the face of rainfall or lack of it, sunshine or lack of it, blight or lack of it. The great goddesses and great gods mated, producing a union of earth and sun/rain necessary for productivity. Cultic rehearsals of this union, while tantalizingly vague and distant in the face of our modern inquiries, seem to have taken place within the context of what is described by the suitably ill-defined phrase "fertility cult." The particular Canaanite SEPTEMBER 1978
manifestations of such religious worshipped as the creator of all life, as the female principle which was ideologies are generally described in terms of their relationship to the the source of life. The mystery of birth and of all creation and thus of impoverished - in comparison to human existence itself rested in the Egypt or Mesopotamia - resources of Syria-Palestine. Thus, the female power. From as early as the Old Stone Age onward (ca. 30,000 emphasis tends to focus on fertility of the soil. Yet, concerns with B.C.E.), material expressions of human fertility should not be religious convictions by which excluded from the parameters of mankind sought to establish links to that divine creative power have been pagan religion. Particularly in the land bridge of Syria-Palestine, and found (James 1958: 113ff.). In the in contrast to the relative stability various places of Stone Age and tendency toward over-population habitation, the naked female in the Nile and Tigris-Euphrates figurines with exaggerated sexual features are found, attesting to the Valleys (Kilmer 1972: 166-72), frequent outbreaks of violence added cult of the Great Goddess. By the to the natural insecurity of time of the great Bronze Age of life. The human cultures of the Near East, the continuity repeated prophetic warning in the supreme Mother Goddesses were Bible about the triple threat of joined by or in some cases death through famine, pestilence, superseded by male deities. The and the sword bears with it an societal changes connected with this transition have yet to be explored urgent concern for the continued existence of any socio-political fully, since they are difficult to disease and retrieve from the limited documents Warfare, famine, group. were inseparable forces posing of antiquity. continuing threats to human exisThough it seems that a tence. At certain times of upheaval, patriarchal system replaced the population losses far exceeded primary role of women in primitive natural increment. Depopulation agricultural-village economies, reflected in and by the Great Mother i.e, decline in population - was a recurrent fact, archeologically deGoddess, the primacy of the female monstrable (Angel 1972). Population role nonetheless persisted in a limited way. The documents of growth, or the replenishing of the population, was a societal aim, Mesopotamian and Egyptian cities show women involved in a variety expressed in Israel's national literature (Frymer-Kensky 1977: 150, of public positions and occupations, 152), in the face of considerable exercising economic and legal rights,
;1 ?f
~d~T\
?.
;1
r,
During the Bronze Age, the Great Mother Goddess cult remained strong. environmental odds at various points in ancient Palestinian history. The biological experiences of women in Bronze Age society were undoubtedly keyed to this fact. The fertility cults, however crucial for a concept of agrarian productivity, were no less crucial for notions of human reproduction. In this respect, the Near Eastern high goddesses are featured in the role of the Great Mother (Neumann 1963) who some believe was the Supreme Deity in the ancient world until the 3rd millennium. She was revered and
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST
which varied from place to place and from time to time (Batto 1974; Harris 1976). Perhaps the most important arena within which women functioned was the temple precincts. Priestesses served the gods and goddesses. The elaborate temple organizations within the royal bureaucracy included female public servants. Some women functioned sexually in such occupations, as references to cultic sexuality attest. Others, it seems, refrained from sexuality and marriage by entering
Terra-cottafigurinefrom Syria (late 2nd millennium B.C.), presumably of
the goddess Astarte. Similar figurines have been found at other sites throughoutSyria-Palestine,attesting to the importanceof female deities in the cultic practicesof the Bronze Age.
93
a sort of convent existence (Harris 1964). It is hard to reconstruct the social motivations for such a choice. Indeed, certain kinds of temple service for women may have represented an escape from the high risks and rigors of childbirth, and/or a way to provide economically for unmarried women. At least certain ancient mythographers saw a relationship between those cultic roles for women involving chastity and celibacy and the social necessity for population control by the limiting of child bearing (Kilmer 1972: 171-72; Frymer-Kensky 1977: 149-50). Whatever the social dynamics of the situation in the Late Bronze Age urban life may have been, certain facts about female roles emerge, dimly perhaps, but nonetheless apparent. The persistent strengths and appeals of Anat and Asherah (cf. Judg 3:7; 1 Kgs 15:13 = 2 Chr 15:16; 1 Kgs 18:19; Jer 44:15ff.) in the Bible itself are evidence of the active participation of women in cultic, and therefore public life. Women served female deities and the female deities served women in return, affirming their
ultimate creative worth. All the above is in a sense introductory and thus is oversimplified and generalized as a preface to the problem posed at the outset, namely, investigating the social grounding for the transformation of women's position during early Israel to the limited and subordinate status that had become normative by late biblical times. Early Israel, it has been shown (Gottwald 1975a: 93-98; Mendenhall 1973: 194-97), constituted a radical break with the citystate feudalism and nation-state imperialism of Late Bronze Age Palestine. The description of the motivation for that break (and the implementation through the Yahwistic covenant of a liberating replacement for city-state oppression) involves an understanding of the life of the peasantry (Mendenhall 1976b: 133-38; Chaney forthcoming). The natural resources of Palestine could no longer support an inflated urban bureaucracy and thus Late Bronze Age peasant society was at the subsistence level. The so-called Israelite "Conquest" represents a return of a full share of the
Standardizedworshipscene on a Mesopotamiancylinderseal of the early Middle BronzeAge. A worshipperis led towardan enthroneddeity by a priestess (though perhapsa goddess).
products of the land to the people, a cessation of the continuous draining contributions to urban bureaucracies (Mendenhall 1962). The fact that nearly half of the Book of Joshua is concerned with tribal allotments points to the early Israelite recovery of land so that the people, according to their several tribes, would derive the benefit therefrom. Claims to land ownership, once the domination of the citybased power structures had broken down, depended to a great extent on populating that land (cf. Exod 23:23-30). In addition to establishing local tribal control over certain territories formerly administered by oppressive city-states, the Israelite federation was about to embark upon the settlement of previously uninhabited territories, namely, the core of Palestine, the central hill country. This territory was largely empty throughout the Bronze Age (Thompson 1975: 39-50), except for occasional, usually minor sites near springs and in valleys. Generally poor soil and scarce water supplies precluded significant habitation, particularly if Bronze Age urban centers siphoned off a portion of the meager productivity. If anything,
for dP0 -%o
94
SEPTEMBER 1978
the Late Bronze Age had even fewer settlements in the hill country proper than the preceding Middle Bronze Age centuries. The ensuing Iron Age, in sharp contrast, brought an extensive settlement of this region (Thompson 1975: 66-67). Technically, the storage of water in lined cisterns, the introduction of iron in the manufacture of farm tools, and the development of methods of agricultural terracing resolved the environmental difficulties and made this demographic shift possible. An enormous amount of human energy was required, however, to clear land that had never before been tilled, to
free peasantry? Thus far, two major issues emerge in the attempt to answer these questions. Both of these had dramatic effects upon women and, while seemingly independent of each other, may prove ultimately to be interrelated. The first issue concerns the biological need for productivity, the need to effect a population increase. Israel was obsessed both with having descendants to inherit its portion and with keeping its land-holdings within its kinship-based groups. In investigating this issue, anthropological and paleo-osteological studies which seek to describe fluctuations in ancient populations are extremely
The Israelite "Conquest" involved a return of the land to the peasants and a cessation of urban control. build homes and villages where none valuable.3 Such studies inevitably had existed, and to cut back forests lead to descriptions of mortality and undergrowth that had covered rates - or life expectancies - in the landscape since time immemorial. the premodern world. In particular, This understanding of early the analysis of skeletal remains from Israel as an agrarian peasantry is various periods of Palestinian history dispelling the romantic attachment (Giles 1951, 1953; Hughes 1965; to the notion of a biblical bias in Smith forthcoming) provides inforfavor of some sort of bedouin or mation about life expectancies. seminomadic ideal. This underExcavations in Palestine have included - and in a sense began standing likewise affords an appreciation of a biblical undercurrent with - the investigation of tomb protesting - understandably so groups. Ironically, the skeletal considering the ills and evils of Late remains of human beings from these Bronze Age Canaanite cities tombs have so far received relatively against urban life. The first city, for slight attention; tomb studies have tended to focus on typologies of example, is built according to biblical tradition by the first grave goods or of the tomb murderer (Gen 4:17). The concluding chambers themselves. However, exhortation of the Holiness Code although osteological studies have been carried out on relatively small (Lev 26:25-26) links city life - "if numbers of the actual skeletal you gather within your cities" with famine, disease, and violence. remains, the results present valid The negative experience underlying evidence for general demographic such a bias is clear. The orientation conditions and fluctuations in of the period of the judges rejected ancient Palestine, since the results of the urban centers.2 In this process those studies correspond exceedingly there arose social sanctions, ultiwell to the results of similar studies on all premodern populations mately translated into law, which strengthened and favored land-based (Genoves 1969; Goldstein 1969). To begin with, the death rate village life. Against this background, what was clearly highest among the was life like for roughly half the preadult population. In one tomb population? How were women to do group, 35% of the individuals died their share in espousing and before the age of five, and nearly half of the individuals did not furthering the Yahwistic ideals of a
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST
survive the age of eighteen (Smith forthcoming). For those who did survive to adulthood, another clear pattern existed: the mortality rate of females in the child-bearing years greatly exceeded that of the males (Genoves 1969: 441-43; Goldstein 1969: 486). In a population in which the life expectancy for men would be 40, women would have a life expectancy closer to 30. Consequently, it should not be surprising that the elders of any ancient tribal system were males, since a greater proportion of males would have survived into the chronological seniority which was at the basis of political seniority and leadership. It is no wonder that ancient biologists, Aristotle among them, proclaimed that the males of all species live longer than the females. It is a relatively modern phenomenon that the converse is true for humans. Women in antiquity were a class of humanity in short supply. Paleo-pathologists have established that the cause of half, if not more, of all deaths, whatever the age of the individual at the time of death, was the presence of endemic parasitic disease, that is, infections which occur in a community more or less all the time without much alteration in their effects from year to year or even century to century (Hare 1954: 32-66). The biblical term "pestilence" (deber) seems to be used in reference to such endemic disease. Very young children and old people, being the most susceptible to such infections, were the most likely to succumb. This fact is archeologically evident in the high infant mortality rate as well as in the scarcity of people past forty. To put it bluntly, in normal times, families would have had to produce twice the number of children desired in order to achieve optimal family size. The outbreak of epidemics, or the abnormal occurrence of acute infectious disease, reduced the usual low life expectancy even further. Epidemiological statistics, for historic periods in which records were kept, show the devastating effects of plague upon mortality rates. For example, in the plague-free early
95
medieval years in Europe, life expectancy has been estimated as being between 35 and 40 years. For the generations during and immediately following the Black Death (1348-49), which introduced an epoch of recurring plagues, the average life expectancy was as low as 17 or 18 years. It took nearly 100 years or more thereafter for life spans to creep back up to around 30 (Herlihy 1978: 56). The Bible has a word that seems to describe such abnormal outbreaks of disease. This word, maggephah, normally translated "plague" (as opposed to "pestilence"), appears in several biblical accounts, chiefly in certain nonpriestly narratives of Numbers, and also once in Exodus. Despite the layers of later explanations, these passages have preserved certain critical incidents of Israel's formative period and thus provide important information about public health and population density. One such episode is Korah's rebellion in Numbers 16. The nature of the violent power struggle within the Israelite camp depicted here is peripheral to the present discussion. What does attract attention is the devastating plague associated with this rebellion in the mind of the biblical writer. The 250 leaders of the Korahites were consumed in a fire coming forth from the Lord. But God's wrath did not stop there; before Moses could carry out his efficacious atoning acts, 14,700 more deaths were recorded. There can be little doubt that this devastating plague, however that large and symbolic-sounding figure is to be interpreted, decimated the nascent community. Num 21:6 recounts another population loss. In this instance, the actual word maggephah is not used. Nonetheless, the description seems to reflect a plague situation: "Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, so that many people of Israel died." Another passage, Num 11:1-3, while not mentioning plague or pestilence specifically, describes in similar language the effects of the
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wrath of God at a place called Taberah, which in itself means "Burning" (Mendenhall 1973: 109, and nn. 17, 18). At this particular place God's anger - attributed to the complaining of the people was kindled and the "fire of the Lord burned among them, and consumed some outlying parts of the camp." The destructive fever of plague, an outbreak of some kind of epidemic disease, seems to be the life situation, theologically interpreted, which gives rise to the association between divine anger and punitive, consuming heat/fire. The text does not give the number of casualties, but the losses in the Israelite camp must have been severe.
Exodus 32 provides one additional text dealing with death by plague. In the story of the Golden Calf, a plague caused the loss of an unspecified portion of the population (v 35: "And the Lord sent a plague upon the people, because they made the calf which Aaron made"). Epidemic disease was clearly rampant. This clustering of biblical texts dealing with the age of Moses and using the word "plague" or maggephah reflects a public health crisis. Furthermore, nearly every extrabiblical source from the Late Bronze Age indicates the devastation wrought by epidemic infections. Perhaps the most famous of these is the Plague Prayer of Mursilis (ANET: 394-96), though disruption
Numbers 16:44-50 (This is the story of Korah's rebellion, which was probably a kind of power struggle within the priesthood). And the Lord said to Moses, "Get away from the midst of this congregation, that I may consume them in a moment." And they fell on their faces. And Moses said to Aaron, "Take your censer, and put fire therein from off the altar, and lay incense on it, and carry it quickly to the congregation, and make atonement for them; for wrath has gone forth from the Lord, the plague has begun." So Aaron took it as Moses said, and ran into the midst of the assembly; and behold, the plague had already begun among the people; and he put on the incense and made atonement for the people. And he stood between the dead and the living; and the plague was stopped. Now those who died by the plague were fourteen thousand seven hundred, besides those who died in the affair of Korah. And Aaron returned to Moses at the entrance of the tent of meeting, when the plague was stopped. Num 14:11 is another relevant text: except for Joshua (who brings back a good report), the spies who had gone into Canaan are said to have died from the plague. Another incident, the unfortunate sequence of events at Beth Baal Peor (Mendenhall 1973: 105-21), stems from the Mosaic period and is recounted in Numbers 25. In some sort of orgiastic rite, various Israelite men participated in sacrifice to the Baal of Peor (Peor seems to be related to a Hittite word for "fire," which underlies that English word) and in relationships with the local unmarried Midianite girls. God's anger was kindled and turned upon Israel. No fewer than 24,000 people died in that epidemic which broke out among the people.
and devastation because of plague are recorded in other sources such as the Amarna letters. A similar situation did not occur again in Palestine until 200-250 years later in the period of the Philistine wars, for which there is another clustering of biblical texts reflecting a plague situation. The biblical passages cited above as well as the extrabiblical sources mentioned can be associated with what has been identified archeologically as a massive disruption of the urbanized life of the petty kingdoms - or kinglets - in Palestine at the end of the Late Bronze Age. City after city suffered violent destruction. In many cases, if not all, the termination of Bronze Age culture in these cities is marked
SEPTEMBER1978
little experience of such epidemics, to grasp the enormity of the plagues and the staggering death tolls which devastated the premodern world. Yet, the effort must be made to comprehend the drastic measures taken to stop epidemics in light of the ancient context. Recognition of the existence of a period of widespread plague and death at the end of the Late Bronze Age is crucial, because that factor even more than famine and warfare (or at least in combination
The Plague Prayer of Mursilis (Mursilis was a Hittite king, son of the powerful monarch Suppiluliumas; he ruled in Asia Minor during the Amarna Age, Late Bronze IIA. The plague to which the text refers seems to be one which Mursilis'father and his soldiers picked up in a battle against Egyptian forces in southern Syria; they carried the plague back to Hatti-land, where it spread among the populace and became troublesome for years to come, as this prayer indicates.) What is this ye have done [ye gods]? A plague ye have let into the land. The Hatti land has been cruelly afflicted by the plague. For twenty years now men have been dying since my father's days, in my brother's days, and in mine own since I have become the priest of the gods. When men are dying in the Hatti land like this, the plague is in no wise over. As for me, the agony of my heart and the anguish of my soul I cannot endure any more. . . . The Hatti land was cruelly afflicted. The few people who were left to give sacrificial The Hatti land, all of it, is dying. ... loaves and libations were dying too. .... fields of the god are dead. . . . The The plowmen who used to work the grinding women who used to make the sacrificial loaves for the god are dead. ... O gods, take ye pity on the Hatti land! ... Look ye upon the Hatti land with favorable eyes, but the evil plague give to [those other] countries.
Thick burn layer (L. 1027.1between Surfaces 1027 and 1028) markingthe end of the Late Bronzeoccupationat ancient Gezer. Similarashen layers have been found at a numberof Palestiniantells and generallymark a severedisruptionof habitation.
(taken from ANET, pp. 394-96, trans. A. Goetze)
archeologically by a thick layer of ashes, indicating a conflagration of major proportions. These burnings of cities, it seems, are an aftermath of military conquest or overthrow rather than a part of it. If anything, military conflicts or guerilla warfare took place outside the city walls, so well constructed were the fortifications of the Late Bronze cities. It is quite possible that the widespread burnings were not so much related to military actions as they were to a kind of primitive and desperate public health measure.4 The fiery destruction of plagues needed to be fought with fire. Immediately following the recollection of the destructive plague of Baal Peor in Num 31:21-23, the instructions to the Israelite warriors stipulate that "only the gold, the silver, the bronze, the iron, the tin, and the lead, everything that can stand the fire, you shall pass through the fire, and it shall be clean. Nevertheless, it shall also be purified with the water of impurity; and whatever cannot stand the fire you shall pass through the water." Thus, the unconscionable herem, or utter destruction of cities as presented in the book of Joshua, perhaps can be seen as a kind of plague control. It is difficult in the western world today, with relatively
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST
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with those other two evils) created a life situation - or rather a death situation - of monumental proportions. The measures taken within the emergent Israelite community to deal with this situation are the ones that profoundly affected the lives of the female segment of the population. Plague severely reduced the population of the peasantry at the time when sheer numbers counted most.5 The normal difficulties in maintaining rural population in Palestine were compounded dramatically during this period. The
From all perspectives, then, female creativity and labor were highly valued in early Israel. This female worth was not biological exploitation but rather part of the full cooperation of all elements in society in pursuing the goals of the Israelite people. Further, the early Iron Age experience of Israel was within the liberating matrix of the Covenant with Yahweh, which emphasized ethical concerns and sought to maintain all human dignity. The precepts of the Decalogue and the Covenant Code
The widespread burnings in the Late Bronze Age may have been in part a desperate public health measure to combat plagues. biological creativity of females, a matter of vital concern even in normal times because of high infant mortality rates and the often fatal complications of childbearing, was most sorely needed in the aftermath of plagues. The devastation of plague had caused a demographic crisis. The repeated biblical exhortation, "Be fruitful and multiply," is singularly appropriate to this situation. The strength and solidarity of the family were the basis for the vitality of the restored peasantry in early Israel and its ability to occupy the hill country of Palestine. At the most basic level, Israelite society urgently required a replenishment and even a surge in population to combat the effect of the famine, war, and disease at the end of the Late Bronze Age and to provide the human factor necessary for normal agricultural efforts. Moreover, this need for population increase was intensified as settlement of virgin areas proceeded. In addition to their specifically biological contribution, the full participation of women in the chores of a land-based economy was essential (Friedl 1975: 46-48). Further, since males were called away for occasional military duty in the absence of a standing army, the woman's role in managing all aspects of a household would increase.
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are dedicated passionately against the exploitation of any groups of human beings or even animals. The Fifth Commandment (Exod 20:12) bears this out. Both parents are to be honored, for on the two together depends the existence of Israel. The second part of this commandment is not a vague generality but rather an intrinsic complement of the familiar first half of that commandment ("Honor your father and your mother"). It expresses a hope for
compensation to the bride's family (Baab 1962a: 283-84), since a daughter contributed through her work to a parent's household. This bride-gift, a kind of reverse dowry, indicates that grooms had to compete for relatively few brides. Likewise, the financial burden of setting up a new household lay with the male, another indication of the socio-economic dimensions of the shortage of brides. The dowry was rarely if ever bestowed in biblical times (Taber 1976: 575). Fathers did not need to entice husbands. (Compare European history: it is perhaps not until the central Middle Ages that a combination of relative peace and a new urban economy brought about a relative increase in female population and led to the reversal of the terms of marriage. Girls became excess economic burdens and fathers gave dowries and paid for weddings to entice young men to take these girls off their hands [Herlihy 1978: 60].) Beyond this, however, the intensified need for female participation in working out the Mosaic revolution in the early Israelite period can be seen in the Bible. Looking again at Numbers 31, an exception to the total purge of the
The biological creativity of females was important because of high infant mortality, fatal complications of child-bearing, recurrent disease, and the desire to inherit the land. continued life and a restoration of public well-being: "that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you" (i.e., that life expectancies will stabilize above the low level characteristic of plague epochs). The Bible generally reflects the fact that there were relatively fewer women of child-bearing age than men of the same age, a condition which Israel shared with the rest of the ancient world. Perhaps the existence of the mohar, translated variously as "bride price" or "marriage present," illustrates one way in which the community dealt with a shortage of marriageable women. The mohar may be a
Midianite population is to be noted. In addition to the metal objects which were exempt from utter destruction, so too were the "young girls who have not known man by lying with him" (Num 31:18). These captives, however, were not immediately brought into the Israelite camp. Instead, they and their captors were kept outside the camp for seven days in a kind of quarantine period. (Note that the usual incubation period for the kinds of infectious diseases which could conceivably have existed in this situation is two or three to six days [Eickhoff 1977].) Afterward, they thoroughly washed themselves and all their clothing before they
1978 SEPTEMBER
Numbers 31:13-24 (In the aftermath of the wars against the Midianites, Moses discovers that the herem had not been completely carried out; he recalls the devastation at Peor, when some Israelite men had mingled with the daughters of the enemy.) Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the leaders of the congregation, went forth to meet them outside the camp. And Moses was angry with the officers of the army. . . . Moses said to them, "Have you let all the women live? Behold, these caused the people of Israel, by the counsel of Balaam, to act treacherously against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and so the plague came among the congregation of the Lord. Now, therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves. Encamp outside the camp seven days; whoever of you has killed any person, and whoever has touched and slain, purify yourselves and your captives on the third day and on the seventh day. You shall purify every garment, every article of skin, all work of goats' hair, and every article of wood." And Eleazar the priest said to the men of war who had gone to battle: "This is the statute of the law which the Lord has commanded Moses: only the gold, the silver, the bronze, the iron, the tin, and the lead, everything that can stand the fire, and it shall be clean. Nevertheless, it shall also be purified with the water of impurity; and whatever cannot stand the fire, you shall pass through the water. You must wash your clothes on the seventh day; and afterward you shall come into the camp."'
entered the camp. This incident is hardly an expression of lascivious male behavior; rather, it reflects the desperate need for women of childbearing age, a need so extreme that the utter destruction of the Midianite foes - and the prevention of death by plague - as required by the law of the herem could be waived in the interest of sparing the young women. The Israelites weighed the life-death balance, and the need for females of child-bearing age took precedence. Such a source of female population, however, was not to be regularized. Instead, the extraordinary needs for female reproductive power in the tribal period precipitated strong sanctions against the expending of sexual energy in ways that either detracted from the primary reproductive channels or interfered with the strengths of nuclear family life or the transmission of family-based land ownership. The whole array of sexual customs and rules which exist in the Bible and which had the ultimate effect of relegating women to a narrowed and eventually subordinate position in later biblical
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST
times are in many cases radical changes from what had existed previously in the ancient world. These changes, which limited human sexual contacts and options, must be reconsidered in light of the demographic crisis of early Israel. Sanctions that eventually became expressed in biblical laws dealing with incest, rape, adultery, virginity, bestiality, exogamy, homosexuality, and prostitution require reexamination and reevaluation within the dynamics of the socio-economic situation (Friedl 1975: 86-98) and human crisis of the earliest days of Israel. The dimension of purity and polemic in sexual sanctions is not to be ignored; but the role of the concern for repopulation and the need for human resources must also enter the picture.6 This is a vast project and one which is beyond the scope of this paper. However, progress can tentatively begin by looking at one expression of sexuality and the way the societal pressures of ancient Israel transformed it. Harlotry is a good example, since it leads directly to considering the second major issue which effected the turnabout in
the status of women in ancient society. Until the period of the Judges, the existence of harlotry was an accepted, if not condoned, fact (Baab 1962b: 932). Courtesans and prostitutes have existed at least since the dawn of recorded history without accompanying moral judgment or moral condemnation of harlotry per se. It was a legitimate though not necessarily desirable occupation for some women. In the Genesis story of Judah and Tamar, Tamar is not condemned for her temporary identification as a prostitute nor is Judah condemned for lying with her, except insofar as it signaled an evasion of his responsibilities toward his sons' widow (Genesis 38). Similarly, Rahab the harlot of Jericho is actually a heroine who helped the Israelite spies, in return for which they spared the destruction of her family (Joshua 2 and 6). By the time that biblical legislation records attitudes toward harlotry, a considerable change had occurred. Lev 19:29 is explicit: "Do not profane your daughter by making her a harlot, lest the land fall into harlotry and the land fall into wickedness." A father was responsible in the patriarchal system for his daughters. He was to limit their choice of occupation. Prostitution was not a possibility. The priorities and values of early Israelite existence had made familycentered life the chief, if not the only, course of action for a young woman. There was another reason for closing out the option of harlotry in early Israel beside the need to have all available women of child-bearing years integrated into self-sufficient families. Harlotry was closely associated with the special use of sexual energy involved in ritual or cultic prostitution in the nature relgions of the ruling urban elites. The efforts to secure productivity in the Israelite village and rural settings were to be separated from the rituals of the fertility cults. The sexual fetishism of Late Bronze Age
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society was "integrated into the hierarchic social order" (Gottwald 1975b: 53). Because Israel rejected that order and also rejected the magical and mythological associations between the human reproductive process and the ritual enactment of such process, it of necessity prohibited the involvement of cult functionaries, male or female (Deut 23:17), in such sexual activity. In biblical law, the particular emphasis on the dissociation of the priests from harlotry can only be understood in this context. In Lev 21:7, 14-15, priests are commanded to marry virgins. They are forbidden to marry any of four categories of
The traditional answer to the to why the priesthood is as query male no doubt would have invoked the notion that the anthropomorphizing tendencies in the Bible made God out to be a male deity, some sort of macho warrior at one end or loving father at the other end. Male deities would naturally require a male priesthood. This response, however, does not account for the nonsexuality and nonhumanity of Yahweh's unity. Gender-oriented language for Yahweh is metaphoric. Furthermore, in addition to the all-too-familiar andromorphic images of Yahweh, there are a multitude of gyno-
The tight channeling of female energies into domestic qffairs, part of the liberating event of Israel's formation, ultimately became the reason for the ideology of female inferiority. women (widows, divorcees, "defiled" women, and harlots) whose sexual energies may already have been somewhat dissipated and whose fitness for child-bearing may have been reduced. Harlots in this law are not singled out as detestable or illegal members of society at large. However, in the same passage, the daughters of priests are condemned to burning by fire should they play the harlot (v 9). This extraordinarily strong penalty for prostitution is aimed specifically at women who lived near or in the Israelite sanctuary area, the daughters of priests. It indicates the danger of pagan cultic expression that existed when men and women were together in cultic contexts, a danger that to some extent necessitated the removal of one of the two sexes from cultic services. In the Bible, it is apparent which sex was barred from cultic leadership, but the reasons for such a limitation have not been properly explored. The priesthood of the Old Testament represents a radical break with the nature of priesthoods in the history of the ancient world; the priesthood of biblical religion is, from the outset, portrayed as a strictly and absolutely male profession.
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morphic images, once one is open to reading them as such (Trible 1973: 31-35). Still, the establishment of an exclusively male priesthood was in a sense a natural development at the end of the 2nd millennium. While a few millennia earlier a female priesthood in service of the Great Mother might have been the paradigm, the urban social systems of the Bronze Age were male dominated. Male deities outnumbered the goddesses. Thus, the kings, priest-kings, and priests were the dominant figures and provided the models for early Israel.
as some economic surplus. The possibility of female service within any sort of cultic context could be eliminated purely on the basis of the felt priorities of early Israel in its allocation of human energies. Female energies were desperately needed in the family setting. Partially as a rejection of the mythological and cultic sexuality of prebiblical religion and its integral connection with the urban power centers, and partly under pressures to concentrate female energies within the home and family, the Israelite priesthood emerged as a male occupation. In ancient Israel, thousands and thousands of years of female participation in this most crucial of all public institutions, an organized cultus, were terminated. One might speculate as to whether or not women might have entered priestly roles once the demographic crisis had been alleviated were it not for the continued attraction of the nature religions, particularly after the establishment of the monarchy and the return to urbanized life as the dominant mode in Israel. Thereafter, the social sanctions against such occupations as harlotry achieved the status of divine laws governing a priesthood distinct from that of pagan religion. From that situation, the moral judgment upon this kind of female sexual activity outside the family was only a step away. Two major factors, then, appear to be primary causes of the
During the establishment of the monarchy and gradual reurbanization, women diminished in social importance. The priesthood before the monarchy was no doubt a decentralized and purposefully limited factor in Israelite life (Cody 1969: 1-61). The egalitarian economy of the reestablished peasantry of the period of the Judges rejected the bureaucratic concentration of wealth that an elaborate priesthood requires. Circumscribed as it may have been, a priesthood nevertheless was established and thus siphoned off some portion of manpower as well
profound change that occurred in the status and role of women during premonarchic Israel. The first was the drastic need to concentrate human energy, male and female, into family life and into intensive cultivation of the land, including considerable new territory. This meant a sex ethic, the primary societal function of which was to make childbirth and sexuality within the family crucial societal goals. Reversing the devastating depopu-
SEPTEMBER 1978
lation of the Late Bronze Age was critical proportions became so deeply an enormous task. Likewise, setting engrained that with the passing of about to reemphasize an agricultural the crisis the restrictions remained and ultimately became the basis for economy and even to settle new lands was a highly ambitious goal ideologies of female inferiority and which called for the labor of women subordination. Once the pattern of female nonparticipation in other alongside men. The second factor was the rejection of pagan deities in spheres of life - the priesthood in favor of a covenant with a unified particular - became established, Yahweh. In cultic terms, this society adhered to it in ways that translated into a male priesthood. became limiting and oppressive to Neither of these two factors within women. their contemporary settings was This was particularly true of male or with the establishment of the particularly exploitive female. On the contrary, strong monarchy and a gradual movement female involvement in an agricultural toward urbanization. Women became less important as participants in economy and in the birth of new economic survival and therefore generations of Israelites who would diminished in social importance. literally inherit the land meant that women and men worked together to They were also the first to suffer achieve the covenant ideals. when urban centers drained off the It is indeed an irony of productivity of the land to support the monarchy and the military. Hard history, then, that this very tight work under conditions of increased channeling of female (and male) population and reduced nutrition energies into domestic affairs, which meant even greater risks of death in was a liberating event in its own childbirth. The introduction of slave the raison time, became, ultimately, wives under the phenomenal growth d'etre for continued and exclusive of the Davidic empire no doubt also confinement of female energies to contributed to the reduced importhat sphere. A functional restriction tance of women. Thus, it was likely to meet a demographic crisis of
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during the monarchy that the functional restriction of women in society became transformed gradually into an ideological restriction. By this time opportunities for women to assume important roles outside the family, possibilities which had previously existed in ancient Near Eastern societies, especially in aristocratic settings, had been more or less systematically cut off in order to meet the needs of the emerging tribal groups. Yet, the exceptional leadership of women such as Miriam, Deborah, and the wise women of Tekoa and Abel are not so much "dynamic remnants" (Trible 1976: 965) of a time when women could hold natural positions of leadership within a community, positions which would have been based in inherited power structures (as queens or noblewomen); rather, their existence gives testimony to an North Syrian cylinderseal of the LB II period. The seal depicts a beardedhero facing a goddess with uplifted hands and a man with a scimitarfacing a female (priestess?) also with raised hands.
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101
epoch of liberation in which stratified hereditary leadership was abolished and anyone, women included, could rise to irregular positions of authority. They thus testify to the notion that God's spirit or wisdom could rest upon any individual, male or female, and grant that person a certain role in the community based on personal gifts rather than on social status. However, the patriarchal structuring of egalitarian tribal life with males as heads of families and of clans, with the elders of Israel becoming leaders, meant that women did not participate regularly in any sort of public political life, just as they did not perform priestly duties. The famous biblical women just enumerated occupy a kind of exceptional position, a nonrecurring charismatic participation. It is important to recognize that, however limited in proportion to males such leadership may have been, it was thoroughly accepted and acceptable. No notion of female inferiority intruded. The reality for most women in the biblical world during the
monarchy was one in which the vigorous equal-participation momentum of the formative period had been transformed gradually into a kind of masculine domination and female subordination. However, various biblical texts (Trible 1973) which depict a kind of harmonious ideal or balance between the sexes preserve the premonarchic situation. The Creation chapters of Genesis are one such text. Both the Priestly account in Genesis I ("So God created mankind in his image, . . . male and female he created them. And God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it' [i.e., till it together]"; Gen 1:27-28) and the Yahwistic narrative in Genesis 2 affirm the existence of two sexes as the necessary and equal balance in human life. In addition to the creation stories, the Song of Songs presents a beautiful picture of human love. The maiden and lad share in their desire and love for the other and in their expression of that love. Ideas of subordination or inferiority of one
or the other are absent. Also, the very anthropomorphism of Yahweh, when it is expressed in feminine terms, reaffirms and encourages the female in society. God, the warrior, is only half of the Exodus event. God, the provider of food and water, sustains the refugees from Egypt until they reach arable land. The redemptive acts of Yahweh, to be sure, are neither masculine nor feminine, but the working out of those actions involved the might that masculine imagery expresses and also the love and caring - and even the giving birth - that feminine imagery conveys. These latter, then, are the biblical ideals which can provide the balance in the endeavor to sort out the realities of life for women in ancient Israel amidst the social changes through which it passed. One can wonder to what extent these ideals were constantly at work within biblical society itself, even as the course of women's participation in society was being altered for millennia to come.
NOTES 'The social history approach is exemplified by the work of such scholars as Mendenhall (1962; 1973; 1976a; 1976b), Gottwald (1975a; 1975b), and Campbell (1975), especially for the period of concern in this paper, premonarchic Israel. A forthcoming article by Chaney in Biblical Archeologist contains a comprehensive presentation and documentation of this approach ("Ancient Palestinian Peasant Movements and the Formation of Premonarchic Israel'). 2A purely ideological understanding of this rejection is problematic, since it is related to some extent to the military-political and also the economic situation of post-Mosaic Israel. Further, the notion of tribal orientation is, at least for some scholars (Gottwald 1975a: 93-95), actually a "retribalization" based on long-standing tribal patterns. 3The difficulties inherent in the task of deducing population fluctuations in antiquity are not to be minimized, as Petersen (1975) makes clear. Nonetheless, the recurrent patterns visible in tomb studies and skeletal analyses for various parts of the premodern world do allow certain qualified judgments. 4Similar extreme and seemingly cruel action in restricting homes or districts or even whole towns afflicted by the plague is well documented in European history. Instead of the healthy removing themselves from infected situations, the infected areas were isolated. Houses and sometimes entire towns were boarded up or walled in, along with all the inhabitants, sick or healthy. Nearly all of the latter
102
then perished along with the former as a result of the disease itself or from suffocation or starvation. See Hare 1953: 150-52. 5Archeological evidence bears out the literary evidence, both biblical and extrabiblical, for a massive disruption at the end of the Late Bronze Age (cf. Mendenhall 1976a). Studies of deaths, longevity, reproductive capacity, ecology, and population density in the east Mediterranean have provided an estimated dramatic drop-off in people per square kilometer (km2) from 30 in the Late Bronze Age, a high point for all of the Bronze Age, to 19 or probably less per km2in the Iron I period. In other words, the Iron Age begins with an overall reduction in population of over 1/3, with some scholars positing as high as a 4/5 reduction. See Angel 1972: 93 and Table 28. 6Anthropological analyses of the roles of women and men in various types of agrarian economies provide an untapped and potentially very fruitful resource for reconstructingthe roles of various family members in early Israel. Particularly as archeology provides more and more information about Iron I agricultural techniques and crop selection and also about cultural and/or commercial isolation, comparative studies will aid in the delineation of the family basis of Israelite society. It is indeed likely, as Friedl explains (1975: 100), that "social structures and attitudes toward sex are together a consequence of strategies of control developed, sometimes unconsciously, by members of society as a means of regulating the ratio of land and food resources to the population."
SEPTEMBER 1978
BIBLIOGRAPHY Angel, J. L. 1972 Ecology and Population in the Eastern Mediterranean. World Archaeology 4: 88-105. Baab, O. J. 1962a Marriage. Pp. 278-87 in vol. 3 of The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, ed. G. Buttrick. Nashville: Abingdon. 1962b Prostitution. Pp. 931-34 in vol. 3 of The Interpreter'sDictionary of the Bible, ed. G. Buttrick. Nashville: Abingdon. Batto, B. F. 1974 Studies on Women at Mari. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University. Bird, P. 1974 Images of Women in the Old Testament. Pp. 41-88 in Religion and Sexism, ed. P. Ruether. New York: Simon & Schuster. Campbell, E. F., Jr. 1975 Moses and the Foundation of Israel. Interpretation 29: 141-54. Chaney, M. T. forth- Ancient Palestinian Peasant Movements and the Formacoming tion of Premonarchic Israel. Biblical Archeologist. Cody, A. 1969 A History of Old Testament Priesthood. Analecta Biblica 35. Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute. Eickhoff, T. C., ed. 1977 Communicable Diseases. Vol. 3 of Practice of Medicine. Hagerstown, MD: Harper & Row. Friedl, E. 1975 Women and Men: An Anthropologist's View. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Frymer-Kensky, T. 1977 The Atrahasis Epic and Its Significance for Our Understanding of Genesis 1-9. Biblical Archeologist 40: 147-55. Genov6s, S. 1969 Estimation of Age and Mortality. Pp. 440-52 in Science in Archaeology, ed. S. Brothwell and E. Higgs. London: Thames & Hudson. Giles, M. 1953 The Human and Animal Remains. Appendix A, pp. 405-12 in O. Tufnell, Lachish III: The Iron Age. London: Oxford University. 1958 The Human and Animal Remains. Appendix B, pp. 318-22 in O. Tufnell, Lachish IV: The Bronze Age. London: Oxford University. Goldstein, M. S. 1969 The Paleopathology of Human Skeletal Remains. Pp. 48089 in Science in Archaeology, ed. D. Brothwell and E. Higgs. London: Thames & Hudson. Gottwald, N. 1975a Domain Assumptions and Societal Models in the Study of Pre-Monarchic Israel. Vetus Testamentum Supplement 28: 89-100. 1975b Biblical Theology or Biblical Sociology? Radical Religion 2: 42-57. Hare, R. 1954 Pomp and Pestilence: Infectious Disease, Its Origins and Conquest. London: Victor Gollancy. Harris, R. 1964 The Nadttu Woman. Pp. 106-35 in Studies Presented to A. Leo Oppenheim. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1976 Woman in the Ancient Near East. Pp. 960-63 in The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible Supplementary Volume, ed. K. Crim. Nashville: Abingdon.
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST
Herlihy, D. 1978 The Natural History of Medieval Women. Natural History 87: 56-67. Higgins, J. 1976 The Myth of Eve: The Temptress. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 44: 639-48. Hughes, D. R. 1965 Report on Metrical and Non-metrical Aspects of E.B.M.B. and Middle Bronze Age Human Remains from Jericho. Pp. 664-85 in Appendix H, "Human Bones," in vol. 2 of K. Kenyon, Excavations at Jericho. London: British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem. James, E. O. 1958 Myth and Ritual in the Ancient Near East. New York: Praeger. Kilmer, A. 1972 The Mesopotamian Concept of Overpopulation and Its Solution as Represented in the Mythology. Orientalia 41: 160-77. Mendenhall, G. 1954 Law and Covenant in Israel and the Ancient Near East. Biblical Archaeologist 17: 26-46, 50-76. 1962 The Hebrew Conquest of Canaan. Biblical Archaeologist 25: 66-87. 1973 The Tenth Generation: The Origins of the Biblical Tradition. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins. 1975 The Monarchy. Interpretation 29: 155-70. 1976a Change and Decay in All Around I See: Conquest, Covenant, and The Tenth Generation. Biblical Archeologist 39: 152-57. 1976b Social Organization in Early Israel. Pp. 132-51 in Magnalia Dei: The Mighty Acts of God, eds. F. M. Cross, W. E. Lemke, and P. D. Miller. Garden City: Doubleday. Neumann, E. 1963 The Great Mother. Bollingen Series 47, 2nd ed., trans. R. Manheim. Princeton: Princeton University. Petersen, W. 1975 A Demographer's View of Prehistoric Demography. Current Anthropology 16: 227-44. Prusak, B. P. 1974 Woman: Seductive Siren and Source of Sin. Pp. 89-116 in Religion and Sexism, ed. R. Ruether. New York: Simon & Schuster. Smith, P. et al. forth- Human Skeletal Remains. Chap. 7.2 in vol. 3 of Publicacoming tions of the Meiron Excavation Project, ed. E. Meyers. Taber, C. R. 1976 Marriage. Pp. 573-76 in vol. 3 of The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible Supplementary Volume, ed. K. Crim. Nashville: Abingdon. Thompson, T. L. 1975 The Settlement of Palestine in the Bronze Age. Beihefte zum Tiibinger Atlas des Vordern Orients, Reihe B. Wiesbaden: Reichert. Trible, P. 1973 Depatriarchalizing in Biblical Interpretation. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 41: 30-48. 1976 Women in the O.T. Pp. 963-66 in The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible Supplementary Volume, ed. K. Crim. Nashville: Abingdon.
103
THE
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The Temple Scroll continues the saga of Qumran and gives valuable evidencefor the nature of Jewish religious thought and its relationship to the development of Christianity. The contents of the Scroll and the conclusions of Yadin are examined.
The long-awaited Temple Scroll, the last of the known scrolls from the caves of Qumran at the Dead Sea, finally has been published. The publication, of which the editor, Yigael Yadin, devotes two volumes to the study of the text, consists of three large volumes Prqfessor Jacob Milgrom, who teaches in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at tie University of California, Berkeler, has recently written Cult and Conscience: The Asham and the Priestly Doctrine of Repentance (1976).
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST
and a supplementary booklet. The 300-page first volume is an introduction describing the acquisition, workmanship, language, and contents of the Scroll; a final chapter deals with the dating of the text and a running commentary which concerns itself with the problems of decipherment, sources, and vocabulary; it also contains brief interpretations, with references to fuller discussion in the first volume. Three appendixes conclude this volume: a reconstructed text, a concordance, and an index of the
primary sources. The third volume contains the plates; each plate is a photograph of a different column of the Scroll with the decipherment on the opposite page. The supplementary booklet consists of photographs of fragments from other copies of the Scroll. Yadin first learned of the Scroll in 1960 and finally acquired it from an Arab dealer in Jerusalem in 1967. It had been hidden in a shoebox under a tile floor and wrapped in layers of paper, towel, and cellophane. Beside it was a
105
cigarbox containing many fragments and wads of several columns which had peeled off the Scroll. The Scroll had been rolled from its end, hence its beginning was on the outside. Thus, the first wad to be deciphered turned out to be col. 5 in its interior and col. 2 at its exterior. Since the back of the exterior fragment showed smudges of letters, it was concluded that another column, the first, had disappeared.
and col. 6 to the end by another. Furthermore, the end of col. 5 and the beginning of col. 6 are identical. These facts have led Yadin to conjecture that the entire Scroll originally was written by a single scribe, but cols. 1-5 became damaged and were rewritten by another scribe. Evidence of repairs is found also in other columns. The calligraphy exhibits various stages of the Herodian style, but one
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The scroll had been hidden in a shoebox under a tile floor. Beside it was a cigarbox containing many fragments. -
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The wads in the cigarbox were put together like a jigsaw puzzle or, to give an archeological analogy, as potsherds are pieced together in restoration. Because of the tight wrapping of the Scroll, columns were imprinted on the back of previous columns. Thus, with the aid of mirrors, whole sections could be read. Infrared photography also aided recovery. Humidity had reduced two or three of the first columns to "chocolate fudge"; they were hopelessly lost. The delicate process of unrolling began, and the unrolled Scroll showed that the top of every column and even the bottom of some columns were missing due to the ravages of humidity in the dealer's shop where it lay buried for years. Fragments from the Rockefeller Museum supplemented the missing parts, proving that there were at least two or three copies of the Scroll. The unrolled Scroll is approximately 28 ft. in length and consists of 19 sheets 10 in. high and an average of 18 in. wide. There are 67 columns of text. Most columns probably contained 22 lines; cols. 49-60, however, contain 28 lines. Yadin believes that the longer columns reflect the scribe's intention to use less parchment, but at col. 61 he abandoned this hope and returned to the earlier column of 22 lines. These statistics earn for the Temple Scroll the designation as the largest of the Dead Sea scrolls. The calligraphy indicates that cols. 1-5 were written by one scribe
106
Rockefeller fragment (43.366) is middle Hasmonean, attributable to the last quarter of the 2nd century B.C.E.
Mistakes were corrected in various ways: omitted letters were inserted above and below lines, between letters, or at the end of lines; other mistakes were erased. Paleographic analysis shows the characteristic plene writing of the other scrolls with many new and interesting examples. The language follows biblical style, but slips of contemporary syntax and idiom betray the scribe. The following examples will suffice: compound verbs with the auxiliary "to be"; words from late biblical books that are frequent in rabbinic literature, e.g., 'esel "near," binyan "building"; technical words, especially in connection with the Temple, found only in the Mishnah, e.g., "the house of the laver/vessels/ steps," parwar "stoa"; and characteristic rabbinic words, e.g., "new wine/oil"; tig'olet "impurity."
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Right: the scroll before being unrolled.It had been hidden in a shoebox under a tile floor and wrappedin layers of paper,towel, and cellophane.Far right:The scroll after its outer layers were unrolled. Notice that the top of every column and even the bottom of some columns were destroyedby the ravagesof humidityin the dealer's shop where it lay buriedfor years.
SEPTEMBER 1978
The Contents The contentsof the Scroll, convenientlytabulatedby Yadin(I, pp. 39here in abbreviatedform. Bracketsindicaterestoration.Biblical follow 60), citationsdesignatedirectquotation;when precededby "cf."the citationis the basis for the ruling. Cols. 1(?)-2. Renewal of Sinaitic Covenant (Exod 34:10-16; Deut
7:1ff.).
Col. 3. The Materials for Constructing the Temple and Its Furniture
(cf. Exod 35:5-16).
Cols. 4-7. The Exterior Wings, Sanctuary, Porch, Adytum, Attic, Stoa (west of Temple), Tunneling of Adytum (cf. 1 Kgs 6:5ff.[?, 1 Kgs 6:2ff., 2 Chr
3:3ff.; Ezek 6:3; Exod 26:15-16;22:26; 1 Kgs 6:15-16).
Cols. 7-11. The Interior Cultic Furniture. Kapporet, cherubim,
golden(!) veil; table of Presence-bread,pure frankincense,menorah,curtain of porch entrance(?)(Exod 25:18-20,31-39;37:17-23;cf. Exod 25:21;26:15ff., 34 LXX; 30:34-35;37:27ff.;40:3; Lev 24:5ff.;Num 8:2; 1 Sam 21:7; 1 Kgs 6:15ff.; 8:7; 2 Chr 5:8). Col. 11. Requirement to Offer Sacrifices on Sabbaths and Festivals
(cf. Leviticus 23). Col. 12. The Sacrificial Altar. Made of stone (cf. Ezek 43:13-17). Probably a second, bronze altar (cf. 2 Kgs 16:14-15;Ezek 9:2). Col. 13. The Daily Whole-Offering (colah) (Exod 29:38-42; Num 28:2-
8; cf. Lev 7:8[?]). Cols. 13-14. The Sabbath Whole-Offering(Num 28:9-10).
Col. 14. The New Moon Whole-Offering (Num 28:11-15; 15:4-10). Cols. 14-15. The First Day of the First Month Whole-Offering (Num 29:1-6; Exod 12:2). Cols. 16-17. Offering for the Seven-Day Consecration of Priests (millu'im) and the Eighth Day. Beginning on the first day of the first month
e' ,
(Exodus 29; Leviticus 8; 21:10; cf. Leviticus 3, 4, 16; Ezek 43:19ff.). Col. 17. The Pesach-Offering.Must be sacrificed before the daily evening offering (tamid) by every male over 20 and eaten at night in the
'
Temple court (Lev 23:5; Num 9:2-5; Deut 16:4-7; Jub. 49:20). Col. 17. The Offerings of the Festival of Unleavened Bread (Lev 23:6-
8; Num 28:17-25). Col. 18. TheNew BarleyFestival.Offeringsaccompanyingthe omer of barley (Lev 23:12-13;Num 28:26-30). Cols. 18-19. The New WheatFestival(Lev 23:15ff.).Twelve loaves of bread offered by twelve tribal chieftains(cf. Num 28:16ff.;Deut 23:26;Lev 2:14). Cols. 19-21. New Wine Festival. Fifty days later, startingthe count with their New WheatFestival(Lev 23:15ff.;Deut 16:9).Requiredsacrifices: twelve rams from the twelve tribal chieftains and their meal-offerings (minhah)and libations(nesek)(four hins of new wine, one-thirdhin per tribe; Num 15:7);the remainingwhole-offeringsfor all New Fruit Festivals(Num 28:27);14 lambs and 14 ramsas offeringsof well-being(shelamim,sacrificed
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,
I
according to Leviticus 3), one for the priests, one for the Levites, and one for each tribe, eaten in the outer court, and their meal-offerings and libations (Num 15:4ff.); "memorial-offering" ('azkarah) of meal-offerings on altar (cf. Lev 7:10; 10:2; 2:2ff.; 6:7ff.), and remainder eaten by priests, unleavened, in the inner court before sundown (cf. Lev 6:9; 2:11; 6:10). All offerings are salted (Lev 2:13; Num 18:19). Priestly and Levitic portions, including shoulder for Levites (cf. Deut 18:1, 3; 2 Chr 31:4, 19; Neh 12:44, 47). Additional offerings of well-being; their consumption in the outer court. The climax is reached with the drinking of the new wine by the entire assembly. Purpose of the festival: to ransom (kipper) the year's wine crop (cf. Num 28:7) for its use on the altar and by the people.
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST
107
The structure of the Scroll begins with a description of the Temple building and moves outward, pausing at key installations to cite related laws. Thus, the outer altar (12) provides the basis for discussing the festivals and their sacrifices (1830); the slaughterhouse is the logical springboard for discussing sacrificial procedure (34-35); the outer court (40-46) requires a discussion of the second tithe, eaten in that court (43); the safeguards for keeping impure birds from alighting on the sanctuary (46) makes their enumeration essential (48); naturally, the sanctity of the Temple and the Temple city mandates the laws of impurity (45-51). The last part of the Scroll (51ff.) follows the Deuteronomic Code (Deuteronomy 12-26) but neither in sequence nor in entirety. Here the scriptural text rather than the Temple architecture provides the basis for citing associative laws that are peculiar and central to the sect. For example, the prohibition to sacrifice blemished animals (Deut 17:1) provides the motivation for discussing the sect's unique laws of slaughter (52-53). Since the laws of slaughter require the citation of Deuteronomy 12, the mention of vows in this chapter (12:26) is the incentive for citing other laws of vows (Deut 23:22-24; Num 30:3-16). Thus, from Deuteronomy 17, the Scroll backtracks to Deuteronomy 12; it breaks the deuteronomic sequence because its organizing, associative principle demands it. The Scroll continues with the law of Deut 13:2-19 (44-45) but then returns to Deuteronomy 17 to take up the law of idolatry (Deut 17:2-7). Here, as Yadin points out, is a good example of the author's editorial skill. Deut 13:2-19 and 17:2-7 are related in content, whereas the intervening chapters contain other subject matter discussed in relevant sections elsewhere in the Scroll. The Scroll ends with Deut 23:1 (66-[67?]) to which similar laws are affixed, thereby comprising a corpus of incest laws.
108
Cols. 21-23. New Oil Festival. Fifty days later, starting the count with their New Wine Festival (Lev 23:15ff.; Deut 16:9). Offering of one-half hin of new oil from each tribe; one bull as a purgation-offering (hatta"t). Lighting lamps with new oil. The sacrifice and eating of 14 lambs and 14 rams as offerings of well-being (same as the New Wine Festival). The climax: eating of olives and anointing with new oil. Purpose of festival: ransom (kipper) the year's oil crop for its use on the altar and by the people. Cols. 23-25. The Wood-Offering Festival. Celebrated for six days following the New Oil Festival (cf. Neh 10:35; 13:31). Each tribe offers one bull, one ram, and one lamb as whole-offerings and one he-goat as a purgation-offering (cf. Num 7:15ff.). Two tribes per day beginning with Levi, the doubling for the probable reason not to conflict with the Day of Remembrance; Ephraim and Manasseh are subsumed under Joseph, thereby giving a total of twelve tribes. Ritual of purgation-offering described in detail (cf. Lev 4:25; Ezek 43:20; 45:19). Sacrifice of suet and whole-offerings (cf. Lev 3:14-16; Leviticus 1). Col. 25. The Day of Remembrance: First Day of Seventh Month (Lev 23:23; Num 29:1-6). Ritual takes place at "the first third of the day," after the daily and new moon whole-offerings. Cols. 25-27. The Day of Atonement (Lev 23:27ff.; Num 29:7ff.; Lev 16:3; 4:18ff.; 25:9; Exod 30:10). The order of the sacrifices: Lev 16:3-10 is prescriptive, vv I1ff. descriptive; complete ritual with the purgation bull of the priests followed by the complete ritual with the purgation he-goat of the people; high priest washes; ritual with the live goat; three rams sacrificed; as an additional offering for the high priest and for the people. Cols. 27-29. Festival of Booths and Day of Assembly (Lev 23:34; Num 28:17; 29:12ff.). The purgation-offering is to be accompanied by a libation and meal-offering. Close to the festival, booths are constructed on the roofs of the structures built along the wall of the outer court. Cols. 29-30. Conclusion of the Festivals (Num 29:39; Lev 23:37-38). The ordained sacrifices should be offered in the Temple until the "Day of Blessing" when God will build His Temple in accordance with the covenant He struck with Jacob at Bethel (cf. Exod 15:17; Gen 25:13; 35:1-15, etc.). Cols. 30-31. The House of the Winding Staircase. The description of the Temple courts begins with the installations of the inner court (fig. 1). The house of the winding staircase is located at a distance of 7 cubits northwest of the sanctuary. The stairway leads to an upper story which connects to the Temple attic. The house is plated with gold on its exterior and interior. Cols. 31-33. The House of the Laver (cf. Exod 30:18; 40:7, 30; 1 Kgs 7:39; 2 Chr 6:13). Located southeast of the sanctuary 50 cubits from the sacrificial altar (4, fig. 1). It has three gates and gold-plated cubicles for depositing the priestly garments (cf. Ezek 42:14; 44:17ff.). A tunnel beneath the house leads to a drain whereby the waters are absorbed into the ground (cf. Ezek 47:1ff.). These waters may not be touched because they are mixed with the blood of the whole-offerings. Cols. 33-34. The House of Vessels. Located 7 cubits from the house of the laver for storing altar vessels (5, fig. 1). It has two gates and "windows"lockers for storing the vessels (cf. 1 Kgs 6:4; Ezek 40:16). Cols. 34-35. The House of Slaughter. An unwalled roof supported by twelve columns (7, fig. 1). Chains suspended from the roof containing rings to affix the animals' heads. Table for slaughtering. The procedure for sacrificing the whole-offering (cf. Leviticus 1). Col. 35. The Sacredness of the Area Surrounding the Altar, Sanctuary, Laver, and Stoa (cf. Exod 30:29ff.). These areas forbidden at pain of death to non-priests and to priests who are blemished, impure, or not wearing priestly garments (cf. Lev 21:10, 17ff.; 22:3, 16; Num 1:51;3:10; 17:5; 18:3; Exod 28:41-43).
SEPTEMBER1978
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The Main Characteristics of the Composition The Scroll bears distinctive literary features. Most striking is the change of scriptural quotations to the first person. Specifically, scriptures attributed to Moses are changed to the first person (e.g., all quotations from Deuteronomy; Num
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST
lls
30:3-16). On the other hand, laws given by God (e.g., all quotations from Leviticus) are left unchanged. Thus, the entire Scroll is the revealed word of God. The surviving fragments of col. 2 indicate that col. 1, the beginning of the Scroll, dealt with the covenant with Moses on Mt. Sinai. If so, it would possess a similar structure to the Book of
Fig. 1. Schematicplan of the inner court and its installations,including the dimensionsof the wall and its gates. Jubilees with which the Scroll has much in common (see below) and which also opens with a revelation of a supplementary Torah to Moses on Sinai.
109
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Laws of a similar nature are conflated: e.g., vows (cols. 52-53) Deut 23:22-24 followed by Num 30:3-15 (first person); bribery of judges (col. 51.11-18) Exod 23:6; Deut 1:16ff.; 16:1-18ff. (first person); slaughter (col. 52) Deut 12:23-24; Lev 17:13. Conflictual laws are harmonized: e.g., spoil (58.11-15) Num 31:27ff.; 1 Sam 30:24-25 (see below); the ravaged virgin (66.8-11)
110
Fig. 2. Schematic plan of the entire Temple complex, showing the inner court, twelve gates, distances between the gates, length of the walls, and the surrounding moat.
Exod 22:15-16; Deut 22:28-29. Scriptures are clarified by emendations and glosses. Three samples follow; changes in the Masoretic Text are italicized. Deut 17:14-20 in the Temple Scroll reads:
"If, when you have entered the Land that I give you, and you occupied and settled in it, you decide, 'I will set a king over me, as do all the nations about me,' you shall set a king over yourself there, one whom
SEPTEMBER1978
Col. 35. The Stoa (parwar). Located west of the sanctuary (2, fig. 1) for corralling the animals for the purgation-offerings (hatta't) and reparation-offerings ('asham). Offerings for the priests and the people must be kept apart (cf. 1 Chr 26:18; Ezek 46:19ff.; 42:13; etc.). Cols. 36-38. The Inner Court (cf. 1 Kgs 6:36; 7:12; Ezek 8:16; 44:17). The inner court is a square containing a gate on each side. The dimensions of the wall and its gates are given in fig. 1. A stoa surrounds the court (9, fig. 1) within which are tables and chairs for the priests (10, fig. 1). Two cooking installations are on either side of each gate (8, fig. 1) (cf. Ezek 46:22-23). A wall within the court probably surrounds the sanctuary and its sacred installations. Cols. 38-40. The Middle Court (cf. 2 Kgs 20:4[Qere], LXX). It has twelve gates named for the tribes. Admittance is permitted only to males over 20 who have deposited their half-shekels in boxes attached to the outside of the wall surrounding the court (cf. Exod 30:12ff.). This court is off limits to women, children, and priests wearing their sacred garments. Cols. 40-46. The Outer Court. A square with twelve gates named for the tribes (1-12, fig. 2). The length of the court walls and the distances between the gates are given in fig. 2. Along the court's walls are three stories of stoae and chambers (cf. Neh 12:44; 13:7) for the tribes (cf. Neh 12:44; 13:7), the priests (cf. Num 3:38), and the Levitic families (cf. Num 3:23, 29, 35; 4:38) (fig. 3). The chambers are to be cleansed when the course is changed at the end of the Sabbath (cf. Neh 12:1ff.; 13:9). On the roof of the third story are columns for the constructing of booths for the Festival of Booths to be occupied by the elders, tribal chieftains, and the commanders of thousands and hundreds (cf. Neh 8:16-17). The (second) tithe is eaten within this court (cf. Jub. 32:11) during the ensuing year but only on festivals and Sabbaths and the remainder is burned. Those living at a distance of more than a threeday journey bring what they can of the tithe; the rest is sold and the money is brought to the Temple city to purchase comestibles eaten in the court (cf. Deut 14:22ff.; 26:12ff.). Col. 46. Protecting the Temple from Pollution. Spikes, set atop the walls and gates of the outer court, to prevent impure birds from polluting the Temple (fig. 4). A platform with twelve stairs outside each gate of the outer court (fig. 5). A moat 100 cubits wide surrounds the Temple area to separate it from the city (13, fig. 2). The plan of the entire Temple complex is given in fig. 2. Cols. 45-47. Those Prohibited from Entering the Temple City. Those having nocturnal emissions and sexual intercourse (cf. Deut 23:11-12; Lev 15:18) require a three-day purification with bathing and laundering on the first and third days. The blind (and all physically impaired?) may never enter (cf. Lev 21:17-18; 2 Sam 8:5; Num 5:2); the gonorrheic may not enter for seven days (cf. Lev 15:2-13, 16); the corpse-contaminated and leper as long as they are impure (cf. Num 5:2-3; Lev 13:46; 14:10ff.). An area to be set aside 3,000 cubits (almost a mile) west of the city with roofed houses containing pits for human waste (not used on the Sabbath; beyond Sabbath limits; cf. Deut 23:13-15; Num 35:4ff.[?]). East of the city there are dwellings for lepers, gonorrheics, and those with nocturnal emissions (cf. Num 5:2). Col. 47. The Holiness of the Temple City (cf. Isa 52:1; Joel 4:17). All food entering the city must be pure and brought in skins of animals that were slaughtered at the Temple. Any other skin, even of pure animals, is forbidden. Col. 48. Pure and Impure animals. List of impure birds (Deut 14:1218). "Winged swarming things" that walk are forbidden; that creep, (Lev permitted (Lev 1 :20ff.; Deut 14:19). Israelites (and ger "resident aliens/ converts") may not eat carcasses (Deut 14:21; Ezek 44:31). Cols. 48-51. Death and the Purtfication of All the Cities. Mourning prohibitions (Deut 14:1-2; Lev 19:28; 21:5). Burial prohibited within homes
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST
I choose. ... He shall not keep many horses, or send back people to Egypt for war to add to his horses, silver, and gold. For I have warned you, 'you must not go back that way again' and he shall not have many wives, lest they cause his heart to go astray; nor shall he amass silver and gold to excess. When he is seated on his royal throne, they shall write for him this torah (copy) in the presence of the priests. .. " The omission of the word "copy" (mishneh) and the change from "he" to "they" mean that it is only the torah of the king, i.e., the regulations applying to the king, which is under priestly (and Levitic?) supervision, but it is not written by the king. "There" s'am is a repointing of the superfluous absolute infinitive som. The slight alteration of yasur to yasiru changes "lest his heart go astray" to "lest they (his wives) cause his heart to go astray." The qualifying "for war" severely compromises the prohibitions for commerce with Egypt. The other changes are the first person for God. The law of the captive maiden (Deut 21:10-14) now reads: "When you take the fields against your enemies, and I deliver them into your power, and you take some of them captive, and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire her and would take her to wife, and you shall bring her into your house, and you shall trim her hair, and you shall pare her nails, and you shall discard her captive's garb. She shall spend a month's time in your house lamenting her father and mother; after that you may come to her and possess her, and she shall be your wife. And she shall not touch your purity (i.e., food) for seven years, and she shall not eat of the offering of well-being until seven years have passed (afterward she may eat)" (63.13-15). "(If a man is guilty of a capital offense) and is put to death, and you hang him on a tree" (Deut 21:22) now reads "and you shall hang him upon a tree that he may die (64.8). This significant change is accomplished merely by transposing
111
50
Top: Fig. 3. Plan showing the dimensionsof the gates and the three stories of stoae and chambersalong the court'swalls for the tribes, priests,and Levites.Center:Fig. 4. Drawingshowingthe spikes, set atop the walls and gates of the outer court, to preventimpurebirds from pollutingthe Templecomplex. Bottom: Fig. 5. Schematicplan of a gate, the adjacentstoae, and the twelve stairs outside each gate of the outer court.
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the verb "to die" and altering its tense so that its meaning should be that death should result from hanging. Some Innovations and Their Scriptural Warrant (where ascertainable) Some innovations already have been indicated in the summary of contents, and others will be
112
u00103 0
Cubits moon of the seventh month (with Jub. 7:2ff.), it in effect gives the calendar two new-year days (as does Ezek 45:18-20 LXX, but with 3 different sacrifices). 2. Seven-day priestly consecration. It is celebrated annually beginning on the first day of the 31"• ll l l first month. Each day the consecrants offer one ram and one basket of bread according to their priestly divisions. The high priest officiates (in place of Moses, Exod 29:26), but in a year when the high priest himself is to be consecrated, then "elders of the priests" also officiate. Not one but two purgation bulls are sacrificed: one for the discussed in the section on polemics priests, the other for the people below. (perhaps based on Exod 29:36). Since the sect allows no additional A. Festivals sacrifices on the Sabbath, the Consecration Festival ends on the 1. The new moon of the first month. It is distinguished from other eighth day of the first month. 3. Pesach and unleavened new moons chiefly because it is the first day of the annual ritual for the bread (see summary). 4. New Fruit Festivals. These consecration of priests (see below). are celebrated 50 days apart. The Since it follows the sacrificial ritual festival day is always the fiftieth day of Num 29:lff., that is, the new
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and cities. One burial place per four cities (Num 35:34; Ezek 39:12). Lepers, gonorrheics, menstruants, and parturients are to be quarantined in special quarters. Procedure for purifying the house where death has occurred (cf. Num 19:14-15; Lev 11:33-34;Num 19:18; 31:22-23; Lev 11:32, etc.). Objects in the home need to be washed on the first, third, and seventh day, and persons must wash and launder on these days and be sprinkled with water of lustration on the third and seventh day (cf. Lev 11:25; 13:58; 15:5-11; Num 19:11ff.). The same applies to those making contact with a corpse "in the field," its bones, blood, or grave (Num 19:16, 18, 20). A woman carrying a dead fetus is contagiously impure as a grave. Whoever contacts an animal carcass or carries its bones, skin, or nails must launder and wash and is impure until sunset (Lev 1l:25ff.; 22:5ff.) Col. 51. Judges and Clerks (Deut 16:18ff.; Deut 1:16ff.; Exod 23:6ff.). Death penalty for accepting bribes. Cols. 51-52. Idolatry (Deut 16:21-22; Lev 26:lff.). Cols. 52-53. Laws of Slaughter in Temple and Environs. Forbidden to slaughter blemished animals (Deut 17:1; cf. Lev 22:20-21), pregnant animals, the parent with its offspring (cf. Lev 22:28; Deut 22:6). First-born must be slaughtered at the Temple (cf. Deut 15:19-23). Blemished first-born may be slaughtered and eaten at home by pure and impure alike (cf. Exod 13:15; Deut 12:22). Blood may not be consumed but must be drained and buried (cf. Deut 12:23-24; Lev 17:13). Prohibition to muzzle an ox while threshing (cf. Deut 25:4) and plowing with an ox and ass together (Deut 22:10). No profane (non-sacrificial) slaughter within Temple city and environs within a radius of a three-day journey (cf. Lev 17:3ff.). No slaughter or consumption of pure but blemished animals within a range of 30 ris (four miles) of the Temple. Cols. 53-54. Vows and Oaths (cf. Deut 12:26; 23:22-24; Num 33:3-16). Col. 54. Prophet or Dreamer (cf. Deut 13:2-6). Cols. 54-55. Subverter (Deut 13:7-12). Col. 55. Subverted Town (Deut 13:13-19). Cols. 55-56. Idolatry (cf. Deut 17:2-7). Col. 56. Priests, Levites, and Judges (cf. Deut 17:8-13). Cols. 56-59. The Law of the King (Deut 17:14-20). Multiple marriages forbidden lest wives cause "his heart to stray." This Torah is written for the king under priestly (and Levitic?) supervision. Upon coronation, a census is taken of males between ages 20 and 60, and the king appoints his commanders (cf. Num 1:3; Lev 27:3; Deut 20:9; 1 Sam 8:12; 2 Sam 8:1). Personal bodyguard of 12,000 elite, 1,000 per tribe (cf. Cant. 3:7-8, Num 31:3ff.; Exod 18:21ff.). Advisory council of 36: 12 chieftains, 12 priests, and 12 Levites (cf. Deut 17:20; 19:17). The king's wife must stem from his father's house, and he cannot remarry as long as she is alive (cf. Lev 18:8). The king's obligation to the people. Scaled mobilization for wars of defense: a tenth, fifth, third, and, in dire extremity, half of the people; but half must always remain in the cities for defense. The king receives a tithe of the spoil, the priests a thousandth, and the Levites a hundredth, and the remainder is divided equally between the army and the home front (cf. Num 31:27ff.; 1 Sam 30:24-26). Wars of aggression require a one-fifth mobilization. The king must consult the Urim and Thummim by means of the high priest (cf. Num 27:21). Curses and blessings. Col. 60. Priestly and Levitic Perquisites. Priestly: elevation-offerings tenupah), first-born, sanctification, jubilation sancta (the fruit of fourth-year trees), one-thousandth of the spoil and hunt and one-hundredth of the wild doves (cf. Deut 18:1-8; Num 18:9ff.; 31:28-29, 41; Lev 19:24). Levitic: tithe of grain, wine (must), and oil (olive), the shoulder of the offering of well-being, a hundredth of the spoil and hunt, and a tenth of the wild honey, and a fiftieth of the wild doves (cf. Num 18:21ff.; 31:30). The Levitic rites (Deut 18:5-8). Cols. 60-61. Prohibitions against Following the Abominations of the Nations (Deut 18:9-14).
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST
of the previous count and the first day of the new count. The New Barley (omer) Festival falls on "the day after the Sabbath" (Lev 23:11), interpreted by the sect as the first Sunday after the Festival of Unleavened Bread which, in its calendar, falls on the twenty-sixth day of the first month. The calendar of Qumran the same as Jubilee's (Jub. 6:23ff.) - is a solar calendar of 364 days or 52 weeks divided into 4 seasons of 13 weeks each or 3 months consisting of 30 + 30 + 31 days. Thus, the festivals and seasons always fall on the same day of the week. On the other hand, it is clear that the calendar is utopian, since there is no indication in the Scroll or in any of the other writings of the sect that they practiced intercalations. Falling short of the true solar year by a day and a quarter, the agricultural festivals would have fallen out of season in a relatively short time. The dates of the festivals unique to Qumran and stipulated for the first time in the Temple Scroll are as follows: Priestly Consecration begins New Barley (omer) New Wheat New Wine New Oil Wood-Offering Festival begins
1/ 1
Wednesday
1/26 3/15 5/3 6/22 6/23(?)
Sunday Sunday Sunday Sunday Monday(?)
a. New Barley and New Wheat. The sacrifice on the New Barley Festival requires one lamb in addition to its libation and mealoffering (Lev 23:12-13). The sect adds one ram and one he-goat for a purgation-offering (based on Num 28:26-30), the offerings for the Festival of the New Fruits. Thus the omer of grain brought that day must be the new barley. The new sacrifices for the New Wheat Festival consist of twelve rams and twelve loaves, each made of twotenths of an ephah of semolina (Lev 23:13; 24:5), the required mealoffering for the ram (Num 15:6; 28:28). The number 12 probably stands for the twelve tribes (so the twelve loaves on the table of Presence, Lev 24:5).
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b. New Wine (see summary). c. New Oil (see summary). 5. The Wood Offering Festival (see summary). 6. Day of Atonement (see summary). 7. Feast of Booths (see summary). B. The Temple and Its Courts The Scroll affirms that a Temple must exist in the land (Exod 25:8-9) and that its blueprint, which specifies its house installations, stairs, courts, and their chambers (1 Chr 28:11-12), was known to David (1 Chr 28:11ff.). The Scroll distinguishes between this Temple and the messianic Temple which God Himself will build on "the Day of Blessing" (cf. Enoch 90:29; Jub. 1:15-17, 26-29) but in which, apparently, the cult will remain unchanged. Nonetheless, there are features in the Temple which clearly mark it as utopian, e.g., the
cherubim-kapporet,the Urim and
Thummim, and the participation of the twelve tribes. Three square courts surround the sanctuary, and as additional purity safeguards, there are two more barriers - a wall surrounds the sanctuary and its nearby installations in the inner court and a moat surrounds the outer court (fig. 2). The plan of the courts is based on the wilderness camp (Numbers 2-3), best illustrated by
Col. 61. Prophets and False Prophets (Deut 18:15-22). Col. 61. Laws of Testimony (Deut 19:15-21). Levites are among the judges. Cols. 61-62. Mobilization (Deut 20:1-9). Cols. 62-63. Approaching and Besieging a City (Deut 20:10-18, [19-20]). Col. 63. Unsolved Murders (Deut 21:1-9). Cols. 63-64. The Captive Wife (Deut 21:10-14). She must not touch the "purities" of her husband or partake of the offering of well-being for seven years. [Col. 64]. Two Wives [Deut 21:15-17]. Col. 64. The Rebellious Son (Deut 21:18-21). Col. 64. Hanging for Capital Crimes or Giving Information to Foreign Nations or Absconding and Slandering Israel (cf. Deut 21:22-23; Lev 19:16). Col. 64. Restoring Lost Objects (Deut 22:1-3). [Col. 65]. Assisting Fallen Animals [Deut 22:4]. [Col. 65]. Dressing Like the Opposite Sex [Deut 22:5]. [Col. 65]. Mixed Seed [Deut 22:9, 11(?)]. Col. 65. Mother Bird and Her Young (Deut 22:6-7). Col. 65. Parapets for Roofs (Deut 22:8). Col. 65. The Defamed Wife (Deut 22:13-19). [Col. 66]. If the Bride is not a Virgin [Deut 22:20-21]. [Col. 66]. The Adulteress-Wife [Deut 22:22]. Col. 66. The Adulteress-Betrothed (Deut 22:23-24).
Col. 66. Adultery in the Field (Deut 22:25-27).
Col. 66. "Seized" and "Seduced" Virgins (Deut 22:28-29; Exod 22:15). Cols. 66-[67]. Laws of Incest (Deut 23:1; Lev 18:12-13, 17; 20:13, 17, 19, 21; Deut 27:22). in form; and (3) many technical terms are the same, indicating that the author of the Scroll made use of Ezekiel's account. On the other hand, (1) Ezekiel proposes two courts, the Scroll three; (2) Ezekiel's blueprint makes the sacrificial altar the geometric center, but in the Scroll it is the sanctuary (porch?); (3) the number and names of the
The last part of the Scroll follows the Deuteronomic but neither in sequence nor in entirety. the chambers of the outer court assigned to the priests, the three Levitic families, and the twelve tribes which also were grouped around the wilderness sanctuary (fig. 2). There are some resemblances but more fundamental differences between this Temple and that described by Ezekiel and the Solomonic and Herodian Temples described by Josephus. For example, like Ezekiel's temple, (1) the emphasis is on the courts, not the sanctuary; (2) the courts are square
114
Code,
gates differ as do the number, place, and distribution of the chambers. According to Yadin, the Scroll's minimal dependency on Ezekiel is due to the fact that God will construct Ezekiel's temple, hence qualifying more for the messianic Temple projected by the sect and not the one which man should build in Jerusalem. C. The Laws of Impurities These laws are arranged according to the following sequence:
Temple, Temple city, other cities, and the land. The basic principle is that the wilderness camp is equivalent to the Temple city and, hence, the laws of the former apply to the latter. Other cities must also be pure, but not holy, that is, their purity is not of the same degree as the Temple city. Moreover, the Temple city, requiring a three-day purification for admission, has the status of Mt. Sinai (cf. Exod 19:1015; IQSa 1:25-26). All cities have installations for lepers outside their bounds and for gonorrheics, parturients, and menstruants inside (i.e., quarantine), but none for those who are corpse-contaminated. However, in the Temple city all impuritybearers are excluded. Defecation, a defiling act, must take place in enclosed toilets, which are 3,000 cubits northwest of the Temple city but which may not be used on the Sabbath (sic!). The Temple city has no provisions for impure women, that is, menstruants and parturients, whereas it provides quarters for men with nocturnal emissions. Women
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would have to purify themselves in their own cities before they could enter the Temple city. Sexual intercourse, which causes ritual impurity, is forbidden in the Temple city, and, most likely, women were not permitted to live there. This ruling is probably the foundation for the fact recorded by Josephus that many Essene groups practiced celibacy (J. W. 1.120, 160f.). It also throws light on the celibate tendencies in the New Testament. They do not stem from the belief that sex is evil but are an accidental by-product of the requirements of ritual purity. Whoever aspires to live in the Temple city, i.e., in perpetual holiness, must of necessity lead a single life (cf. IQM 7:3-6). Marriage, then, is ritually but not morally defiling. Josephus, who attributes the sect's celibacy to its distrust of a woman's fidelity (J. W. 1.121), is therefore wrong. D. The Torah of the King In addition to a revised version of Deut 17:14-20 (see above), there is a supplement containing many innovations, such as the admonition to the king that he should submit to his advisory council. In the division of the spoils, the king receives a tenth from the
top. Then Num 31:27ff. and 1 Sam 30:24-25 are harmonized so that the clergy receives the spoils after the king, and finally, the remainder is divided equally between the soldiers and the home front. The rules concerning the wife bear the widest king's implications. She cannot be a foreigner (cf. Jub. 30:11; m. Sanh. 9:6; Philo, Laws 3:29). She must be from the king's family, "father's household," and more strikingly, she is his only wife; he cannot remarry until she dies (cf. also CD 4:20-5:2). In effect, polygamy and divorce are forbidden, and important light is cast on the antecedents of Mark 10:2-12.
the sect is opposing the point of view adopted by the establishment. The following list is not complete but only representative. Most of the opposing views cited come from rabbinic literature which is much later in composition but which reflects older tradition. A. Festivals 1. Calendar and dates of festivals and new festivals (see above). 2. The seven-day consecration of the priests began on the first day of the first month (Nisan). The majority of the rabbis held that it begins on the twenty-third of the previous month, Adar (Sipra, Millu'im 1:36; cf. T. Jon.), but Akiba shared the view of the sect (Sipre Num. 68). 3. The Pesach was sacrificed before the daily offering (tamid). This sequence was opposed by the rabbis (m. Pesah. 5:lff.) and the Temple practice according to Josephus (J. W. 7.423; Ant. 14.65).
E. The Higher Status of the Levites (see below) Polemics "Speculation on the potential effects of polemics remains without foundation" (IDB Sup 1976: 218). This statement is correct in regard to the previous corpus of Dead Sea documents. But with the publication of the Temple Scroll, the polemical thrust of the sect's laws is projected into clear relief. Indeed, when a law is emphasized either by alteration or repetition, the probability exists that
The inner part of the scroll, cols. 55-57, which includeslaws governing subverters,priests, Levites,judges, and the king.
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The ritual was incumbent on all males 20 years and up (Jub. 49:17). It is to be eaten any time during the night and in the Temple courts (with Jub. 49:16-20), a practice which is contrary to the opinion that it must be eaten during the first third of the night (Jub. 49:12) or until midnight (m. Pesah. 10:9), and that the rabbis allowed it to be eaten anywhere within the city (m. Zebah. 5:8). 4. The date of the New Barley Festival was fixed on the twenty-sixth of the first month, interpreting "the day after the Sabbath" (Lev 23:11, 15) to mean the first Sunday after the Feast of Unleavened Bread. On the other hand, the Pharisees interpreted the date as the day after the Festival, i.e., the sixteenth of the month, and the Sadducees, the first Sunday after Pesach. 5. The second tithe (Deut 14:22-27) must be brought to Jerusalem each year (with Jub. 32:10-12; Ant. 4.24), in opposition to the rabbis, who claimed that the tithe of the third and sixth year (Deut 14:28-29; 26:12-26) was to be left at home for the underprivileged. This tithe might be eaten only in the outer court and only on Sabbaths and festivals, again counter to rabbinic traditions, which allowed the tithe to be eaten anytime and anywhere in the city of Jerusalem. 6. The Day of Atonement. The requirement of three rams was in agreement with Elazar b. Simeon and against Judah and the majority (Yoma 70b). 7. The Feast of Booths. The booths must be constructed anew each year; Shammai agreed and Hillel disagreed (m. Sukk. 1:1). B. The Sacrifices 1. The purgation-offering required a meal-offering and libation (Lev 14:12ff.; m. Menah. 9:6); the rabbis did not (Menah. 90b-91b). 2. The complete sacrificial ritual with the purgation-offering must be completed before the wholeoffering is sacrificed, a requirement which the rabbis did not endorse (m. Zebah. 10:12).
116
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3. On the altar, different to the Levites (Num 18:21-24, versus sacrifices must be kept apart (against Sota 47b). the rabbis [m. Menah. 9:4]). 2. The fruit of trees in their 4. All libations are poured on fourth year went to priests (not to the altar hearth (with Jub. 7:5). The owners, Sipre Num. 6). rabbis, however, maintained that this 3. Wild bee honey was subject was true for discrete libations and to a Levitic tithe. The rabbis held that those accompanying other that the honey of 2 Chr 31:5 was sacrifices must be poured out on the made from dates (y. Bik. 1:3). altar base (Sukk. 48b-49b). 4. A foreleg portion, cheeks, 5. The blood of sacrifices and stomach of the well-being maintained its sanctity even after it offering were priestly portions. This was drained from the altar (against view was held by the Tosefta t. Zebah. 6:9, the majority view). (Menah. 7:17-18), which required 6. The purgation-offering was burned outside the Temple city "in a that these gifts undergo elevation (tenuphah, a sacrificial ritual), and is place set apart for purgationin disagreement with the rabbis, who offerings" (16.12). This was contrary maintained that these gifts were to Lev 4:12 and t. Yoma 3:16-17, priestly perquisites from profane which prescribed that it was to be slaughter and not from sacrifice (m. burned in the "ash heap/house" of Hul. 10:1). other sacrifices. 5. The foreleg portion of the C. The Perquisites for Priests and priests did not include the shoulder, Levites which belonged to the Levites 1. The first tithe was assigned (versus m. Hul. 10:4).
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D. The Impurities 1. Since the Temple and Jerusalem were the direct continuation of the camp and Tabernacle of the wilderness, similar prohibitions existed. The rabbis, however, divided Jerusalem into three sections: the priestly camp (Temple), the Levitic camp (the Temple Mount), and the Israelite camp (the city), cf. t. Kelim 1:12. For the sect, this meant that all impurities, even the slightest, banished their bearers from the entire city. Moreover, the Temple and its city possessed the sanctity of the Sinaitic encampment and thus required a three-day purification for admission (Exod 19:10-15). 2. Blemishes which disqualified priests from officiating in the Temple (Lev 21:17ff.) also disqualified Israelites from entering the Temple city. This rule showed the tendency of the sect to extend the priestly regimen to the entire people, so that they, too, would become holy (Exod 19:6; 22:30; Lev 19:2; Deut 14:2). 3. Skins of impure animals were also impure in the Temple city (with Ant. 12.146 and against m. Hul. 9:2; Sipra, Shrasim 10:6). As noted in the summary, the Scroll was even more extreme, banning even skins of pure animals which were not slaughtered as sacrifices.
1:1; m. Mid. 1:9). This ruling was observed by the Essenes in Jerusalem, as attested by Josephus (J. W. 2.147-49), who also asserted that the Essenes refrained from defecation on the Sabbath (J. W. 2.147-49). The topographic name bethso near the Essene Gate (J. W. 5.144f.) may be a Greek transliteration of Hebrew beth sooah, "toilet," and its proximity to the Essene Gate may locate the latter in the western section of the first wall; it was probably a small gate or wicket used exclusively by the Essenes to reach their toilets.
Celibate tendencies in the New Testament are an accidental by-product of the requirements of ritual purity. E. Sundry Laws 1. The seducer described in Exod 22:15-16; Deut 22:28-29 must marry the girl. The rabbis hold that these are discrete cases, but in both, the father may veto the marriage (Mek. Mishpatim 17). 2. Hanging was a mode of execution (Deut 21:22-23). It was so attested for the end of the Second Temple period (e.g., y. Hag. 2:2), but the rabbis maintained that hanging was solely for the display of the executed criminal's corpse (Sanh. 46b).
The most striking literary feature is the change of scriptural quotations to the first person; God is the speaker. 4. The prohibition of Lev 22:28 fell on both father and mother of the slaughtered animal, whereas rabbis (the majority) held that it applied solely to the mother (m.
F. The Torah of the King
1. The king may not hire mercenaries, contrary to the practice of John Hyrcanus and Aristobulus (Ant. 13.249-304). Hul.78b). 2. The king's wife was chosen 5. The house where death had his occurred and everything in it was from father's household (see The rabbis maintained that m. Num. 126, above). impure (versus Sipre Kelim 10:1). every Israelite was eligible (e.g., t. Sanh. 4:2). 6. As long as the dead fetus 3. The king may have only was in the womb, the woman was impure as a grave (cf. Ezek 4:12-13; one wife (see above), but the rabbis denied by the rabbis: m. Hul. 4:3). placed a limit of 18 (m. Sanh. 2:4). 4. The king was subject to his 7. Human excrement defiled the Temple city (denied by the advisory council and high priest; the rabbis: y. Pesah. 7:11; cf. m. Tamid latter must sanction all wars of
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST
aggression by consulting the Urim and Thummim. The Pharisees publicly requested John Hyrcanus (or Alexander Janneus) to relinquish the office of high priest (Ant. 13.288; Kid. 66a). The Scroll may also be responding to Hyrcanus' reputed prophetic powers (Ant. 13.282, 300, 322; J. W. 1.68f.; So.ta 33a). 5. The offices of king and high priest were not held by the same person. On the other hand, the Hasmoneans (non-Zadokites!), beginning with Jonathan, assumed both offices against popular oppo-
sition (above). The Hasmonean background of the Scroll is thus clarified by these specific details of the king's torah. G. The Levites Acquired a Higher Status That many polemics have yet to be ferreted from the Scroll can be demonstrated by this theme, gleaned from a first reading of the Scroll. Its polemical nature can be discerned only after it is defined: 1. The central and most important gate of the eastern sides of the middle and outer courts was named for the Levites (39.12; 40.14). 2. Three sections of chambers were assigned to each of the three Levitic families in the outer court, whereas priests received two sections and the tribes one each (44). 3. The new wine was drunk by priests, Levites, tribal leaders, and Israel, in that order (21.4ff.). Moreover, during the New Wine (and New Oil) Festival, one of the 14 lambs and 14 rams was assigned to the Levites, one for the priests, and one for each tribe. If Levi was also one of the twelve tribes, as elsewhere in the sect's tribal lists, it then received a double portion (21.[1]; 22.12). 4. It was the first of the tribes to have the privilege of sacrificing on the Wood-Offering Festival (23.9-24.11).
117
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118
SEPTEMBER 1978
5. The word "Levites" was inserted into the citation from Deut 19:17 so that judges will be chosen from Levites as well as from priests (61.8-9). 6. There was equal representation from priests, Levites, and laity on the king's advisory council (57.12-15). 7. The Levitic perquisites were the first tithe, the shoulder of the well-being offering, one-hundredth of the spoil and hunt, one-tenth of the wild honey, one-fiftieth of the wild doves (60.6-9), and one pair of the 14 rams and 14 lambs offered on the New Wine and New Oil Festivals (above). The first tithe and the Levitic share of the spoil was
The Temple Scroll clearly projects the pqlemical thrust of the sect's law.
later rabbinic rulings declared that slaughtering may be done by nonpriests (m. Zebah. 3:1), in practice, only priests performed the slaughter (m. Yoma 2:3; m. Mid. 4:7; b. Ketub. 106a). Thus, the Scroll's assignment of sacrificial slaughter by the Levites constituted an innovation. 9. Most significant of all: Levites were assigned priestly functions, such as blessing Israel (60.11, cf. Deut 10:8; 18:5 LXX, Samuel). The Scroll also assigned them the duty legaret "to officiate," which, however, can only mean "assist" in reference to the Levites (cf. 60.14). Levites are forbidden at pain of death to have access to the altar (35.4-9), but presumably, the blessing may be offered elsewhere (m. So.ta 7:6; the rabbis even permitted blemished priests to offer the blessing, t. So.ta 7:8). In sum, the Levites were distinguished even further from the laity by being assigned new perquisites from sacrifices and offerings and new judicial and cultic duties, including those hitherto exclusively held by the priests. The quantity and thrust of these innovative rules are not the product of an abstract speculation but are a polemic whose historical background can readily be discerned. It is a protest against the Wicked Priest (Jonathan) who usurped the high priesthood and displaced the true Zadokite line. Did he or his successors also deprive the Levites of
investigating the tensions and struggles among priestly families and between priests and Levites at the end of the Second Temple period. Date, Status, Authorship The Temple Scroll was composed probably during the reign of John Hyrcanus (135-104) or slightly earlier, i.e., during the second half of the 2nd century B.C.E. Three lines of evidence lead to this conclusion: (1) the writing of Rockefeller 43.336 is dated at the end of the 2nd century B.C.E.,giving a terminus ad quem. (2) The language is heavily rabbinic, hence, not pre-Hasmonean. (3) The content: (a) the requirement of rings for tying animals in the slaughterhouse was introduced by John Hyrcanus, probably after he abandoned the Pharisees for the Sadducees (y. So.ta 9:11; Ant. 13.296); (b) the law of the king fits the Hasmoneans; John Hyrcanus was the first to hire mercenaries. Death by hanging was also a Hasmonean practice. There can be no doubt that the Dead Sea sectarians regarded the Temple Scroll as quintessential Torah, the true word of God. One indication already has been noted: the change to the first person so that the entire Scroll was the speech of God. A further indication was that the Tetragrammaton was written in the square alphabet, the same as in the other canonical books of the Dead Sea scrolls,
ordained by scripture (Num 18:2124; 31:30); the others were innovations. However, historical evidence certifies that the priests had preempted the Levitic tithe at some point during the Second Temple period (cf. Jub. 13:24-26; Yebam. 86b), and there is no record that the law of the spoil was ever observed. Thus, every Levitic perquisite enumerated by the Scroll would have constituted an innovation for its day. The most radical innovation, however, was the shoulder of the well-being offering. Neither was the shoulder ever considered a sacred portion in the Bible nor were the Levites ever entitled to sacrificial There can be no doubt that the Dead Sea sectarians flesh. This ruling can be shown to regarded the Temple Scroll as quintessential Torah, the true be based on the Scroll's interpreword of God. tation of Deut 18:1-3. 8. Levites performed the some of their perquisites? At some whereas it was written in paleosacrificial slaughter in the cult (col. Hebrew in the noncanonical scrolls. point, the priests had preempted the 22.4). Here too the Scroll polemiLevitic tithe (Yed. 86b; Jub. 13:24Yadin believes that the Scroll cized against contemporary Temple and the the identification of the Levitic corroborates role as sacrificial 26) practice. Early in the Second Temple slaughterers, and the Scroll demands sect with the Essenes. His evidence period, Levites were recorded as their restoration to the Levites. The includes four items: (1) the Essenes sacrificial slaughterers (Ezek 44:10Scroll repeatedly insists that the refrained from anointing themselves 11; 2 Chr 30:17; 35:6, 10-11). with oil (J. W. 2.123), a reluctance foreleg portion assigned to the However, by the end of the Second reflected in the sect's festival of New priests from the sacrifices does not Temple period - at the time of the include the shoulder; had it been Oil; (2) the Essenes also provided Scroll - this function was themselves an area outside of the usurped by the priests? Thus, the preempted by the priests. Though Scroll gives new grounds for city for disposing their bodily waste
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST
119
The publishers - the Israel Exploration Society, the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University, and the Shrine of the Book - deserve universal accolades for. their prodigious labors. The volumes are spacious and handsomely bound, the print is a delight to read, the illustrations are ample, and, above all, the plates are remarkably clear - almost obviating the need to check the originals. The forthcoming English edition undoubtedly will possess these same virtues. A final word about the editor. At the beginning of this introductory volume, Yadin writes: "Of all the scrolls studied so far, there is none whose complete comprehension depends so much on
thoroughly at home with their vocabulary and thought. Refinements, of course, will be suggested, but his restored text will remain standard for a long time to come. Moreover, Yadin's primary skills as an archeologist are given full play, as evidenced by the comprehensive and lucid exposition of the Temple blueprint and the reconstruction of its architectural features. Equally meritorious are his discernment of the polemical thrust of the Scroll and his assiduous search for traces of opposing views in subsequent historical and rabbinical literature. Finally, he deserves commendation merely for his splendid organization of this heterogeneous and complex codex. With Yadin's introduction (vol. I), the inquiring layman as well as the scholar can easily find their Yadin believes that the Scroll corroborates the identification way through the Scroll's maze of of the sect with the Essenes. details. Some have wondered, even in at or control the researcher's itself from the mainstream. Chrisit took Yadin ten years of least the sect at knew why print, many understanding tianity, then, was published. Now the Scroll until each of which areas of cult where the sacrificial research, Qumran, that we have it in hand and can demands professional expertise: with its related laws of purity were in suspension. And what the sect Bible, rabbinics, history, archaeoappreciate his magisterial achieveand ment, it is a wonder - especially in logy theology, scroll research, suspended temporarily Christianity who and made permanent. among present view of his ongoing academic and philology scholars . . . is equipped to control This summary has only been governmental responsibilities - that it took him only ten years. In truth, all these fields? Certainly not the able to touch the highlights. Yet, had he published only the plates, it The lines" these writer of its has said to indicate been 7). (I, p. enough would have taken at least as many truth is that Yadin has made vast scope and rich complexity. fundamental contributions to each of years for someone to collate the Enough work remains to occupy these fields in his study of the teams of scholars for decades to readings and interpretations of many in the field, dispersed over scholars he that it noted let be Scroll. restorations New and come. First, readings in these the consulted will be proposed. New questions will many periodicals, and even then, it experts freely is doubtful that Yadin's masterful various fields, and he fully be asked and old ones will be illuminated. Yet, even at the outset, organization and analysis would acknowledges their aid in his have been matched. His publication with the publication of the editio footnotes; on one problem he of the Temple Scroll establishes commissioned this writer to conprinceps, it is safe to say that the the But an excursus. tribute bridgeheads in every problem area Temple Scroll will make a vital of Dead Sea scrolls research from restoration of the text and the contribution in filling the gap between Biblical and Rabbinic analysis and synthesis of its contents which the scholarly community will be able to launch successful forays are entirely his own. The paleoJudaism and in shedding abundant into the remaining terra incognita of graphic restoration is brilliant; light upon the development of the land of Israel at the turn of the sectarianism at the close of Israel's clearly, Yadin has "lived" with the millennium. is and the Dead Sea sectarians of second commonwealth. (J. W. 2.147-49; 5.144ff.; Ant. 15.373); (3) the Essenes also championed the imposition of the priestly rules for the Temple and the priesthood upon the city of Jerusalem and all of Israel; (4) the sect's opposition to the structure of the Temple and its courts in Jerusalem sets it uncompromisingly apart from the Sadducees. Yadin also asks how this super-legalistic sect which gave the Temple and its sacrifice such a central role could have influenced Christianity, which rejected the sacrificial system. His answer is convincing: the founders of Christianity came into contact with the sect at the end of the latter's existence, long after it had separated
120
SEPTEMBER 1978
It is with a special sense of gratitude and satisfaction that we reprint the entire first issue of The Biblical Archaeologist on our silver anniversary, for forty years ago out of New Haven, Connecticut, a fourpage, typewritten 8" x 5" pamphlet, The Biblical Archaeologist, made its first appearance. The masthead designated G. Ernest Wright as editor, and W. F. Albright, Millar Burrows, and E. A. Speiser as the Board of Editors. In the "Announcement" of the new quarterly, Wright pointed out that
Forty Years Ago
THE
BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST
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The AmericanSchools of OrientalResearch a) m.n Bbdw
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1938
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WHATWERETHE CHERUBIM? Today we think of a cherub as a tiny winged boy, folthe of Renaissance tradition artists (see Fig. i). lowing This conception of was directly borrowed from pictures Graeco-Roman "loves" or Erotes, familiar to us from the exof Pompeii. of the cherucavations The actual appearance bim of the Old Testament was already forgotton before the time of Christ, and Josephus A.D.) says that (1st century "no one can tell what they were like."
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST
The need for a readable, nontechnical, yet thoroughly reliable account of archaeological discoveries as they are related to the Bible has been frequently expressed of late. The Bulletin and Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, like other similar publications, are a bit too technical for the hundreds of ministers and Bible teachers who are not specialists in the field. To meet this need the experiment, of which this leaflet is a prospectus, is being launched. The plan is to publish at 50 cents a year a small popular quarterly, describing and interpreting the results of Biblical Archaeology. The materials used will represent the latest authoritative research, as exemplified by the samples which appear in this number. The form, size, and contents will depend largely upon the response which the project receives. (BA 1 [1938] 4) Recently, Emily Wright graphically recalled the enthusiasm and hesitant expectation which accompanied the appearance of that first issue: It seems only yesterday that my husband of seven months came bounding into the room (Millar Burrows' office and the only office ASOR had) with the first copy of our first "child" hot off the "press!" We couldn't believe it really was. I don't think the "proper" Prof. Burrows was
121
as overjoyed as we - at that bemused "cherub" of the Renaissance on a publication (?) of the ASOR. But he was indulgent. Looking back, I still don't see how Ernest managed it so soon after our arrival - he had only
begun his job at ASOR on Jan. 1. And all the previous fall, we had been laboring in Haverford to get the A in Shems stuff in order for publication (and he was still writing text). Well there it was! To whom
would we send it? And who would do the sending? (Guess who!) And once they'd seen the sample issue, would anybody buy it? And where was the money to come from for publicity? Incredibly, people did subscribe, and
* 2
THEBIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST TheBiblical Archaeologistis edited by G. ErnestWright,under
the direction
of the Board of Editors
of the American Schools of Orien-
tal Research, consisting of Professors W.F. Albright of JohnsHopkins University,
Millar Burrows of Yale University,
and E. A. Speiser
University of Pennsylvania. It is to be published quarterly. scription price is 50o per year.
of the
The sub-
Since the veil of the Tabernacle was decorated with embroidered cherubim, and the walls and the religious objects of Solomon's temple lavishly adorned with them, -we ought to be able to identify them in contemporary SyroPalestinian art. The account of the Ark of the Covenant shows that only a creature with wings can be considered. If, therefore, we study all known representations of animals and hybrid creatures, partly animal, we find one which is much more commonthan any other winged creature, so much so that its identification with the cherub is certain: that is the or In lion with human head. Egypt the winged sphinx winged wingless sphinx and the griffin appear; in Babylonia and Assyria the winged bull with a humanhead prevails; but in Syria and Palestine it is the winged sphinx which is dominant in art and religious symbolism. The God of Israel was often designated as "He who sitteth (on) the cherubim" (I Sam. 4:4, etc.). The concepby reption underlying this designation is well illustrated resentations of a king seated on a throne supported on each side by cherubim, which have been found at Byblus, Hamath, and Megiddo, all dating between 1200 and 800 B.C. Fig. 2 is the first mentioned, showing King Hiram of Byblus (Periodof the Judges) seated upon his cherub throne. Pottery incense altars found at Taanach and Megiddo are archaeological parto the wheeled lavers ("bases") of Solomon's temple, allels which were decorated with lions and cherubs, according to I Kings 7:36. The primary function of the cherub in Israelite religious symbolism is illustrated by two Biblical passages. A very ancient hymn, found twice in the Bible, has the words, "And He rode upon a cherub and did fly" (I Sam. 22: the second is Ezek. 10:20. The conception 11, Ps. 18:11); of the deity as standing or as enthroned on an animal or hybrid creature was exceedingly common in the ancient Near East, but it was most common in Syria and Northern Mesopotamia between 2000 and 700 B.C. In Babylonia the figure of a deity is replaced in certain cases by a winged shrine and later by a thunderbolt. So in Israelite symbolism between Glory (Jehovah) was 1500 and 900 B.C., the invisible
conceived as enthroned upon the golden cherubim or standing on a golden bull.
t_'
r,*
G. Ernestand Emily Wright-Summerof 1938. month by month we watched the subscription lists grow - requiring ever more subscription forms and bills to be cranked off the mimeograph machine. (BA 39 [1977] 98) That many changes have occurred since that first issue scarcely needs to be mentioned: more and larger pages, a rising subscription rate, a slightly altered title, different editors, authors, editorial boards, publishers, and production-editorial assistants. Yet it is our hope that these changes the signs of the times and qf time - do not obscure the continuity which ties the original to the descendant. To provide a journal which maintains the enthusiasm, vitality, intentions, and audience which the initial issue attempted to achieve is, in itself, a celebration qf our silver anniversary.
W. F. Albright
SEPTEMBER1978
Herod's Nabataean Neighbor Herod Antipas, who reigned in Galilee from 4 B.C. to 39 A.D., was strong and clever enough to be called "that fox" by Jesus (Luke 13:32) and "king" by Mark (Chap. 6:14), but he had a neighbor who was stronger and more clever than he. That was Aretas IV (9 B.c.-40 A.D.), king of the Nabataeans, whom St. Paul mentions in I Cor. 11:32. Herod had married the daughter of this king; but during a visit to Rome he had met his sister-in-law, Herodias, over whom he so lost his head that a marriage was arranged for her. For denouncing this marriage, John the Baptist was imprisoned and later beheaded. Herod's first wife, the daughter of Aretas, fled to her father, who sent an army and soundly defeated his son-in-law. The ancient historian Josephus tells us that Aretas' daughter had asked to be sent to Machaerus, just east of the Dead Sea. Director Glueck of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem has been thoroughly exploring this region, and has discovered that Machaerus was in Herod's territory, but so close to the border that a flight of only a few miles would bring the Nabataean princess to the safety of her father's kingdom. The power of Aretas, however, was not confined to the boundaries of his small kingdom. He controlled the trade routes to the north as far as Damascus and southern Syria, and to the south into Arabia and the mouth of the Red Sea. His ancestors were hardy Arabs who had invaded the territory of the Edomites during the fourth century B.C., driven them from their home,
and taken Petra (Sela of the Old Testament) for their own capital. By cunning diplomacy and the wealth derived from controlling the caravan routes, the father and grandfather of Aretas had brought their little country to a state of affluence and power. A mine of information on the art and religion of these Nabataeans in the time when Christ was teaching in Palestine and the rabbis were developing the Mishna has been opened by the excavation of a small temple at Khirbet et-Tannur, not far from Petra, southeast of the Dead Sea. This temple, built in an admirable location at the intersection of two valleys, was richly adorned with statues and images of the favorite gods and goddesses. Fig. 3 is an altar of incense which was found there by the American School's excavations. On the front is the figure of Baal whom they thought to be the same as Greek Zeus and the Roman Jupiter. The chief goddess was Atargatis, sometimes representedas a fishgoddess, and sometimes as a goddess of grain. Another figure is the goddess of Good Luck, Tyche, shown on the left side of the altar in Fig. 3. Fig. 4 shows a workman lifting a block of the pavement to find a small receptacle for offerings below. An inscription tells us that a man by the name of Natayrael had built this temple during the second year of his king, Aretas IV; that is, in 7 B.C. The religion practiced there was another of those pagan religions which confronted the early disciples of Jesus.
(cont. from p. 90) few Cretan sites have produced Cypriotic ware. Jeremy B. Rutter, in "A Plea for the Abandonment of the Term 'Submycenaean,"' noted that the term began as a designation for tomb ceramics but soon became a chronological indicator to the entire Mycenean culture sphere. Skeats first used the term in 1934 to date vases of the Salamis cemetery which Kavvadias had excavated in 1893. From then until 1964, "Submycenaean" indicated a chronological stage between the latest Mycenean pottery from the Argolid and the beginning of protogeometric types in Attica. In the following decade, a controversy brewed among various scholars as to the proper application of the term. Foremost among them were Desborough and Deshayes, the former maintaining that "Submycenaean" is a period of time within a geographical area,
i.e., within western Attica, which was contemporary with the latest Mycenean in other areas, whereas the latter insisted that there must be a chronological rather than a regional distinction between Mycenean and "Submycenaean." Since then, the term "Submycenaean" has generally designated only funerary assemblages and been applied to a fraction of the Mycenean culture sphere of the 14th and 13th centuries B.C. Rutter now advocates that his "awkward"term be discarded altogether and be substituted by one combining geographical and chronological designations such as "Western Attic LH III Phase 5." "In such a combination, the geographical determinative would distinguish between the shorter ceramic subperiods and be a direct indicator of the source of cultural and artistic influence."
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST
G. E. WRIGHT
LOTTA MOREAU GASTER
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Book Reviews Messiah and Temple, by Donald Juel. Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series 31. 223 pp. Missoula: Scholars Press, 1977; $4.50. Both the author and Nils Dahl, who directed it, are to be congratulated for this superb Yale Dissertation. It is everything a dissertation should be: a firstrate contribution, concise, and clear. Through the medium of the charge by false witnesses that Jesus would destroy the Temple, Juel studies the Marcan passion narrative and makes sense of it on a literary level. More important, he challenges some very prominent methodologies in vogue today in Marcan studies. In CBQ 39 (1977), 283-85, I reviewed a collection of essays related to the Perrin school, The Passion in Mark (ed. W. Kelber), and remarked that the style of Marcan exegesis exhibited in some of those essays was between 90* and 180" in the wrong direction. I find that Juel is almost entirely in the right direction. He resists the temptation to make the interpretation of Mark depend on highly conjectural distinctions between pre-Marcan tradition and Marcan redaction and works on the principle that the final product made good sense to the person who produced it - a sense that can be detected without elaborate presuppositions about the author's adversaries. (One should not confuse John and Mark; it is not guesswork to suppose that John had adversaries inside and outside Christianity, for he makes that clear; Mark's adversaries can be reconstructed only by guesses about how Mark changed his sources and guesses about how anti-Twelve, anti-Petrine motifs go against the surface impressions of the Gospel.) For Mark, the two statements about the destructipn of the Temple and about Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed (14:57-62) are not to be interpreted as haphazard joinings from A and B passion sources. No matter where he got them, Mark sees them as belonging together, since he places them together again on the lips of Jesus' opponents at the foot of the cross (15:29-32). They are not totally false perceptions about Jesus' work and identity; rather, they are false only as they are crassly misunderstood by Jesus' opponents, whom Mark pictures as schemers determined to reject Jesus. An element of truth is already perceived in them as Jesus dies, for then, the veil of the Temple is torn, and the centurion is brought
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST
to acknowledge that this is God's Son (15:38-39). An even deeper level of truth may be known to the reader who sees the Christian community of the 60s or 70s as a Temple, not made with hands, beginning to replace the old Temple of Judaism (which, indeed, may by then have been destroyed), and as one whose faith in Jesus as the Son of God is enshrined in the divine revelation placed at the beginning of the Gospel (1:1; see also 1:11). By way of another example, even if it came from a separate source, the mockery of Jesus as a prophet (14:65) should be interpreted in the light of its present context. Jesus has told the high priest that he "will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power." The Christian knows that this was a prophecy, for God did raise Jesus up and place Jesus at His right hand. And so it is ironic that his opponents mock his ability to prophesy when he has just given grounds to believe it and when the scene that immediately follows (Peter's threefold denial before the cock crowed twice) will also testify to it. Juel's approach does not solve historical problems, but it shows that the Marcan passion narrative is a coherent story that would have made sense to its readers - and still makes sense today, if we do not ask the wrong questions or make the wrong presuppositions. RAYMOND E. BROWN
Union Theological Seminary (N.Y.C.) The Message of Jonah: A Theological Commentary, by Terence E. Fretheim. 142 pp. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1977; paper. $4.95. This is not an ordinary commentary on the book of Jonah. That is, one will not find here philological ruminations about the Hebrew text of Jonah accompanied by stray notes about various and sundry other matters appended almost as an afterthought (or pre-thought!). Rather, as the subtitle indicates, what Fretheim is doing in this volume is theological in orientation. As the reader will quickly discover, Fretheim is not uninformed about technical matters (philological or otherwise). But this book is his attempt to concentrate upon "the most important aspects of Jonah, its theological and kerygmatic content" (p. 11). The first five chapters lay the groundwork. Chapter I concludes that the major theological problem addressed by the book of Jonah is "the question of God's justice" (p. 24). It is this - rather than the fish, the question of Israel's mission to the Gentiles, or anything else - which best explains the format of the book, especially the divine-human dialogue in chapter four. Chapter II argues that the figure of Jonah was characteristic of every Israelite. The negative reaction at the idea of offering life to the hated Assyrians would have been widely shared in ancient Israel. But beyond that, the book of Jonah deals with things which would
125
have meaning for "an audience which is experiencing real hardship" (p. 34). Not only is Jonah (- every Israelite) the subject of the composition, Jonah (= a man of faith) is also characteristic of the audience for which the biblical work was intended. Accordingly, Fretheim concludes that "the book was written not only about Jonah but for him" (p. 37). In Chapter III, Fretheim discusses the proper nouns and the various key words in the book. One wonders why such words as ydc ("know"), Dnh ("please"), and dbr ("speak";"word")were not included in this section, but those which are included are well done indeed. Especially is this true of the discussion of Sub ("repent"). Chapter IV contains a very useful survey of the use of irony in Jonah, along with Fretheim's view of its literary structure. In the section on "The Unity of Jonah," Fretheim discusses the problem of the psalm which appears in Jonah 2. Though some (including this reviewer) will not be convinced by his arguments that the author of chapters 1, 3, and 4 "composed a psalm out of traditional poetic materials and used it for his particular purposes" (p. 60), his discussion is nonetheless balanced and helpful. In Chapter V, Fretheim addresses the tricky question of the historicity of Jonah. Again, some may feel that Fretheim has erred here, but in my opinion, it is precisely here that Fretheim has done his best work. His own point of view shines through in the following excerpt. "What is most important is enabling the message of the book to be heard clearly. It is commonly thought that if one has been convinced of the story's historicity (or nonhistoricity), then one has somehow heard its message. But the question of 'happenedness' is only preliminary to a discernment of the message of the book" (p. 61). In this vein, Fretheim decides that the balance of probability favors viewing the book of Jonah as comparable to the parables of Jesus and offers a judicious opinion about the appeal which is commonly made to the fact that Jesus' citation of Jonah furnishes evidence of historicity. "Jesus may have referred to Jonah in much the same way that a modern preacher might refer to incidents from the parables of Jesus, e.g., the merciful deeds of the Good Samaritan" (pp. 62-63). In short, Fretheim views Jonah as "a satirical, didactic (or theological) short story"(p. 72). The remaining chapters include discussion of each of the four chapters of Jonah and two homilies from Fretheim which are based upon his theological understanding of the book. Though these chapters are in more conventional "commentary" format, they are nonetheless well worth reading. In all chapters, what is important about this little book is, above all, its emphasis upon the message of biblical Jonah and its refusal to be sidelined by other questions which detract from that central task.
Jerusalem as Jesus Knew It: Archaeology As Evidence, by John Wilkinson. 208 pp. London: Thames and Hudson, 1978; $8.95. This unpretentious little book is in refreshing contrast with most of the books on biblical archeology which have appeared in recent years. What it lacks in external appearance it makes up in content. It is a careful, up-to-date examination of the archeological remains associated with the Gospel stories which have their setting in the vicinity of Jerusalem. The central focus of the book is archeological, but the author also concerns himself with the historical background of the stories, the intention of the biblical writers, the topography of the area, and even such data as soil types and rainfall patterns. Not primarily interested in locating and describing holy places, the author is concerned to gather and interpret all data which help one "to see Jesus' significance in his day." Ancient sites are important to him because of the light which they may cast on the events which transpired there and because of the role which they have in proclaiming the message and ministry of Jesus. In dealing with the events of Jesus' ministry, the author is constantly confronted with problems of critical interpretation. He is aware of these problems, but the scope of the book does not allow him to deal with them exhaustively. He readily admits that the Gospels are not biographies, but concludes that all four Gospels present "a generally reliable picture of parts of Jesus' life and work." Holy places associated only with the Johannine tradition (e.g., the raising of Lazarus) are accorded the same treatment as those supported by the Synoptics. In cases where the identifications of sites are disputed, the author clearly weighs the evidence for each and defends the site which he believes to be authentic. Herod's palace at the Citadel rather than the Antonia fortress is presented as the place of Jesus' trial. The site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is defended as the place of Jesus' crucifixion and burial. The Garden Tomb is easily shown to be the result of modern imagination. Emmaus is located at Qalunieh (Motza'-Colonia). Khirbet Imwas, Abu Ghosh, and el Qubeibeh are dismissed as contending sites. Some nonarcheological controversies are examined also. For example, blame for the execution of Jesus is placed primarily on the Sanhedrin. Pilate is not exonerated, but his guilt lies only in his being cowed into ordering the death of an innocent man. This book is recommended for any reader who is interested in the New Testament or in the archeology of ancient Palestine. It should be particularly helpful to a person who plans a visit to Jerusalem today. EMMET W.
HAMRICK
Wake Forest University
CHARLESD. ISBELL
Nazarene Theological Seminary
126
SEPTEMBER
1978
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4WHERE IS NOAH'S ARK? Mystery on Mount Ararat Lloyd R. Bailey Here is the firstand only scientificand historical survey of the currentclaimsto have found Noah's Ark. Dr. Lloyd R. Bailey (see BiblicalArchaeologist, Dec. 1977 issue) studies the ancient geographical situationof Mt. Araratin Asia Minor,the historical records,recent reportsand photographs,and the from scientificlaboratorieson materialreportedly modem reports taken from the ark. Dr. Bailey, a highlycompetent Old Testament scholar,outlines the historyof ark sightingsfrom ancient to present times. An authoritative,well-researchedresourcewhich combats currentunsubstantiatedand sometimes sensationalclaims, this book will help you to evaluate the barrageof printedmaterialon the location of Noah's Ark. $1.95,
paper LLOYDR. BAILEYis associate professorof Old Testamentat Duke DivinitySchool. He obtained the Ph.D. degree at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Instituteof Religion.Dr. Bailey's undergraduatemajor,physics, proved quite useful in his understandingand evaluatingthe variousscientifictests to which the wood samples from Mt. Ararathave been subjected.Dr. Bailey majoredin Hebrew and cognate studies and minoredin Semitic languages and ancient Near Easternhistoryin his doctoralstudies.
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