Le-maʿan Ziony: Essays in Honor of Ziony Zevit

By Cascade Books

An international array of twenty-six scholars contributes twenty-one essays to honor Ziony Zevit (American Jewish University), one of the foremost biblical scholars of his generation. The breadth of the honoree is indicated by the breadth of coverage in these twenty-one articles, with seven each in the categories of history and archaeology, Bible, and Hebrew (and Aramaic) language.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Mar 2, 2017
• ISBN: 9781498206921

Book preview

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Le-ma‘an Ziony: Essays in Honor of Ziony Zevit

edited by

Frederick E. Greenspahn

&

Gary A. Rendsburg

8377.png

Le-mA‘an Ziony

Essays in Honor of Ziony Zevit

Copyright ©

2017

Wipf and Stock Publishers. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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Cascade Books

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paperback isbn: 978-1-4982-0691-4

hardcover isbn: 978-1-4982-0693-8

ebook isbn: 978-1-4982-0692-1

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: Greenspahn, Frederick E. | Rendsburg, Gary A.

Title: Le-ma‘an Ziony : essays in honor of Ziony Zevit / edited by Frederick E. Greenspahn and Gary A. Rendsburg.

Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books,

2016

| Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Identifiers:

isbn 978-1-4982-0691-4 (

paperback

) | isbn 978-1-4982-0693-8 (

hardcover

) | isbn 978-1-4982-0692-1 (

ebook

)

Subjects: LCSH: Zevit, Ziony. | Bible. O.T.—Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Classification:

DS111 L44 2017 (

print

) | DS111 (

ebook

)

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

April 10, 2017

Table of Contents

Title Page

List of Contributors

Acknowledgments

Bibliographic Abbreviations

Abbreviations of Ancient Sources

Introduction

Publications of Ziony Zevit

Part 1: History and Archaeology

Chapter 1: History from Things: On Writing New Histories of Ancient Israel

Chapter 2: Tel ‘Eton Excavations and the History of the Shephelah during the Iron Age

Chapter 3: Jerusalem in Rome: Moses Mendelssohn on the Arch of Titus Menorah

Chapter 4: Ekron of the Philistines: A Response to Issues Raised in the Literature

Chapter 5: Regional and Local Museums for Archaeology in the First Years of the State of Israel

Appendix 1: Early Local/Regional Museums

Appendix 2: Other Museums

Chapter 6: Disks and Deities: Images on Iron Age Terracotta Plaques

Chapter 7: An Early Iron Age Phase to Kuntillet ‘Ajrud?

Part 2: Bible

Chapter 8: Psalm 122: The Idealized Jerusalem

Chapter 9: The Qeré in the Context of the Masorah Parva

Chapter 10: The Odd Prophet Out and In

Chapter 11: Canon, Codex, and the Printing Press

Chapter 12: Piercing God’s Name: A Mythological Subtext of Deicide Underlying Blasphemy in Leviticus 24

Chapter 13: Varia on Crowns and Diadems in the Bible and Mesopotamia

Chapter 14: Psalm 20 and Amherst Papyrus 63, XII, 11–19: A Case Study of a Text in Transit

Part 3: Hebrew (and Aramaic) Language

Chapter 15: Two Maskilic Explanations of the Difference between the Causative Pi‘el and the Hiph‘il in Biblical Hebrew

Chapter 16: Kissing through a Veil: Translating the Emphatic in Biblical Hebrew

Chapter 17: H. H. Rowley’s Aramaic of the Old Testament after (Almost) a Century

Chapter 18: Visual Grammar: An Eye-Tracking Perspective on Cognitive Complexity in Biblical Hebrew Pronunciation

Chapter 19: Syntactic-Stylistic Aspects of the So-Called Priestly Work in the Torah

שֶׁמֶן תּוּרַק šεmεn turaq (Song 1:3:

Chapter 21: On the Tolerative/Permissive Hiph‘il

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List of Contributors

Tanya R. Beelders, Senior Lecturer, Computer Science and Informatics, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa

Luna Bergh, Lecturer, University of the Free State Business School, Bloemfontein, South Africa

Adele Berlin, Robert H. Smith Professor of Bible Emerita, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, U.S.A.

William G. Dever, Distinguished Visiting Professor, Lycoming College, Williamsport, PA, U.S.A.; and Professor Emeritus of Judaic Studies and Near Eastern Studies, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, U.S.A.

Steven E. Fassberg, Caspar Levias Chair in Ancient Semitic Languages, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

Avraham Faust, Professor of Archaeology, The Institute of Archaeology, The Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel

Steven Fine, Dean Pinkhos Churgin Professor of Jewish History, Yeshiva University, New York, NY, U.S.A.

Michael V. Fox, Halls-Bascom Professor of Hebrew Emeritus, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, U.S.A.

Richard Elliott Friedman, Ann & Jay Davis Professor of Jewish Studies, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, U.S.A.; and Katzin Professor of Jewish Civilization Emeritus, University of California at San Diego, San Diego, CA, U.S.A.

Zev Garber, Professor Emeritus and Chair of Jewish Studies and Philosophy, Los Angeles Valley College, Valley Glen, CA, U.S.A.

Seymour Gitin, Dorot Director and Professor of Archaeology, Emeritus, W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, Jerusalem, Israel.

Lester L. Grabbe, Professor Emeritus of Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism, University of Hull, Hull, England, U.K.

Frederick E. Greenspahn, Gimelstob Eminent Scholar of Judaic Studies, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, U.S.A.

Raz Kletter, Docent for Near-Eastern Archaeology, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

Theodore J. Lewis, Blum-Iwry Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, U.S.A.

Carol Meyers, Mary Grace Wilson Professor Emerita of Religious Studies, Duke University, Durham, NC, U.S.A.

Cynthia L. Miller-Naudé, Senior Professor, Department of Hebrew, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa

Jacobus A. Naudé, Senior Professor, Department of Hebrew, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa

Shalom M. Paul, Yehezkel Kaufman Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

Frank H. Polak, Professor Emeritus of Bible, Department of Bible, Tel-Aviv University, Ramat-Aviv, Israel

Gary A. Rendsburg, Blanche and Irving Laurie Professor of Jewish History, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, U.S.A.

William M. Schniedewind, Kershaw Chair of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Studies, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.

Jeffrey H. Tigay, Emeritus Ellis Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages and Literatures, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, U.S.A.

Karel van der Toorn, Professor of Religion and Society, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands

Ian Young, Associate Professor, Department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies, University of Sydney, Sydney, N.S.W., Australia

Bruce Zuckerman, Professor of Religion and Linguistics, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.

Acknowledgments

The editors would like to thank their respective endowed chairs, which continue to support their research, writing, and editing on an ongoing basis. Rendsburg, accordingly, expresses his gratitude to the Blanche and Irving Laurie Chair of Jewish History at Rutgers University; while Greenspahn does likewise to the Gimelstob Eminent Scholar Chair of Judaic Studies at Florida Atlantic University.

Charles Loder, a graduate student at Rutgers University, was exceedingly helpful in preparing the final manuscript, assuring all manner of accuracy and consistency in the present volume. The editors are greatly indebted to Charles for all his excellent work and wish to extend to him a heartfelt הבר הדות—even if those two simple words do not begin to capture our deep appreciation for all that he has done.

We also thank American Jewish University, the home institition of our honoree, for a subvention which helped defray some of the production costs.

Finally, it has been a pleasure to work with K. C. Hanson and the excellent staff at Wipf and Stock, with their clear commitment to producing first-rate scholarly publications.

Bibliographic Abbreviations

Abbreviations of Ancient Sources

Introduction

Ziony Zevit: A Scholar of Breadth and Depth

In an age of ever-increasing specialization, Ziony Zevit has swum against the tide with a breadth and depth to his scholarship not typically encountered nowadays. He is that rare scholar who is expert in both the written word and the archaeological artifact. In the former realm, he is able to analyze with fine linguistic skill both the biblical text and ancient Hebrew epigraphs. In the latter realm, he brings new insights to both mundane objects and those which served a cultic or religious function. One thinks of the great synthesizers of the past such as W. F. Albright, Yigael Yadin, and Anson Rainey in such vein—and yet here is a contemporary scholar who carries on that glorious tradition.

Ziony Zevit was born in 1942 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, to a family devoted to both traditional Jewish life and liberal education. Our honoree’s parents could not have realized the prescient nature of their naming their oldest child Ziony, for the city of Jerusalem was to play a major part in his life for decades to come, הזה םוֹיה דע.

The Zevit family actually moved back-and-forth between Winnipeg and Los Angeles during Ziony’s grade-school years, but his virtually unbroken connection to the latter city began in earnest in 1959. Did he know then that his enrollment as an undergraduate student at the University of Southern California would commence a 57-year (and counting!) association with the city? Ziony received his B.A. in Religion from the University of Southern California in 1964, though this represented only the start of his studies at leading academic centers.

While an undergraduate at USC, Ziony took a year off to study in Jerusalem at both the Hayim Greenberg Teachers Institute and the Hebrew University. His teachers that year included David Flusser, Moshe Greenberg, Menaham Haran, and Yigael Yadin. Thus began a long and fruitful association with the Hebrew University, to which Ziony would return again and again, once more הזה םוֹיה דע.

Back in Los Angeles, and immediately upon receiving his B.A., Ziony began his graduate studies at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), with his primary teachers being Jonas Greenfield and Wolf Leslau. One year later, when Jonas¹ left UCLA for the University of California at Berkeley, he arranged for Ziony to transfer his fellowship and continue his studies at Berkeley. Among his other teachers at Berkeley were Jacob Milgrom, Ariel Bloch, Anne Drafkorn Kilmer, and Joshua Blau (visiting from the Hebrew University), along with Victor Gold, James Muilenberg, and David Noel Freedman, all of whom were associated with the Graduate Theological Union at the time. Ziony emerged from these studies with his M.A. in 1967 and his Ph.D. in 1973.

During the years of his graduate study, Ziony also spent two summers in Ann Arbor, one at the Summer Institute for Near Eastern Languages (1965), where he studied Arabic, and one at the Summer Institute of Linguistics (1967), where he studied with Charles Hockett and Gene Schramm.

More importantly, however, were his two academic years (1968–1969 and 1970–1971) at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where once more he studied with Haran, along with a host of other great scholars of those years, including E. Y. Kutscher, Samuel Loewenstamm, Chaim Rabin, Shemaryahu Talmon, and Meir Weiss.

As we reflect back on Ziony’s career, research interests, and emerging publications, one sees the influence of so many of his primary professors mentioned here: Greenfield in philology; Blau, Rabin, and Kutscher in language; Milgrom in priestly matters; Haran and Greenberg in Israelite religion; Yadin in archaeology; and so on.

On a personal level, we note that Ziony met his wife-to-be, Rachel Elkarat, in 1962, during his undergraduate year at the Hebrew University, and that the two then married in 1966. Three children followed, Zehava, Noam, and Yonatan; and ten grandchildren in their wake. The entire Zevit progeny lives in Israel, and thus Ziony and Rachel spend as much time as possible (summers, sabbaticals, etc.) in the country that they know so well and love so much.

Back to academics: given his strong training both at Berkeley and in Jerusalem, and given the talent evident already at an early stage in his career (note that he published his first two articles in 1968 and 1969), it was no surprise that Ziony landed his first professorial position shortly after graduating from Berkeley with the Ph.D.² First, and only, that is! For in 1974, Ziony began teaching at the University of Judaism, renamed the American Jewish University in 2007, where he rose through the ranks from assistant professor to his current title as Distinguished Professor of Biblical Literature and Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures. In this position, Ziony has introduced several generations of rabbis and educators to modern biblical studies, teaching them how to read the text, how to understand its language, and how to interpret it against the cultural background of the ancient Near East.

Over the years Ziony has held prestigious visiting positions at a host of academic institutions: Hebrew University, Pontifical Biblical Institute, W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Bellagio Center of the Rockefeller Foundation. The two places to which he has returned again and again are those located in Jerusalem: the Hebrew University and the Albright Institute. Here he developed close ties not only with the local scholars, but also with many visiting scholars whose appointments at the two institutions overlapped with Ziony’s.

Given his location in Los Angeles, colleagues in the area have turned to Ziony to serve as visiting or adjunct professor throughout his career. Thus, he has also taught at the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of California at San Diego (UCSD), Hebrew Union College (Los Angeles), California State University at Northridge, the Claremont Graduate School, and his alma mater the University of Southern California.

Ziony’s collegial nature is further witnessed by his active involvement in a variety of scholarly associations, though none more so than the National Association of Professors of Hebrew (NAPH). Through the years, Ziony has served as President (2009–2011), Vice-President (2007–2009), on the Executive Board (2011–2016), and on the Executive Council (1998–2011)—plus he served as Editor-in-Chief of its journal, Hebrew Studies, for eight years (1998–2005), during which time the annual publication expanded its size, breadth, and coverage remarkably.

As if this were not enough involvement, just as his tenure as Editor-in-Chief was coming to an end, Ziony organized two panels at NAPH meetings (held in conjunction with the Society of Biblical Literature) devoted to the question Can Biblical Texts Be Dated Linguistically? (2004, 2005), the results of which were then published in Hebrew Studies, volumes 46 (2005) and 47 (2006), under Ziony’s special editorship. Most significantly, whereas most scholars on different sides of this crucial issue within biblical studies were simply talking past each other, Ziony brought them together to serve on the panels in order to engage in real dialogue. Such is the make of the man.

At the outset we referred to Ziony’s breadth and depth. As we survey his career, we are able to identify three distinct areas to which he has made lasting contributions. These are: a) Hebrew language; b) Bible per se; and c) the history and archaeology of ancient Israel, with a special emphasis on religious life. Consider, for example, his two monographs, Matres Lectionis in Ancient Hebrew Epigraphs (1980) and The Anterior Construction in Classical Hebrew (1998), which belong to the first subject area; his most recent book What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden? (2013), with a focus on a well-known and important narrative in the book of Genesis; and his magnum opus, The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches (2001), replete with 135 images (yes, we counted) presenting archaeological material relevant to the subject.

Alongside these books are numerous articles which surely will be read for decades to come, including "The So-Called Interchangeability of the Prepositions b, l, and m(n) in Northwest Semitic; Converging Lines of Evidence Bearing on the Date of P; A Chapter in the History of Israelite Personal Names; The Common Origin of the Aramaicized Prayer to Horus and of Psalm 20; Roman Jakobson, Psycholinguistics, and Biblical Poetry; Philology, Archaeology, and a terminus a quo for P’s ḥatta’t Legislation; and many more—along with his Introduction and Annotations to the Books of Kings," contributed to The Jewish Study Bible (2003/2014). If we highlight these specific essays, it is because the editors have continued to return to these writings in their own research, and/or have assigned them to students throughout the years.

The contributions to and the organization of this Festschrift reflect the honoree’s breadth and depth. We have divided the individual contributions into three areas, aligned with the aforementioned purviews of Ziony’s research interests—see further the Table of Contents and of course the essays themselves. The international scope of the present volume, corresponding to the international reputation of our jubilarian, is indicated by the fact that the contributors come from five continents.

All who have participated in this volume honor Ziony Zevit greatly as both friend and colleague, as we wish him many more years of productive teaching, editing, research, and writing.

Gary A. Rendsburg and Frederick E. Greenspahn

1. He will forever be Jonas to everyone; Greenfield somehow does not ring properly.

2. First, fulltime, tenure-track position, that is, since Ziony taught as a lecturer both at the University of Haifa and at the University of the Negev (before its name change to Ben-Gurion University) during the years 1971–1974.

Publications of Ziony Zevit

DISSERTATION

1. Studies in Biblical Poetry and Vocabulary in Their Northwest Semitic Setting (University of California at Berkeley, 1973)—supervised by Jonas C. Greenfield (chair), Joshua Blau, and Ariel Bloch.

BOOKS AUTHORED

1. Matres Lectionis in Ancient Hebrew Epigraphs. ASOR Monograph Series 2. Cambridge, MA: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1980.

2. The Anterior Construction in Classical Hebrew. SBL Monograph Series 50. Atlanta: Scholars, 1998.

3. The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches. London: Continuum, 2001.

4. What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden? New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013.

BOOKS EDITED

1. Solving Riddles and Untying Knots: Biblical, Epigraphic, and Semitic Studies Presented to Jonas C. Greenfield, co-edited with Seymour Gitin and Michael Sokoloff. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1995.

2. The Jewish Bible: A JPS Guide, co-edited with Shalom M. Paul and Frederick E. Greenspahn. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2008.

3. Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew, co-edited with Cynthia Miller-Naudé. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2012.

4. Subtle Citation, Allusion, and Translation in the Hebrew Bible. London: Equinox, 2017.

ARTICLES

1. The Structure and Individual Elements of Daniel 7. ZAW 80 (1968) 385–96.

2. "The Use of ‘ebed as a Diplomatic Term in Jeremiah." JBL 88 (1969) 74–77.

3. A Misunderstanding at Bethel—Amos VII, 12–17. VT 25 (1975) 783–90.

4. "The So-Called Interchangeability of the Prepositions b, l, and m (n) in Northwest Semitic." JANES 7 (1975) 103–12.

5. "The ‘Eglah Ritual of Deut 21:1-9." JBL 95 (1976) 377–90.

6. The Priestly Redaction and Interpretation of the Plague Narrative in Exodus. JQR 66 (1976) 193–211.

7. A Phoenician Inscription and Biblical Covenant Theology. IEJ 27 (1977) 110–18.

8. "The Linguistic and Contextual Arguments in Support of a Hebrew 3 m.s. Suffix –y." UF 9 (1977) 315–28.

9. The Exegetical Implications of Dan VIII, 1; IX, 21. VT 28 (1978) 488–92.

10. Expressing Denial in Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew and in Amos. VT 29 (1979) 505–9.

11. The Ten Plagues: A Biblical Midrash. Proceedings of the Rabbinical Assembly 41 (1979) 181–85.

12. "Two Hapax Legomena in Ugaritic: t‘lgt and pš." UF 13 (1981) 194–97.

13. Converging Lines of Evidence Bearing on the Date of P. ZAW 94 (1982) 481–511.

14. A Chapter in the History of Israelite Personal Names. BASOR 250 (1983) 1–16.

15. Archaeological and Literary Stratigraphy in Joshua 7–8. BASOR 251 (1983) 23–35.

16. "Nondistinctive Stress, Syllabic Constraints, and Wortmetrik in Ugaritic Poetry." UF 15 (1983) 291–98.

17. "A Supplementary Note on Ugaritic ‘lg." UF 15 (1983) 319.

18. "The Question of Case Endings on Ugaritic Nouns in Status Constructus." JSS 28 (1983) 225–32.

19. The Khirbet el-Qom Inscription Mentioning a Goddess. BASOR 255 (1984) 39–47.

20. The Problem of Ai. BAR 11/2 (1985) 58–69.

21. Deuteronomistic Historiography in I Ki 12–II Ki 17 and the Reinvestiture of the Israelite Cult. JSOT 32 (1985) 57–73.

22. Clio, I Presume. BASOR 260 (1985) 71–82.

23. Psalms at the Poetic Precipice. HAR 10 (1986) 351–66.

24. Underground Religion. American Schools of Oriental Research Newsletter 39 (1988) 2–4.

25. Onomastic Gleanings from Recently Published Judahite Bullae. IEJ 38 (1988) 227–34.

26. "Talking Funny in Biblical Henglish and Solving a Problem of the YAQTUL Past Tense." HS 29 (1988) 25–31.

27. "Phoenician nbš/npš and Its Hebrew Semantic Equivalents." In Sopher Mahir: Northwest Semitic Studies Presented to Stanislav Segert, edited by Edward M. Cook, 337–44 = Maarav 5–6 (1990) 337–44.

28. The Common Origin of the Aramaicized Prayer to Horus and of Psalm 20. JAOS 110 (1990) 213–28.

29. Roman Jakobson, Psycholinguistics, and Biblical Poetry. JBL 109 (1990) 385–401.

30. Three Ways to Look at the Ten Plagues. BR 6/3 (1990) 16–23, 42. [See also no. 84 below.]

31. Yahweh and Yahweh Worshippers in 8th-Century Syria. VT 41 (1991) 363–66.

32. How Do You Say ‘Noble’ in Phoenician, Biblical Hebrew, and Ugaritic? In Semitic Studies in Honor of Wolf Leslau on the Occasion of His 85th Birthday, edited by Alan S. Kaye, 1704–15. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1991.

33. "Timber for the Tabernacle: Text, Tradition, and Realia." In Eretz Israel 23: The Avraham Biran Volume, edited by Ephraim Stern and Thomas E. Levy, 136–43. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1992.

34. Cognitive Theory and the Memorability of Biblical Poetry. In Let Your Colleagues Praise You: Studies in Memory of Stanley Gevirtz, edited by Robert J. Ratner, et al., 199–212 = Maarav 8/2 (1992) 199–212.

35. Two Inscribed Punic Seals from the J. Paul Getty Museum. Studi Epigrafici e Linguistici 10 (1993) 85–91. [See also below, Miscellaneous, no. 3.]

36. "Philology, Archaeology, and a terminus a quo for P’s ḥaṭṭā’t Legislation." In Pomegranates and Golden Bells: Studies in Biblical, Jewish, and Near Eastern Ritual, Law, and Literature in Honor of Jacob Milgrom, edited by David P. Wright, David N. Freedman, and Avi Hurvitz, 29–39. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1995.

37. In Memoriam—Jonas C. Greenfield. BASOR 298 (1995) 3–5.

38. Report—Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches. BASOR 298 (1995) 74.

39. Jonas C. Greenfield: An Appreciation (in Hebrew). In Le-Zikro šel Ḥayyim Yonah Greenfield: Devarim še-Ne’emeru bi-Mle’ot Šelošim le-Moto, 25–30. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of the Sciences and Humanities, 1996.

40. The Earthen Altar Laws of Exod 20:24-26 and Related Sacrificial Restrictions in their Cultural Context. In Texts, Temples, and Traditions, A Tribute to Menahem Haran, edited by Michael V. Fox, et al., 53–62. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1996.

41. Greenfield, Jonas Carl. In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East, edited by Eric M. Meyers, 2:440–41. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

42. Ha-’Etos ha-Yiśra’eli še-bo Ṣamaḥ Sefer Devarim (The Israelite Ethos in which Deuteronomy Developed [in Hebrew]). Shnaton: An Annual for Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies 11 (5757 / 1997) 103–13.

43. The Gerizim-Samarian Community in and between Texts and Times: An Experimental Study. In The Quest for Context and Meaning: Studies in Biblical Intertextuality in Honor of James A. Sanders, edited by Craig A. Evans and Shemaryahu Talmon, 547–72. Biblical Interpretation Series 28. Leiden: Brill, 1997.

44. Proclamations to the Fruitful Tree and the Spiritualization of Androgyny. In The Echoes of Many Texts: Reflections on Jewish and Christian Traditions: Essays in Honor of Lou H. Silberman, edited by William G. Dever and J. Edward Wright, 43–50. Brown Judaica Studies 313. Atlanta: Scholars, 1997.

45. Discussion. In Mediterranean Peoples in Transition: Thirteenth to Early Tenth Centuries BCE, edited by Seymour Gitin, et al., 265–66. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1998.

46. The Second-Third Century Canonization of the Hebrew Bible and Its Influence on Christian Canonizing. In Canonization and Decanonization: Papers Presented to the International Conference of the Leiden Institute for the Study of Religions (LISOR), held at Leiden 9–10 January 1997, edited by Arie van der Kooij and Karel van der Toorn, 133–60. Leiden: Brill, 1998.

47. Congenital Human Baculum Deficiency: The Generative Bone of Genesis 2:21-23. American Journal of Medical Genetics 101:3 (2001) 284–85 [co-authored with Scott F. Gilbert]—republished in Cabinet: A Quarterly of Art and Culture 28 (January 2008) 76–77.

48. Philology and Archaeology: Imagining New Questions, Begetting New Ideas. In Sacred Time, Sacred Space: Archaeology and the Religion of Israel, edited by Barry M. Gittlin, 35–42. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002.

49. Preamble to a Temple Tour. In Sacred Time, Sacred Space: Archaeology and the Religion of Israel, edited by Barry M. Gittlin, 73–81. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002.

50. Three Debates about the Bible and Archaeology. Biblica 83 (2002) 1–27.

51. Anatomy of An Impending Divorce. AJS Perspectives (Fall/Winter 2002) 5–8.

52. False Dichotomies in Descriptions of Israelite Religion: A Problem, Its Origin, and A Proposed Solution. In Symbiosis, Symbolism and the Power of the Past: Canaan, Ancient Israel, and their Neighbors from the Late Bronze Age through Roman Palaestina, edited by William G. Dever and Seymour Gitin, 223–35. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003.

53. Introduction and Annotations to the Books of Kings. The Jewish Study Bible, edited by Adele Berlin and Marc Z. Brettler, 668–779. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. [See also below, no. 83.]

54. Invisible and Unheard in Translation: How New Discoveries in Hebrew Grammar Affect Our Understanding of Tanakh. Conservative Judaism 55/2 (2003) 38–48.

55. The Biblical Archaeology versus Syro-Palestinian Archaeology Debate in its American Institutional and Intellectual Contexts. In The Future of Biblical Archaeology: Reassessing Methodologies and Assumptions, edited by James K. Hoffmeier and Alan R. Millard, 3–19. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004.

56. The Prophet versus Priest Antagonism Hypothesis: Its Origins and History. In The Priests in the Prophets: The Portrayal of Priests, Prophets and Other Religious Specialists in the Latter Prophets, edited by Lester L. Grabbe and Alice O. Bellis, 189–217. London: T. & T. Clark, 2004.

57. Introductory Remarks: Historical Linguistics and the Dating of Hebrew Texts ca. 1000–300 BCE. HS 46 (2005) 321–26.

58. Symposium Discussion Session: An Edited Transcription. HS 46 (2005) 371–76.

59. Dating Ruth: Legal, Linguistic and Historical Observations. ZAW 117 (2005) 574–600.

60. Jewish Biblical Theology: What? Whence? Whither? HUCA 76 (2005) 289–340.

61. Implicit Population Figures and Historical Sense: What Happened to 200,150 Judahites in 701 BCE? In Confronting the Past: Archaeological and Historical Essays on Ancient Israel in Honor of William G. Dever, edited by Seymour Gitin, et al., 357–66. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006.

62. "Israel’s Royal Cult in the Ancient Near Eastern Kulturkreis." In Text, Artifact and Image: Revealing Ancient Israelite Religion, edited by Gary M. Beckman and Theodore J. Lewis, 189–200. Brown Judaic Studies 346. Providence: Brown University, 2006.

63. What A Difference A Year Makes: Can Biblical Texts Be Dated Linguistically? HS 47 (2006) 83–91.

64. The First Halleluyah. in Milk and Honey: Essays on Ancient Israel and the Bible in Appreciation of the Judaic Studies Program at the University of California, San Diego, edited by Sarah Malena and David Miano, 157–64. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007.

65. Scratched Silver and Painted Walls: Can We Date Biblical Texts Archaeologically? HS 48 (2007) 23–37.

66. Text Traditions, Archaeology, and Anthropology: Uncertainties in Determining the Populations of Judah and Yehud from ca. 734 to ca. 400 BCE. In "Up to the Gates of Ekron": Essays on the Archaeology and History of the Eastern Mediterranean in Honor of Seymour Gitin, edited by Seymour Gitin, et al., 436–43. Jerusalem: W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research and Israel Exploration Society, 2007.

67. The Search for Violence in Israelite Culture and in the Bible. In Religion and Violence: The Biblical Heritage, edited by David A. Bernat and Jonathan Klawans, 16–37. Recent Research in Biblical Studies 2. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2007.

68. From Judaism to Biblical Religion and Back Again. In The Hebrew Bible: New Insights and Scholarship, edited by Frederick E. Greenspahn, 164–90. New York: New York University Press, 2008.

69. The Davidic-Solomonic Empire from the Perspective of Archaeological Bibliology. In Birkat Shalom: Studies in the Bible, Ancient Near Eastern Literature, and Postbiblical Judaism Presented to Shalom M. Paul on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, edited by Chaim Cohen, et al., 201–24. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2008.

70. Deuteronomy in the Temple: An Exercise in Historical Imagining. In Mishneh Todah: Studies in Deuteronomy and Its Cultural Environment in Honor of Jeffrey H. Tigay, edited by Nili S. Fox, et al., 201–18. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009.

71. The Two-Bodied People, Their Cosmos, and The Origin of the Soul. In Maven in Blue Jeans: A Festschrift in Honor of Zev Garber, edited by Steven L. Jacobs, 465–75. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2009.

72. Is There an Archaeological Case for Phantom Cities in the Persian Period? PEQ 141 (2009) 124–37.

73. Jesus, God of the Hebrew Bible. Shofar 28/3 (2010) 14–32.

74. What’s New About What’s Old? Iggeret: Newsletter of the National Association of Professors of Hebrew 82 (Fall 2010) 1–4.

75. Jesus Stories, Jewish Liturgy and Some Evolving Theologies Until ca. 200 CE: Stimuli and Responses. In Jesus in the Context of Judaism: Revelation, Reflection, Reclamation, edited by Zev Garber, 65–92. Shofar Supplements in Jewish Studies Series. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2011.

76. Syntagms in Biblical Hebrew: Four Short Studies. In En pase grammatike kai sophia: Saggi di linguistica ebraica in onore di Alviero Niccacci, ofm, ed. Gregor Geiger and Massimo Pazzini, 393–403. Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, Analecta 78. Jerusalem / Milano: Terra Santa, 2011.

77. Biblical Histories Yesterday and Tomorrow. Iggeret: Newsletter of the National Association of Professors of Hebrew 83 (Fall 2011) 1–4.

78. "Mesha’s ryt in the Context of Moabite and Israelite Bloodletting." In Puzzling out the Past: Studies in the Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures in Honor of Bruce Zuckerman, edited by Marilyn J. Lundberg, et al., 235–38. Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 55. Leiden: Brill, 2012.

79. Not-so-random Thoughts About Linguistic Dating and Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew. In Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew, edited by Cynthia Miller-Naudé and Ziony Zevit, 453–87. Linguistic Studies in Ancient West Semitic 8. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2012.

80. Of What Was Eve Guilty (Gen 3:16)? In "Built by Wisdom, Established by Understanding": Essays in Honor of Adele Berlin, edited by Maxine L. Grossman, 29–38. Studies and Texts in Jewish History and Culture 23. Bethesda, MD: University of Maryland Press, 2013.

81. The Textual and Social Embeddedness of Israelite Family Religion: Who Were the Players? Where Were the Stages? In Family and Household Religion: Toward a Synthesis of Old Testament Studies, Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Cultural Studies, edited by Rainer Albertz and Rüdiger Schmitt, 287–314. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2014.

82. Dating Torah Documents: From Wellhausen to Polak. In Discourse, Dialogue, and Debate in the Bible: Essays in Honour of Frank H. Polak, edited by Athalya Brenner-Idan, 258–91. Hebrew Bible Monographs 63. Amsterdam Studies in the Bible and Religion 7. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014.

83. Introduction and Annotations to the Books of Kings. In The Jewish Study Bible, 2nd edition, edited by Adele Berlin and Marc Z. Brettler, 653–761. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. [See also above, no. 53.]

84. Exodus in the Bible and the Egyptian Plagues. Online at Bible History Daily, www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/exodus/exodus-in-the-bible-and-the-egyptian-plagues/. (March 31, 2015). [See also no. 30 above.]

85. Einführung in das Buch Bereschit / Genesis. In Die Tora: Die Fünf Bücher Mose und die Prophetenlesungen (hebräisch-deutsche) in der revidierten Übersetzung von Ludwig Philippson, edited by Walter Homolka, et al., 63–76. Freiburg: Herder, 2015.

86. Was Eve Made from Adam’s Rib—or His Baculum? BAR 41/5 (September/October 2015) 33–35.

87. Taking the Measure of the Ten Cubit Gap, Isaiah’s Vision, and Iron Age Bones. In Marbeh Ḥokma: Essays in Memory of Victor Avigdor Hurowitz, edited by Shamir Yona, et al., 631–53. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2015.

88. "Weber’s Ancient Judaism: How Well Has It Worn?" In Weber’s Economic Ethics of the World Religions, New Perspectives, edited by Tom Ertman and Detlef Pollack. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.

89. Echoes of Texts Past. In Subtle Citation, Allusion, and Translation in the Hebrew Bible, edited by Ziony Zevit. London: Equinox, forthcoming.

90. Yehezkel Kaufmann: Observations about His Major Ideas in the Past, Almost Present, and the Immediate Future. Yehezkel Kaufmann and the Reinvention of Jewish Exegesis of the Bible, edited by Thomas Staubli, Benjamin Sommer, and Job Jindo. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis. Freiburg: Universitätsverlag Freiburg / Göttingen: Vandenhock & Ruprecht, forthcoming.

REVIEW ESSAY

1. "Timing Is Everything: A Review Essay of Biblical Hebrew: Studies in Chronology and Typology, edited by Ian Young. Review of Biblical Literature 8 (2004) 1–15. Online at www.bookreviews.org/pdf/4084_3967.pdf.

REVIEWS

1. Richard V. Bergren, The Prophets and the Law, in AJS Newsletter 16 (1975) 22, 24.

2. Joseph Blenkinsopp, Gibeon and Israel: The Role of the Gibeonites in the Political and Religious History of Early Israel, in Hebrew Abstracts 16 (1975) 61–62.

3. James L. Crenshaw, Prophetic Conflict, in AJS Newsletter 16 (1975) 22.

4. Judah Goldin, The Song at the Sea: Being a Commentary on a Commentary in Two Parts, in Hebrew Abstracts 16 (1975) 59–60.

5. R. N. Whybray, ed., The Intellectual Tradition in the Old Testament, in AJS Newsletter 16 (1975) 24.

6. Alexander Rofé, Introduction to Deuteronomy (in Hebrew), in JBL 95 (1976) 646–47.

7. Moshe Garsiel, The Kingdom of David: Studies in History and Inquiries in Historiography (in Hebrew), in JBL 96 (1977) 116–18.

8. E. Y. Kutscher, Studies in Galilean Aramaic in JAOS 98 (1978) 512–13.

9. Douglas A. Knight, ed., Tradition and Theology in the Old Testament, in JAOS 99 (1979) 376–78.

10. William H. Irwin, Isaiah 28–33: Translation with Philological Notes, in JAOS 99 (1979) 378–79.

11. Menahem Haran, ed., Eretz Israel 14 (The H. L. Ginsberg Volume), in BASOR 249 (1983) 91–92.

12. Robert B. Coote, Amos among the Prophets: Composition and Theology, in JBL 102 (1983) 308–10.

13. Dennis Pardee, Handbook of Ancient Hebrew Letters, in JQR 74 (1984) 431–33.

14. R. J. Coggins et al., eds., Israel’s Prophetic Tradition: Essays in Honor of Peter Ackroyd, in HS 25 (1984) 198–99.

15. Frederick E. Greenspahn, Hapax Legomena in Biblical Hebrew: A Study of the Phenomenon and Its Treatment since Antiquity with Special Reference to Verbal Forms, in CBQ 47 (1985) 701–3.

16. Adele Berlin, The Dynamics of Hebrew Parallelism, in HS 27 (1986) 96–99.

17. Foster R. McCurley, Ancient Myths and Biblical Faith: Scriptural Transformations, in BA 49 (1986) 61–62.

18. Brevard S. Childs, Old Testament Theology in a Canonical Context, in CBQ 50 (1988) 491–93.

19. William H. Stiebing, Jr., Out of the Desert? Archaeology and the Exodus/Conquest Narratives, in Shofar 8 (1989) 83–84.

20. Jeaneane D. Fowler, Theophoric Personal Names in Ancient Hebrew: A Comparative Study, in CBQ 52 (1990) 115–18.

21. Jon D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence, in Journal of Reform Judaism 37/2 (Spring 1990) 80–82.

22. James Barr, The Variable Spellings of the Hebrew Bible, in JAOS 111 (1991) 647–50.

23. Gary A. Rendsburg, Linguistic Evidence for the Northern Origin of Selected Psalms, in CBQ 54 (1992) 126–29.

24. Silvia Schroer, In Israel gab es Bilder: Nachrichten von darstellender Kunst im Alten Testament, in BASOR 285 (1992) 85–86.

25. Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel, in AJS Review 17 (1992) 93–97.

26. Graham I. Davies, Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance, in CBQ 55 (1993) 753–54.

27. Philip R. Davies, In Search of Ancient Israel, in AJS Review 20 (1995) 153–56.

28. Karel van der Toorn, Family Religion in Babylonia, Syria and Israel: Continuity and Change in the Forms of Religious Life, in JQR 86 (1996) 519–22.

29. Hans M. Barstad, The Myth of the Empty Land. A Study in the History and Archaeology of Judah During the Exilic Period, in BASOR 308 (1997) 106–8.

30. Simon B. Parker, Stories in Scripture and Inscriptions: Comparative Studies on Narratives in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions and the Hebrew Bible, in BASOR 312 (1998) 82–84.

31. Robert Chazan, William W. Hallo, and Lawrence H. Schiffman, eds., Ki Baruch Hu: Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and Judaic Studies in Honor of Baruch A. Levine, in BASOR 316 (1999) 118.

32. Sandra L. Gogel, A Grammar of Epigraphic Hebrew, in RBL (online at www.bookreviews.org/pdf/163_633.pdf, published October 1999), and in JBL 120 (2001) 347–48.

33. Avraham Negev and Shimon Gibson, eds., Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land, in Shofar 21 (2002) 156–57.

34. Bernhard Lang, The Hebrew God: Portrait of an Ancient Deity, in RBL (online at www.bookreviews.org/pdf/2835_2785.pdf, published January 2003).

35. Dennis Pardee, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit, in RBL (online at www.bookreviews.org/pdf/2976_3068.pdf, published May 2003).

36. Meir Malul, Knowledge, Control and Sex: Studies in Biblical Thought, Culture and Worldview, in JAOS 123 (2003) 671–72.

37. William G. Dever and Seymour Gitin, eds., Symbiosis, Symbolism, and the Power of the Past: Canaan, Ancient Israel, and Their Neighbors from the Late Bronze Age through Roman Palestina: Proceedings of the Centennial Symposium W. F. Albright Institue of Archaeological Research and the American Schools of Oriental Research Jerusalem, May 29–31, 2000, in RBL (online at http://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/4100_3983.pdf, published July 2004).

38. Ian Young, ed., Biblical Hebrew: Studies in Chronology and Typology in RBL (online at www.bookreviews.org/pdf/4084_3967.pdf, published August 2004).

39. Ronald Handel, Remembering Abraham: Culture, Memory and History in the Hebrew Bible, in Shofar 24 (2006) 186–89.

40. Richard C. Steiner, Stockman from Tekoa, Sycomores from Sheba: A Study of Amos’ Occupations, in JNES 66 (2007) 66–68.

41. André Lemaire, The Birth of Monotheism: The Rise and Disappearance of Yahwism, in HS 49 (2008) 331–33.

42. Deborah O’Daniel Cantrell, The Horsemen of Israel: Horses and Chariotry in Monarchic Israel (Ninth–Eighth Centuries B.C.E., in BAR 38/2 (March/April 2012) 62–63.

43. Beate Pongratz-Leisten, ed., Reconsidering the Concept of Revolutionary Monotheism, in BASOR 369 (2013) 237–40.

MISCELLAENOUS

1. Response to letter of Jeffrey Chadwick. BAR 11/4 (1985) 22–23.

2. Response to letter of John J. Bimson. BAR 11/5 (1985) 79–80.

3. Decipherments of two Punic seals cited in Jeffrey Spier, Ancient Gems and Finger Rings (Malibu, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1992), 83 and 119. [See also above, Article no. 35.]

4. Response to letter of Jean-Daniel Stanley. BAR 31/1 (2005) 63.

5. Before the Beginning: Appreciating the Thought of an Ancient Cosmologist, online at http://thetorah.com/before-the-beginning/ (October 14, 2014).

6. Seeing God(s) in Temples, the Heavens, and in Model Shrines, A Problem in Ancient Metaphysics. ASOR Blog, online at http://asorblog.org/seeing-gods-in-temples-the-heavens-and-in-model-shrines-a-problem-in-ancient-metaphysics/ (October 1, 2014) = Albright News 19 (November 2014) 16.

7. The Ten Plagues and Egyptian Ecology (a popular and slightly revised version of Articles nos. 30 and 84 above), online at http://thetorah.com/ten-plagues-and-egyptian-ecology/ (January 15, 2015).

8. Invoking Creation in the Story of the Ten Plagues, online at http://thetorah.com/invoking-creation-in-the-story-of-the-ten-plagues/ (March 27, 2015).

Part 1: History and Archaeology

1

History from Things: On Writing New Histories of Ancient Israel

William G. Dever

Lycoming College

Introduction

Twenty-five years ago (1991) Max Miller famously asked: Is it possible to write a history of Israel without relying on the Hebrew Bible?¹ His answer was that it might be possible; but it would be undesirable. Four years earlier, Miller’s own history of Israel, written with John Hayes, had been published, and not unexpectedly it made only scant use of archaeological data. Miller and Hayes’ A History of Ancient Israel and Judah in its second edition (2006), although in my judgment deficient, is still the standard work in the English-speaking world.

Meanwhile, in the past 25 years no new, mainstream history of ancient Israel has been written by any scholar anywhere in the world. Provan, Long, and Longman’s A Biblical History of Israel (2003) is largely uncritical, essentially a fundamentalist work. Mario Liverani’s Israel’s History and the History of Israel (2005) is a learned revisionist work, but Marxist and scarcely mainstream.

Twenty-five years in the progress of our branch of archaeological research marks a long, revolutionary era that has seen dramatic, profound changes. Yet the majority of biblical scholars seem oblivious to the new potential of material culture data as a source for writing history. The latest handbook (so-called), Moore and Kelle’s Biblical History and Israel’s Past: The Changing Study of the Bible and History (2011) betrays no overall comprehension of the discipline of modern archaeology. It uncritically cites mavericks and authorities side-by-side; it completely ignores many major works; and it makes grandiose claims that are groundless.

This is what happens when amateurs meddle in fields in which they have no credentials. A single statement of Moore and Kelle will illustrate my point. They claim: Without the Bible, archaeologists would never have been able to name the ancient names of many ruins, or know the names of rulers in the area or the general circumstances of their reigns, particularly their building activities . . . Also, without the Bible, it would be very difficult to construct a time line of the important events in the region.²

Each of these claims is grossly overstated. Anyone who makes such claims can be dismissed immediately as a reliable guide. (When the blind lead the blind, both fall into a ditch.) This guidebook to the Bible and history-writing leads nowhere.

The Literary Turn and a Historiographical Crisis

What went wrong? What provoked the crisis in history-writing in both archaeology and biblical studies, which we all know has plagued both our disciplines for more than a generation now? The short answer lies in what is often called the literary turn. Notwithstanding the major contributions from the likes of Robert Alter and Meir Sternberg (who actually said little or nothing about the historicity of the biblical text), other scholars latched on to the literary turn, abused the methodology, and took it to extremes—thereby spawning an increasingly skeptical attitude toward the credibility of the texts of the Hebrew Bible as a historical source. That was presumably because these texts were all too late (i.e., Persian or even Hellenistic in date), or too tendentious to contain any reliable historical information about any Israel in the Iron Age.

The gauntlet was thrown down in Philip R. Davies’ In Search of Ancient Israel (1992). Davies found three Israels (1) The first was a putative historical Israel, about which little could be said. (2) The second was biblical Israel, a late, Jewish literary construct, in effect a foundation-myth. (3) The third was ancient Israel, a concoction of modern scholars, especially Americans and Israelis who had bought into the Zionist program.

Davies’ diatribe cites none of the available archaeological data except Amihai Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible (1990), and that in a single footnote,³ claiming that since Mazar’s work deals with the Iron Age and stops there, it is irrelevant (his word) to the real Israel, that is, Davies’ Persian-Hellenistic literary Israel.

Davies’ deliberately provocative book was soon followed by other works of the Sheffield and Copenhagen axis who were by now coming to be regarded as revisionists (their term originally, adopted by me); minimalists; or even nihilists. In short order there appeared Keith Whitelam’s The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History (1996), whose anti-Israel (and potentially anti-Semitic) bias was evident already in the title. This was followed in a similar vein by Thomas L. Thompson’s The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel (1999). Here the myth was that Thompson’s work had anything whatsoever to do with archaeology. Both volumes are simply caricatures of archaeology and archaeologists, written by authors with little or no field experience.

The deepening of the historiographical crisis in the 1990s and into the early twenty-first century can best be followed by skimming through the pages of the dozen or so volumes published from a series of symposia sponsored by the European Seminar on Method in Israel’s History. The first was a volume edited by the seminar’s founder, Lester L. Grabbe, titled appropriately Can a History of Israel Be Written? (1997). Subsequent volumes dealt with several case-studies: the exile and the myth of the empty land (1998); the prophets as putative historical figures (2001); the presumed Hellenistic date of the biblical texts (2001); the campaign of Sennacherib in 701 BCE (2003); the kings of Israel and Judah (2006); Ahab and the Omride dynasty (2007); and finally, two volumes on the Late Bronze-Iron I horizon and the rise of ancient Israel (2008; 2010), where for the first time archaeologists were included in the discussion and their data taken seriously.⁴

As an example of how oblivious the seminar’s members were to the potential of archaeology for history-writing I note that the 2003 volume, Like a Bird in a Cage, a study of the famous campaign of Sennacherib to Judah in 701 BCE, did not contain a chapter by an archaeologist.

To put this deficiency in perspective, the books of Kings and Chronicles confine their references to any of the 46 walled towns, which Sennacherib claims to have destroyed, to one or two sites. Lachish is one, which they mention in a single verse, noting only that Sennacherib was there. (Libnah is the other site, but no information is provided.) Then the biblical writers go on to devote three long chapters to the miraculous lifting of the siege of Jerusalem—obviously their only concern, given their theocratic program.

Lachish has been extensively excavated in several large projects, and 10 sumptuous volumes of final reports are now available. Which source do you think more promising for writing a history of the Neo-Assyrian campaigns: the tendentious biblical account of events or the vast and detailed archaeological evidence? Yet the foremost European biblical historians saw no problem in focusing almost exclusively on the biblical texts—despite their own declared pessimism regarding these texts as historical sources. That is an example of the dilemma we face, which as an archeologist I confess I find inexplicable.

Thus far I have illustrated what the much-discussed literary turn in biblical (Old Testament) scholarship has produced over the past 25 years. The turn, as it is called, was clearly a moving away from historical considerations (and, of course, theological issues), and toward the kind of strictly textual analysis. This was the tactic favored by New Literary criticism and other more extreme approaches such as semiotics, post-Colonialism, liberation theology, the New Historicism, radical feminist critiques, queer theory, and the like.

The latest fad is cultural memory or reception history which is said to be the sine qua non of modern Old Testament/Hebrew Bible scholarship. Here one no longer asks what the text says, but only how it is able to say anything at all, what it signifies. What really happened need not concern us, since it is impossible to know, and irrelevant in any case. What matters is only what the story