Within the Dusts of Time: Letters from the Field

By James F Strange

James F. Strange was a pioneering New Testament archaeologist and Distinguished
University Professor in Religious Studies at the University of South Florida, where
he taught from 1972 until his death in 2018. His personal letters from the field,
written over the nearly five decades in which he excavated in Israel, illuminate the
intersection of his scholarship in Christian Origins and post-Biblical Judaism with
his deep faith in a personally knowable, loving God. They comprise a collection of
entertaining, insightful, and sometimes poignant stories about the people on his dig,
explanations of archaeological findings, and glimpses into the social workings of
modern-day Israel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Midkiffstrangellc
• Release date: Nov 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215758960

Book preview

Within the Dusts of Time: Letters from the Field

Written by James F. Strange

Edited by James R. Strange, Katherine Strange Burke, and Joanna C. Strange

Cover Design and Interior Design by Joanna C. Strange

© 2022 Carolyn M. Strange, Midkiff Strange, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except as provided by USA copyright law.

This is a work of nonfiction. No names have been changed, no characters invented, no events fabricated.

In memory of James F. Strange

For Elizabeth Strange, daughter and sister, you are missed

Within the Dusts of Time

Letters from the Field

Written by James F. Strange

Edited by

Katherine Strange Burke

James R. Strange

Joanna C. Strange

With additional contributions by

Carolyn Midkiff Strange

Contents

Foreword

A Morning Chronicle – 1975

July 3, 1969

July 16, 1969

July 17, 1969

July 20, 1969

August 15, 1971

June 22, 1972

July 1, 1972

July 24, 1972

April 5, 1980

April 6, 1980

The Sepphoris Newsletter, 1996

May 30, 1998

June 14, 1998

June 18, 1998

June 21, 1998

The Sepphoris Newsletter, 1999

The Sepphoris Newsletter, 2000

May 20, 2005

May 26, 2005

June 4, 2005

June 13, 2005

June 18, 2005

June 26, 2005

July 1, 2005

July 20, 2005

May 13, 2006

May 19, 2006

May 22, 2006

May 23, 2006

May 26, 2006

June 5, 2006

June 11, 2006

June 17, 2006

June 23, 2006

July 1, 2006

June 14, 2008

May 29, 2009

June 28, 2009

July 12, 2009

May 21, 2010

June 6, 2010

June 20, 2010

June 26, 2010

July 3, 2010

May 28, 2011

June 4, 2011

June 11, 2011

June 19, 2011

June 25, 2011

July 2, 2011

July 7, 2011

July 16, 2011

May 19, 2012

May 27, 2012

June 3, 2012

June 10, 2012

June 17, 2012

July 2, 2012

July 6, 2012

July 8, 2013

July 20, 2013

May 17, 2014

May 25, 2014

June 8, 2014

June 14, 2014

June 21, 2014

Letter 1, 2015

Letter 2, 2015

Letter 3, 2015

Letter 4, 2015

Letter 5, 2015

May 21, 2016

May 28, 2016

June 4, 2016

June 11, 2016

June 18, 2016

Legacy

Afterword

Foreword

Many archaeologists dig for deeply personal reasons. Considering that, following decades of labor, there are no Nobel Prizes, no Fields Medals, no new species named for you, and not much funding besides, archaeology requires dedication, passion, and a sense of calling. It also requires a sense of humor, for archaeologists still chuckle at the dinosaur jokes (wrong profession, by the way), and the Indiana Jones, Lara Croft, and Daniel Jackson references.

But archaeology is rarely sensational. After all, no one makes films about the real work of archaeology: sorting artifacts, writing stacks of paperwork, raising funds, and publishing expensive books that few will buy, not to mention enduring instant coffee before dawn, digging latrines for the crew, and reapplying sunscreen.

What drives someone to become an archaeologist, then? For Dr. James F. Strange—Jim or Abuna to friends— the interest in material culture began in his boyhood when he and fellow Scouts collected Caddo and Comanche arrowheads behind a team of mules in an East Texas field. By the time he began applying for Ph.D. programs he was looking for a place where he could pursue New Testament and archaeology. He knew he had made the right choice, however, in the dust and sun atop Tel Gezer in the summer of 1969. So far as we know, he never missed another summer in Israel—and made many more trips besides—until illness kept him away toward the end of his life.

Yes, what motivates people to spend a lifetime digging and writing about it is intensely personal and idiosyncratic, but for Jim, some of the answers can be found in his long letters, written weekly to members of his Sunday School class at Bayshore Baptist Church in Tampa, FL, as well as in newsletters he sent out once dig seasons were over. He also loved telling stories about digs past, and his audiences loved hearing them. At both Sepphoris and Shikhin, volunteers knew that when he set his chair near their balks, they were in for an auditory treat that would include anecdotes, advice on trimming balk, and songs, all delivered in his rich baritone.

Archaeologists of yore, those gentlemen and ladies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, often recorded their breakfasts alongside the finds of the day. These notes allowed insights into the daily dig life when biblical archaeology was in its infancy. Jim used a separate genre to do something similar, and while it is no longer customary to publish the letters of an archaeologist, it seemed to us good to do so, as the posthumous publication of his work at Sepphoris in the Galilee is impending. The missives help account for what compelled Jim, the man and archaeologist, who is no longer here to explain his own drive. They allow insight into a mind churning with curiosity.

The first piece is not a letter but something Jim wrote during the Meiron Excavation Project, probably after the 1975 season. In A Morning Chronicle, readers will see the sorts of connections that Jim made between his work and the lives of the people whose culture he was exposing. These connections appear throughout the letters. Next are three letters that Jim wrote to Carolyn and their children during his first excavation, at the site of Tell Gezer, in the summer of 1969. The letters dating to the 1970s are also personal letters to Carolyn from three Upper-Galilean sites of the Meiron Excavation Project: Khirbet Shema, Meiron, and Gush Halav. The two letters written in April of 1980 were found in a personal journal and we assume that typed copies were mailed.

We don’t have all of Jim’s letters. Readers will notice a fourteen-year-gap before the first newsletter reporting on the 1996 season of the USF Excavations at Sepphoris. For later seasons, sometimes there is a single letter; for others, none. The lacunas suggest that many letters are lost or exist as copies on someone’s hard drive or in manilla folders in someone’s file cabinet. The final letter dates from the end of the 2016 season of the Shikhin Excavation Project, the last dig Jim attended, though he and Carolyn were able to return to Israel in December of 2017 for a symposium that his friend and archaeological colleague Motti Aviam organized in his honor.

People often told Jim that he should publish his letters. He did not, but we gladly take up the task. We think there is something here for readers who knew Jim and for those who never met him but wonder what this work is like. Those of us who can still hear his voice ringing and singing across the field will remember that archaeology ignited his imagination, gave context to his faith, and demanded his best intellectual efforts.

The Editors

A Morning Chronicle – 1975

Iopen my eyes in the morning blackness and feel the night images drift from my mind. Heavy breathing and whistling of seven other men in sleep tumble about the room. I flash the light briefly, long enough to see my watch, but quickly enough to grant my cabin mates a few more minutes' sleep. It's 4:00 A.M.

I swing my legs to the floor and in a moment I'm dressed and easing my way down the half-ladder, half- staircase that leads downstairs. Bill Architect is already awake; his breathing betrays him.

My feet reach bottom, and I swim for the bathroom, groping with open hands and defenseless shins. It is my shins that find the first obstacle, and the crash of chair, self, and wall dooms the others to wakefulness before their time.

I make it outside in two minutes, or so it seems. I see a light in the kitchen and marvel that John Hanks is already up, getting coffee for the camp. When does he sleep? He's 15 years my elder, labors in the dirt, and doesn't even glance at his bunk at siesta time.

I move down the hill the 50 meters to the watering place and find instant coffee and Israeli cookies in the breakfast room. I can hear John still knocking about in the kitchen. As I stir my coffee I glance at my watch, shade my eyes from the artificial glare, and strain to see if the sun has struggled up again. A dim, pink glow softens the east.

The thought registers that it's time to rouse the rest of the camp, but even at that moment two of them walk in and give me sleepy good-morning smiles. Well, at least one of them does.

Again outside I stride back to the cabins, occasionally meeting others who have managed to find the way to wakefulness without my knock on the door. The early warmth tells me that the advancing sun will bring heavy, unrelieved heat today.

Good morning in there. More people die in bed than anywhere else, I call cheerfully, knocking at doors with drawn curtains. Groans inside tell me that they have heard.

As usual, cabin number two, the last one I reach, is already up when I arrive. We hear you, we hear you! they shout as I approach. But I do my act anyway, dodging the hard-flung desert boot as I beat my hasty retreat towards more coffee and sleepy hellos.

Director Eric Meyers and Field Archaeologist Carol Meyers are already deep into shop-talk when I walk in. I see years of practice in their bearing as they eat, drink, greet, and handle dig business all at once. As usual Carol starts in on the decision at hand immediately: Melanie reports that two are down with diarrhea in her crew, and Little Sarah wants to dig today instead of helping Bill Architect. What do you say that we let one from Willard's crew go on over to Melanie, and Little Sarah return to her area? Bill says he can make it alone without anyone before second breakfast.

It's fine with me, as long as the crews are balanced, I say, glancing at Eric to read previous agreement in his eyes.

Well, James, what makes you so agreeable this morning? teases Eric, slapping me on the shoulder in his boyish, warm fashion.

I don't know. Must have had a fantastic dream. Yes, I dreamed I dug up Nefertiti and she still looked great, though a little desiccated.

Some students and Area Supervisors in the immediate vicinity groan or laugh appreciatively, but most are engrossed either in cookies or dry bread and chocolate jam. Others only pay attention to whether Eric and I will move toward the door together, the signal that work now begins. And not a few sit staring vacantly into space, absently sipping hot coffee, waiting for the exodus.

I scan their faces in the yellow light, looking for those who can see beyond the present crowd, for those who can see the long-since vanished men and women who also once cast aside sleep before the sun. That busy village, now dust and stone, that crowned the hill where the sun still sets and paints its idle colors on rumors of walls and houses. But perhaps it's too early, for no vision shines forth yet from these young eyes.

Pink changes to red in the east and crowds aside the darkness. I rise from my seat and move outside, not anxious to wedge into the narrow, cold seat of a coughing jeep to herd that steel animal up the dirt road. Its lurching load of hopefuls will search all day for some sparkle in the dirt that will etch this summer on their map of memories.

Time to hit the road! I shout, and give all my attention to starting the cold machine. I sense the noise, confusion, and movement over the angry cranking of the jeep. It finally starts, and we slip into reverse, rocking left and right with each new addition in the back.

Wait, wait! sounds behind and to the left. I know it is Big Sarah with her basket of supervisor's supplies running for a lift. I check the crowded back for room.

Sit up here in Ed's lap.

No, Ed can sit in my lap, she counters gleefully, but instead plunks her Area Supervisor's basket into his lap, stands on the running board, and grabs the canvas top with both hands. To the left I hear John start the surplus monster we call the Red Rover and know that Eric is with him. Carol walks, and will probably get there first.

We are off into the morning light, wind blowing through our collective hair. I watch the winding dirt road for animals and rocks in the way and listen with one ear to the banter and chatter in the rear, as much as I can make out. The road unwinds beneath our feet. Two dogs bark us away from their property and return home, satisfied. Doves soar across the road from right to left. I glance right to find their troubler, then left to capture their quick grace. Dust billows out behind and adds its silence to the early pause just before the town awakes.

I tell my eyes to watch the road, but they see what they like anyway. Here a sudden, yellow flower gazing ahead, there an unexpected, square-cut and ancient stone.

How many stones did he chisel, the author of that block? How often did he rest his squinting eyes on these same, yellow flowers at this same hour? Could he also hear the doves call and flutter, and even sometimes chuckle at early morning silliness? How long is fifteen hundred years, anyway, when mountain contours do not change and wildlife whistles the same song? And even though the edges of that fine building stone may soften with age, the hand of the fashioner can still be seen, if one but will.

Hey! We get off here.

Somewhat embarrassed I stop, back up, and let off Willard and one of his crew. The fig tree that marks his diggings passed through my vision, but I was busy driving through other times. And even as he unloads I notice that the ancient path from the middle entrance and its ruins must have crossed directly in front of us and beneath the modern road. Is any of the paving still preserved down there? Was it paved at all? I engage gears and bump forward while still more questions pour through my mind.

What?

I said why don't you dig this house on the right, anyway? It's just sitting there, and you can see the tops of walls.

Have you been over there? I ask, navigating a sharp right.

Well, no, but it sure looks interesting.

"Well, we did open a trench in there two years ago, but it was just a question of personnel and money. We couldn't dig the lower houses, the tower, the synagogue and that house, all four, so that was the first to go.

Maybe eventually we'll get back to it, but I doubt it. Why not?"

"For the same reasons we had to abandon it: people and money. Our priorities really