Full John Greene review of Digging through the Bible
John Greene review
RICHARD A. FREUND
DIGGING THROUGH THE BIBLE: UNDERSTANDING BIBLICAL PEOPLE, PLACES, AND CONTROVERSIES THROUGH ARCHAEOLOGY
NEW YORK: ROWAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC., 2009, 381 pp.
REVIEWED BY
JOHN T. GREENE
Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies
Michigan State University
Major Challenges of the Book: The Nature of Literary Sources, Editing Techniques, the Revisionism Controversy, and Archaeology
About the book Mond, Stier, und Kult am Stadtor: Die Stele von Bethsaida (et-Tell). (Freiburg: Universitaetsverlag; Goettingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998) that studies the steer cult at et-Tell/Tzer’s city-gate complex, the reviewer, Willem S. Boshoff in Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages (Vol. 26/2 2000: 175-177), praised the book’s timely and relevant appearance as a volume made important by its care in planning and execution, and how quickly after the discovery of significant, cult-related material-culture at the gate the volume appeared in print. This has been a long-standing tradition and professional attitude among the scholars, researchers, and technicians who have advanced the goals of the Bethsaida (Archaeological) Research Project. Administratively based at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, its members fill an international roster. In addition to Monika Bernett, co-author (along with Othmar Keel) of the Mond book, Bethsaida members have striven to place in readable form in the hands of both professional archaeologists and the intelligent, interested reader of matters archaeological originating in the territory of ancient Israel, timely works relevant to the Project’s overall endeavors. During the course of excavations, begun in 1987 and continuing to the present, Rami Arav, the Project’s field director, and Richard A. Freund, project organizer and secretary, have co-edited and published three volumes of preliminary reports, reports of technical experiments and non-invasive archaeological techniques using electric resistivity tomography, ground penetrating radar, GPS-assisted mapping, as well as geological and geographical studies of hydrological conditions and immediate regional morphology under the title Bethsaida: A City by the North Shore of the Sea of Galilee. Vols. I-III. Kirksville, MO: The Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1995 (Vol. I); Truman State University Press, 1999 (Vol. II), and 2004 (Vol. III). These three volumes cover some of the archaeological and related literary research of the Project’s members and colleague specialists (such as numismatists, epigraphers, bullae specialists, object restorers, specialists in ancient glass, paleo-pollen specialists, pottery specialists, zooarchaeologists, to name but a few) up to the date of the publication of Volume Three. Volume Four is scheduled for a 2009 publication, and Volume Five is on the drawing board. Few archaeological organizations have these many up to date ‘combat ribbons and medals’ to show for some twenty years of challenging campaigns.
Individual member volume/contributions include, but are not limited to those of Rami Arav and John Rousseau, Elizabeth McNamer and Bargil Pixner, Fred Strickert, Elizabeth McNamer (alone), Richard Freund and Rami Arav, editor. Volumes on the history of the Geshirites who dwelt at Tzer, on the religion of the Geshirites who dwelt there, and a two-volume work that summarizes the military involvement of the site are in progress.
Articles, too many to include here, have been written on the work of the Project, which takes great pride in the fact that as part of its plan to train the next generation of researchers at the site, three doctoral dissertations have been written and published on various aspects of the Bethsaida overall plan: Sondra Fortner. “Die Keramik und Kleinfunde von Bethsaida Am See Genezareth, Israel.” [“The Ceramics and Small Finds from Bethsaida on the Sea of Galilee, Israel.”] (University of Munich, 2005); Toni Fisher. “A Zooarchaeological Analysis of Change in Animal Utilization at Bethsaida From Iron Age II through the Early Roman Period.” (University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2005); and most recently Carl Savage. “Et-Tell (Bethsaida): A Study of the First Century CE In The Galilee.” (Drew University, 2007).
The above serves as a brief overview of some of the import work Project members have shared with the public so far. One intuits that this group of archaeologists/researchers has not been sitting on the laurals of their to-this-point success. Rabbi Dr. Richard Freund’s Digging Through the Bible is the most recent contribution to this publishing heritage. One of its main contributions is its rehabilitation of the terms biblical archaeology and biblical archaeologist, especially at a time when both terms have been steadily eroding and under attack by those who would re-write the history of archaeological research, especially that of ancient Israel and its immediate neighbors. Freund is indeed a biblical archaeologist, and he takes great pride in doing biblical archaeology, and in both he is impenitent, and with good reason. But more than this, Freund is also a student of Jewish, or “Rabbinic”, or “Babylonian” archaeology as well. (p. 151) I will return to this when I review his third problem below.
During a certain period, ‘biblical archaeology’ meant activities in the dirt designed to ‘prove’ that the Bible was true and accurate. The searcher was on a treasure hunt that began with a given theological position, and then went in search of data to support that position. Literature produced by this method is legion, and the reader understands why it slowly came to be all but discredited. Accordingly, the plan of Digging Through the Bible is bold and comprehensive; there are numerous ‘wrongs’ to be ‘righted.’ Freund’s understanding of biblical archaeology comes from his having been a ‘student’ tutored by the dirt, first at et-Tell. The silent yet eloquent lectures provided him by ‘Professor Dirt’ there have led him to other ancillary archaeological projects. The book, therefore, is a veritable roadmap of Freund’s personal experiences in archaeology detailed against the backdrop of a cavalcade of challenges to and lessons for the researcher/archaeologist. And it provides yet another jewel in the crown that sits on the head of the Bethsaida Project.
Digging consists of eight significant chapters in the life of Freund the archaeologist/researcher, and the issues to which he would respond. I like the fact that he does not diminish the importance of problem-solving. Freund writes, for instance, in “My Passover at Mount Sinai” just before he and his team researched what was termed the “new Mount Sinai” location in the Negev: “Any one of us can go out and excavate alone, but together we have the collective wisdom to solve a problem.” (p. 49)
Problem #1: “What if “there was a possibility that the event, the Exodus from Egypt, never really happened in history but rather was just a symbolic or mythological story created by ancient writers to motivate ancient readers to live a better or more meaningful life?” The story of an exodus being one of the main tenets of the story of ancient Israel, it is nevertheless surrounded by questions of a scientific nature enroute to an epistemology. The reader will notice that he goes directly to the heart of the matter; while many approach archaeology as a fishing expedition, casting their line(s) everywhere and in every direction hoping for a bite, he directs his research to the abiding questions that have been, and still are, being asked about biblical, unsettled issues. The Bible’s Old Testament story does not make sense were we to omit the account of God’s revelation to Moses on Mt. Sinai, and the laws he presented to his servant there. Yet the account produces as much fascination and awe as it does questions in the mind of the modern reader–some questions cannot be avoided. Sometimes, it is not enough to just excavate, sometimes it is necessary to merely upgrade your excavation work with the latest technical assistance to enhance already–in-progress methodologies. At the “new Sinai”, Freund offered such assistance and collaboration to the excavation’s director, Emmanuel Anati at Har Hakom. Freund felt that the generation of a subsurface map could “indicate what potential sites for excavations should be pursued.” (p. 50) This is one of the contributions of the new biblical archaeology. Boldly Freund raises the vexing question: “why scientific answers have been given greater emphasis in the modern period over traditional answers, . . .”(p. 51) What parts of the Exodus story are credible? What portions incredible? And how does one differentiate between the two? And how does the scientific-driven/led, archaeological methodology assist in this effort?
One learns from Freund’s inquiries ultimately that whether one speaks about an exodus or the Exodus, both ideas caroming off of a biblical book sharing the same name, one should speak of exodi. Leading him to this position is subscription to an approach that has been recently under attack by historical and literary-critical reconstructionists: the Documentary Hypothesis in its most recent recension: an Exodus by J/E [9th cent.B.C.E.] ( a lengthy account that includes mention of the city of Rameses, a ‘mixed multitude’, escape route to the south, and maybe recalls events that took place in the 16th century B.C.E), a Priestly presentation of an Exodus (small group, more named characters, taking a northern route to northern Sinai), and a Deuteronomistic version of an Exodus (taking a northern route into southern Negev, circuitous route back and forth to the Red Sea, heading for a Mount Horeb), all with parallels in other Old Testament literary accounts (such as Genesis, Judges and Kings). Three trajectories can be traced throughout the Old Testament/Hebrew Scriptures, Freund argues.
Freund moves toward ending this chapter by asking the question that may have gotten lost to all but the archaeologist(s): “If Mount Sinai is so important to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, why was the knowledge of the location of the site of Mount Sinai lost?” (p. 105) He intimates that the problem caused by editing of text traditions much later than the time of the events narrated, plus realization that at the time of the narrator travel by donkey from oasis to oasis had been long reolaced by travel by camel from one caravanserai to another severely altered the narration technique(s) of the event teller. One he termed Bronze Age travel, the other Iron Age travel. He concludes ultimately : the Jerusalem mountain became far more significant and important than the Sinai mountain–regardless where it (or the Horeb mountain) had really been located. Consequently, the issue of where Mount Sinai was located, whether in the south, central mountains of the present Sinai Peninsula of the Egyptian Republic, or a mountain on the western side of the Negev Desert at Har Hakom are both led by a ring through the noses of dogmatic interpreters, placed there by the redactor of the literary Exodus traditions contained in the Old Testament/Hebrew Scriptures.
Problem #2: Will the real David, Solomon, and Jerusalem of their era please stand and identify themselves to the nearest official?! Although Middle East archaeologists backed, as it were, into the issue, especially after the major chronology tables had been crafted by Albright and other giants, reliable material-cultural evidence of the 10th century B.C.E. in ancient Israel at all suspected sites became a major bone of contention among certain groups of archaeologists. I remember that at et-Tell where I had invested numerous years of my sweat working on our Iron Age bit hilani, city-wall, and city-gate complexes, on the one hand, while reading the contrary articles of Professor Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University, among others, who were diametrically opposed to there being any evidence in existence to a 10th century, on the other, in my frustration at an international meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature I presented a paper entitled: “Did the Tenth Century B.C.E. Only Exist at et-Tell/Bethsaida?” (Groningen, The Netherlands 2004) There the evidence had produced overwhelming material-culture leading from the late Bronze to the late 8th century. Between the 9th-8th century material and the Middle-Late Bronze finds, there was an abundance of material that, by Carbon-14 dating and ancillary methods, could only be identified as 10th-century material-culture. I remember the chronologist, Anne Killebrew, attending my presentation. Contrary to my thoughts that she was a nay-sayer, she turned out to have no issues with my conclusions.
While the material-culture in question by those who deny evidence of a 10th century is legion, the debate has centered on two literary characters and an ancient city. As Freund puts it: “The search for the Jerusalem of David and Solomon is almost as contested as the Exodus from Egypt.” (p. 110) Accordingly Freund next takes up this challenge and controversy. He argues that et-Tell is what one terms a pristine site when compared with a site such as Jerusalem, the last having been excavated thousands of times, while the former was abandoned in the 3rd century CE and remained forgotten and untouched until 1987. And Bethsaida has the added advantage of being a multi-period site as well. It is an excellent laboratory/classroom.
While David, and consequently Solomon–and their occupation level at the ruins of ancient Jerusalem–were being denied as having no supporting evidence for their existence, once the Bethsaida researchers reached the Iron Age levels, 12th to 8th century CE material-culture began to come to light. Most prominent among that evidence were a large, pillared, multi-purpose building with numerous rooms and a large, rectangular reception room (called a bit hilani), and a large city-gate complex whose ruins were built on an even earlier and large city gate complex. There at et-Tell, there was evidence of continuous occupation–and prosperity–for an extended period of the early to middle Iron Age. The bit hilani, especially as a type of royal residence, supports the account in 2 Samuel about David not only having had liason with the Geshurite King Talmai, and having married his daughter, Princess Maachah, but of the place to which Prince Absalom fled after the assassination of his half-brother, Prince Amnon (2 Samuel 14). Until the identification of Tzer/et-Tell, the major outlines of the biblical account remained in question, for no Geshurite capital city had heretofore been discovered. Since Tzer’s discovery, excavations there have contributed much to what must have been appearances of certain appurtenances and fixtures in Jerusalem, for they are very much in relief at et-Tell, and during the 10th century, Tzer was a much larger city than Jerusalem. As one reads the 2 Samuel account of Absalom’s stay and activities after his return, it is apparent that Tzer–and the royal business conducted there by the Geshurite court–had so impressed him that he burned to institute such a model of rulership in his father’s capital city; it resulted in his death.
In terms of the questions asked by Freund that drove his second chapter, : “. . . who were King David and King Solomon? Did they ever really exist, and what do we know about the Jerusalem(s) in the most ancient through modern period?’, Freund concludes that the existence about doublets and even triplets of stories about these men make it nearly impossible for archaeology to verify their existence from biblical records. It was the case with the identity of Moses and Mount Sinai/Horeb and its/their location in Freund’s Chapter One also. In other words, “The biggest question for archaeologists . . . is the lack of extrabiblical and unchallenged inscriptional information.” (p. 110) As of the state of the art, therefore, archaeology at Bethsaida provides a lot of circumstantial evidence–a lot more circumstantial evidence than has been presented anywhere else–of the reality of David and family, as well as his diplomatic connections with Geshur. We look into a mirror, as it were, and see his image; we just don’t see him standing before it causing the reflection. As for Jerusalem, David’s and later Jerusalem(s)? The example that comes readily to mind is not for prime time. Freund says it best when he writes: “While i have found that Jerusalem is a place where the archaeological layers are inherently mixed and difficult to interpret, it has not stopped archaeologists from trying to find King David and King Solomon amids the chaos of layers.” (p. 110)
Problem # 3: One sometimes wonders whether the reader is in danger of experiencing ‘controversy overload’ as she begins Freund’s third chapter: “Searching for Jesus in Galilee and Babylonia.” Immediately one entertains the thought/question: I know Jesus’ connection with the Galilee (as told in the canonical Gospels), but what does Jesus have to do with Babylonia? You will remember that when I introduced the author above I introduced him as Rabbi Dr. Freund. Suffice it to say for the moment that it is while wearing the ‘rabbi hat’ that he is highly aware of Babylonian rabbinic views of Jesus, as well as the significance of Christianity.
One of Freund’s challenges, as a result of being an archaeologist, was to be present in Israel in the year 2000. Charged with all of the excitement and anticipation that surrounded that year, the late Pope John Paul II visited Israel and toured the ‘Holy Land.’ Freund and some of his Bethsaida colleagues were granted a brief audience with the Pontif (March 24) at which time they presented him with a replica of an ancient door key that had been discovered during excavations of a large, courtyard house at Bethsaida. After relating to the pope the circumstances of the discovery, the pope accepted the replica and said “The Key of Peter.” He said it as much as a statement as a question. According to certain New Testament Gospels, Bethsaida was the home of the Apostle Peter. Since the key was discovered while excavating a large house that contained fishing paraphernalia, and since all popes are considered the decendants of Peter, the conclusion was understandable on many levels. But here is where archaeology presents a challenge to both text and tradition: it can be highly suggestive, highly helpful, or highly irrelevant.
Even with a popular figure such as Jesus, it is virtually impossible to directly–and with supporting, physical evidence–declare that Jesus–like Moses, David, and Solomon–existed. I think Freund’s very honest statement (p. 148) “There are so many historical, artifactual, archaeological, geographical, and literary lines of evidence that point to the authenticity of these accounts that it is difficult to interpret otherwise.” Nevertheless, returning to Kibbutz Ginosar, where he was in temporary residence, he asked himself honestly whether he had “done the right thing by agreeing with the words of the Pope, ” the Key of Peter.” (p. 149) Stimulating debate about the historicity of Peter revolves around not a rock but a key. There is no specific, physical, material-cultural object that points to a historical Jesus.
Nevertheless, the Galilee was the center for much of Jewish life, even before the first, disastrous Jewish vs. Roman War (66-73 C.E.), but most certainly after that war. Both Judaism and Christianity therefore flourished along the shores of the Sea of Galilee/Lake Kinneret.
Our late colleague mentioned above, Father Bargil Pixner, wrote about a “Fifth Gospel” thereby attempting “to weave the material culture and geography of first-century Galilee into his understanding of what the first four canonical Gospel accounts meant.” (p.153) Wisely borrowing this example, Freund first describes the significance to the Six Orders (of arrangement by subject matter) of a fundamental, Jewish document edited in the third century C.E. known as the Mishnah; he then posits, Pixner-like, a “Seventh Order” which he explains is the material cultural context itself also. Where Rabbinic literature was composed is as crucial to what it says about Jesus is as important as Pixner’s positing a “Fifth Gospel” Freund argues. In short, because of its nature and perameters the Bible (both testaments) provides biblical archaeologists with canonized direction in a way that is impossible–also because of the nature of the Rabbinic Canon of classics–to do. “In short,” Freund admits, “there are a number of problems associated with the use of Rabbinic materials to determine reliable information about fixed historical personalities and cities/towns in the Israel of late antiquity.” (p. 155) This is especially true of the Rabbinic literature edited in Babylonia; it must be subjected to critical analysis.
There are even archaeological instances when there has been discovered a plethora of physical evidence that seems to validate the existence of a historically-questioned figure. Such is the case of Jesus and the ossuaries found in burial caves in the section of Jerusalem known as Talpiot some years ago. Familiar and/or similar-sounding names and apparent connections of those names with characters known from the canonical Gospel stories, when examined critically and in context, moved one no closer to concluding that the bone boxes, their contents, and their inscriptions pointed to identifying the family of Jesus than finding a petrified hamburger in each proving they belonged to a hamburger queen named Wendy. Either the biblical story had to be altered to accomodate many anomalies in the evidence, or, and this is far more difficult, the bones would have to be bent in order to fit the writen account. The state of the challenge was not lessened but made even more difficult by the discovery of a seventh ossuary (not in context), supposedly of James, the son of Joseph, the brother of Jesus.
Ultimately, one learns that there are so many ‘Jesuses’ -the Palestinian, the Josephan wise man, the Hellenistic (although absent from the contemporaneous Philonic tradition), the Pauline, the Roman, the Byzantine, the Ethiopic, the Coptic, the Gnostic, the Rabbinic, the Byzantine, the Protestant, etc.–that one is highly challenged just where to begin the search, especially as an archaeologist, any kind of archaeologist. While the Babylonian Rabbinic tradition has a lot to say about Jesus, he may not have not been the first century C.E. figure, but a composite figure of traditions in Babylonia joined to earlier traditions from the Palestinian academies before they were closed in the fifth century. Freund concludes therefore: ” . . . the Rabbis of Babylonia, writing . . . in a land that was only indirectly informed about the Jesus and Christianity, are particularly unreliable sources of “real” information on Jesus . . .”(p. 182)
Chapter 4’s four women force one to consider once again the relationship between literary ‘witness’ and archaeological data. With the contents of the previous three chapters, we saw that while there is no dirth of literature, including the ‘literary testimony of evangelists/eyewitnesses’, and other ‘reliable sources’, that the more literature and artefacts that turned up the farther into obscurity were rendered the chances to capture the historically reliable Jesus. It was a case of shooting a mouse with a 12-gague shotgun shell: nothing was left after all of the effort. Yet, the archaeologist need not fold his/her tent (nor the hunter his/her hunting camp), for this situation does not plague every case. This we demonstrate in the following analysis.
Problem # 4: Chapter 4 shines the research spotlight on “Her Stories.” Statuettes of Livia Julia the Augusta and Daughter of Caesar, and a woman from the Iron Age were unearthed at et-Tell. One dates from the time when the tel was home to the polis Julias, the other when it hosted the Geshurite capital, Tzer. What drives Freund here is the invaluable service that archaeology can render to social history, especially the history of women for whom comparatively few written records exist. Archaeology fills numerous gaps in the search for a marginalized social class. This chapter is informed by Freund’s archaeological experiences at Bethsaida, Tiberias, and The Cave of Letters. The challenge, he thinks, is to learn more through archaeology than what women wore as adornments, utilized as cookware, employed as domestic implements, for men made use of all three also. Where archaeology may assist when producing material-culture are artifacts that signify the (almost) exclusive provence of women. Statuettes are a good beginning, and what a statuette may hold may also suggest a difference in the religious observance of women from that of men, and thus provide knowledge of social structure.This is certainly along the lines of the thesis of parallel folk religions of the archaeologist William Dever in his work Did God Have a Wife? (2005) But statuettes are not all; literature also helps provide some guideposts. Freund focuses on four women whom literature tells us were significant: Livia Julia, Berenice, Babatha, and Beruriah. Through them Freund intends to demonstrate “how textual information informs archaeology and archaeology informs textual information.”(p. 198) After her death, Livia Julia, the widow of Augustus Caesar, was deified (over her son’s objections) by the roman Senate. Researchers at et-Tell/Julias maintain that not only her statuette, but the temple dedicated by Philip Herod, tetrarch of Gaulanitis plus, to her venerating cult were discovered there. Berenice was the distinguished wife of the Jewish King Herod Agrippa II, who ruled on behalf of Rome during the First Jewish Revolt against Roman overlordship. She was also his sister. Babatha was the wife of one of the senior officers of the last of the Palestine-based, Jewish messiahs. Known as ‘Son of a Star,’ Simeon bar Kosiba led the Final Jewish Revolt Against Roman Overlordship (132-135 C.E.) against the forces of the Emperor Hadrian.Various documents belonging to her were discovered at the Cave of Letters during excavations there headed by the Israeli archaeologist, Yigael Yadin and his staff. As to Beruriah, Freund says of her that she was “the wife of Rabbi Meir, a rabbinic sage of singular importance in the second century C.E. Beruriah became a real person to me after I visited the graves of the Rabbinic sages and their spouses that are found in the hills around Tiberias and noticed that she was missing. Her absence is as important as her story.”(p. 189)
A. Livia Julia: A plethora of literary witness points to the existence of Livia Julia, both Roman and non-Roman. While all of it may not bestow glowing praise on her and hold her up as an example of womanhood to always be emulated, she, nevertheless, simply by being who and what she was, wife of Caesar Augustus and mother of Caesar Tiberias, was wafted onto the stage of Roman political and religious history. Freund, drawing heavily upon the sustained research of his Bethsaida colleague, Professor Fred Strickert of Wartburg College, is able to show how coins struck by Philip Herod helped to establish specific dates when ‘Village Bethsaida’ was elevated to ‘Polis Julias’ and the chronology of events during the last three years of the activity of Jesus and his group; the temple dedicated to Livia Julia was in active operation before Jesus left the area for his fate in Jerusalem, and parts of his critical remarks about attitudes by the local leadership could have been caused by events at Julias.
B. Berenice: While Freund’s section on Berenice is a delightful read, I found little in it of archaeological significance, unless it was the fact that archaeology concerning her has provided very little that is more helpful than the existing literature that provides glimpses of her. I don’t think I’ve ever read a better and more succinct biography of an influential Jewish woman of her times than what Freund has presented concerning her. Freund appears to delight in sharing with his readers that among all of her liasons with various rulers, and even with her brother, King Herod Agrippa II, that toward the end of her life she was the ‘girl friend’ of Titus Vespasianus Flavius, son of Emperor Vespasian. This liason was already in force when Rabban Yochannan ben Zakkai came to Yavneh to make his request to establish an academy for Torah study there; that she may have been far more influential in causing Titus to assent to his request; that she lived with him in Rome upon his return following his defeat of the First Jewish Rebellion; and that she was potentially a candidate for being the first Jewish Empress of Rome.
C. Babatha: Freund heaps great praise on the scholar Hannah Cotton when he discusses Babatha bat Shimon (104-135 C.E.).(p. 208) With the plethora of written material about Moses, David, Solomon, and Jesus that exists, we learned that the more there was the less we knew about these men. With far less extant written data, we know more about Babathah bat Shimon–and thereby conditions of women of her time–than any of these men. We know this because of her correspondence that was discovered in the Cave of Letters. Cotton has spent a considerable amount of her professional career studying these letters and ancillary materials; she is probably the most knowledgeable person concerning the letters. Babatha, probably well-educated, hid her correspondence and documents in the Cave during the Bar Kokhba Rebellion (132-135 C.E.), creating a “time capsule”, as Freund terms it,(p. 209) of readable, well-preserved letters for later researchers. Babatha”s ‘archive’ is part of a much larger body of literature that belonged to several women who deposited their valuable documents in other caves in the general area. While theier contents help flesh out many aspects of the social history of Jewish women of the first and second centuries of this era, and especially their legal rights–generally heretofore unknown–what archaeology still cannot solve is the problem of whether the presence of so many documents in at least three languages–Aramaic, Greek, and Nabatean–testifies to the education level of the average Jewish woman. Yet, Freund points to advancements in such a history based on the presence of documents produced by archaeology.
D. Beruriah: Beruriah, said to have been the daughter of the famous Rabbi Hananiyah (Hananya), is considered one of the rabbinic sages (although female! and never wearing the title Rabbi); she was also the wife of the equally famous Rabbi Meir, who initialized the codification of what eventuated as the Mishnah under Rabbi Yehudah ha-Nasi’ at the end of the second century of this era. Because of her pedigree and that of her husband, the stage is set for the appearance of a most remarkable woman. Freund stresses that the Rabbinic traditions acknowledge that she was an intellectually capable woman, and that oftentimes a decision followed her ‘ruling.’ Yet, this same woman, because of the stylized manner in which the Rabbinic record has been transmitted, could just as credibly been captured and taken to Rome as a prisoner, and made to serve in a brothel.(p. 219)
Freund’s concluding remarks concerning this chapter’s subjects remind one of a cloth being woven: Without Babatha’s archives, she would not have entered onto the historical stage, without the stories of Beruriah (and the ‘other woman’ who was probably she), Babatha would have been considered an anomalie of history; they, thus, complement each other and provide for themselves a modicum of credibility in the social history of first century C.E. Judaism. The tension between archaeology and literary interpretation have here forged a working partnership.
Problem # 5: The next twenty-one pages (Chapter 5) deal with the search for synagogues, and the use of incense.
Synagogues: Numerous works deal with the search for and definition of a synagogue in general, and specific works dedicated to regional studies such as the Galilee and Golan have done the same. Interpretive battle still rages on as to the first appearance of this Greek word within a Jewish, socio-religious context. During the summer of 1985, I excavated the ruins of the city of Gamla on the Golan Heights. Then, I wondered why there was so much uncertainty among some of my colleagues as to the purpose/use of a rather sizeable, attractive, partially-preserved building located along the eastern city-wall, below what remained of the circular, defense tower. Two competing views developed: 1) It was a synagogue, and 2) It was a multi-purpose building, plain and simple. While I was there, concensus was never reached. Spurring on the controversy was the presence (and discovery) of at least two mikvaot or ritual baths. If one attempt to assume a rabbinic mindset, it is easy to conclude from the mikvaot that this city, concerned as the mikvaot suggest that it was, was concerned with laws of purity; any such place would have had a synagogue, one would argue. But the argument is based on later practice in Jewish-Rabbinic sociology, and not on historical fact.
Freund clarifies almost immediately that “A modern synagogue is an architecturally unique structure oriented toward the east or Jerusalem that is used for rabinically-defined regular prayer services and Torah-reading ceremonies.”(p. 228) Yet, he concedes that this definition would not be accurate, even in ancient Israel, until after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 C.E. But in the Diaspora, where the institution probably originated, as a prayer and study place it had existed, and been well developed during the Second Temple Period. Without the assistance of archaeology, then, one may trace the evolution in meaning of the Greek word, synagogue, from a meeting/prayer house–the equivalent in use and meaning to the Hebrew Bet Knesset=meeting house to Bet Midrash (house of study), to Bet Tefillah (a prayer house), and translating the Greek proseuche (prayer place). But some of the mystery falls off when one learns that the word synagogue in its basic meaning was generally used by Greek-speakers to mean simply a gathering-place. Even Christians used it as a synonym for boule (gathering/meeting place) prior to the third century C.E. Freund concludes his analysis by maintaining that “The early Christians also used synagogue as an alternate name for an “ekklesia” or church.(p. 228). In the end, literature as early as the third century B.C.E. mentions “synagogue”, but does not specify whether it is a collection of people or a building where people collect themselves. Buildings that have been referred to as synagogues architecturally (Gamla, Herodium, Migdal, and Masada) do not provide uniform characteristics to suggest that they were anything other than multi-purpose buildings. When archaeology begins to produce synagogues as that term is now understood, it was not until after the Bar Kochba Rebellion. And archaeology has produced numerous synagogues dating from the third to the fifth centuries of this era. It is at this point that the uniformity of purpose and floor plan manifest themselves.
Incense: The ruins of a rectangular building that overlaps the third chamber of the Iron II city-gate complex at Bethsaida/Julias is referred to as Julia’s Temple, a reference to a hypothesized cultic center built by Philip Herod in honor of Livia Julia the Augusta, the deified wife of Augustus. The earth in the immediate vicinity yielded two important items: a terra cotta statuette of the deified Livia, and a bronze incense shovel. For Freund this shovel has caused numerous personal epiphanies! Freund is ecstatic that the 1996 “Bethsaida shovel is possibly the only one in Israel that comes from a documented archaeological city context and not from a hoard, a random discovery, or a private collection.”(p. 234)
This shovel launched Freund on a journey, both literary and archaeological, that had him trace the presence of incense shovels in Jewish synagogal art, especially mosaic floor art, along with other utinsils that had been appurtenances in the Jerusalem Temple incence service(s). Not necessarily an issue for Christians, Freund pointed up the importance of shovel, conical burner, and spice box in the developed service in the synagogue service and its prayerbook from the second through tenth centuries C.E. (both East and West), and how it differed depending on whether Jews were being influenced by Christians, Muslims, or other Jews such as the Karaites.
The Bethsaida shovel, those uncovered in the Cave of Letters, those discovered throughout the Jewish world, and those included in various synagogue art in Israel and the Diaspora all combine to testify to the continued importance of both incense use, or memory of it having been an important part of the Temple service(s), through the first ten centuries of Rabbinical Jewish-life and ritual. Freund even surmises that the three-legged, perforated cups from et-Tell may have been incense shakers (distributors) that functioned ritually like spice-boxes function in contemporary Jewish practice.
Problem # 6: Freund’s first five chapters relied on artefacts that were produced by traditional, archaeological methods of recovery to compare with relevant literary witnesses. His Chapter 6 demonstrates how archaeological methodology has come of age, and the fruit of some of its newer applications.These he has utilized at Bethsaida, The Cave of Letters, Qumran, Yavneh, and Mary’s Well near Nazareth. They involve better ways of mapping a site accurately utilizing GPS, ground penetrating radar, and electric resistivity tomography. The three make revisiting an already excavated site worthwhile; applications at a new or ongoing site, such as Bethsaida, even more successful in that they can help determine where to dig next on the site, and thus help planning strategy. But as the chapter’s title suggests, Freund intends to invest most of his writing capital in his Qumran research and results. In so doing, he will provide the reader with a most excellent summary of Qumran research from beginning to present state of the subject, reviewing all of the major scholarly theories. Second Temple Judaism, early Christian origins, and historical-critical study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as the relationship of the cemetery and Teacher of Righteousness to the community/communities flesh out this chapter.
It is in this chapter that Freund best demonstrates the relationship between earlier and modern methods and equipment used by archaeologists; the importance of revisiting specific sites that had been excavated earlier; and what the researcher can learn about problem-solving, text-to-on-site data tension(s). Qumran presents a veritable cornucopia of challenges to modern archaeological techniques. Freund and his technical team attacked the unanswered ‘relationship’–if any–between the numerous scrolls that were discovered there and in the vicinity of the settlement, the settlement’s floor plan and what that communicated, the settlement’s relation to the latrines discovered during Freund’s campaigns in 2001 and 2002, and finally the type of cemetery, the various burial practices noticed there, and the significance of a structure located on a promontory overlooking both the valley to the east of the Qumran site, as well as the cemetery and settlement to the west. This chapter reads like a detective novel, and kept me spellbound as Freund juggled seemingly unrelated facts and data. Once again, herein, especially as Freund devotes the latter portion of this chapter to the title ‘Teacher of Righteousness,’ speculation on the identity or identities of this person or persons, and what function he (assumed to be of the Zadoqite Priests) performed vis-a-vis other Jewish and Christian leaders with allied titles. He pursues this title until it appears to become phased out (reason unknown) during the Byzantine Period.
Problem # 7: In this chapter Freund takes up two allied issues: 1) whether it is possible to find the place where some Gospels (primarily apocryphal, not canonical) hold that Mary, mother of Jesus, bathed and had her annunciation, and 2) whether it can be demonstrated that ‘Mary’s Well’ is also the water source from which Jesus served his mother. (p. 322) This chapter is an enchanting tease, chock full of anecdotal information about the well. The real value of this section is the ‘hydrological’ history of Jewish and later Christian water use and ritual water use from the time of the ancient Israelite period to the Medieval period and beyond. Once again, Freund demonstrates his genius in writing ‘mini histories’ of matters pertaining to Judaism and Christianity that exist only spread out over huge amounts of sectarian literature, produced during a protracted period.
During the previous seven problems, Freund faced the problem of the interface between literature and archaeological data. With this problem he confronts the issue of archaeology helping to clarify both Jewish and Christian legends and traditions, especially from the first century through the twelfth centuries C.E. Miraculous wells and springs were well known in Middle Eastern literature and lore. Abraham’s seven wells at Beersheba and the well of Zamzam in Israelite and Islamic lore respectively come readily to mind. Freund has traced a connection between what is called Mary’s Well in Nazareth and the Well of Miriam found in Rabbinic Aggadot. Both traditions, he argues, appear around the second-third centuries C.E. and continue through the period of the Middle Ages. Since Mary (the Greek rendering) and Miriam are the same name (although the specific stories are different), Freund understands why confusion and conflation could result. Freund attempts to link the Mary’s Well tradition with the phenomenon of late Hellenistic and early Roman, as well as Byzantine Era bath houses and their importance for those societies, with Jewish adoption and adaptation to Rabbinic laws of ritual purity. The results were Jewish bath houses in large cities and towns that also contained ritual baths or mikvaot. The chapter’s triumph is in the way that Freund and his geophysicist colleagues collaborate to map out the relationship between the water source of Mary’s Well, the present site of Mary’s (waterless!) Well, and the basement of a nearby coffee house in the basement of which one gains access to an ancient Roman era bath house.
Problem # 8: It is regrettable that no coin was discovered anywhere near the traditional Mount Sinai(s)/Horeb inscribed with the name Moses and the caption ‘For the Congregation Israel.’ Equally regrettable is the failure (thus far) to find a coin inscribed with the words ‘King David, Ruler of Judah and Israel’ in the ruins of what are said to be his palace in the City of David in Jerusalem. And how many controversies could be put to rest amicably had a coin been discovered inscribed with the name ‘Jesus, Crucified–and Some Say Risen,’ either in Jerusalem or somewhere near Nazareth, Capernaum, Corazim, or Bethsaida. Alas, with neither of these three have we been treated to such luck. Fortunately, that has not been the case with Shimon Bar Kosiba/Kochba. Often referred to as a Messiah/Prince in Israel, Bar Kosiba led a revolt against Roman overlordship (132-135 C.E.), and for a time freed Jerusalem from Roman rule and the Emperor Hadrian’s plans to make it a non-Jewish, Roman city. A coin with a palm tree on the obverse side bearing the name ‘Shimon’ (whose letters are written along both sides of the trunk, and on the reverse side “For the Liberation of Jerusalem” does exist. By “Biblical” in Freund’s title for this chapter: “The Search for Bar Kochba: One “Biblical” Character Who Was Found”, he means the title which appears numerous times in biblical literature, and is alluded to in much more biblical contexts, i.e., Messiah, rather than implying that Shimon Bar Kosiba was a character like Moses, David, and Jesus mentioned in the Bible. In addition to the coin(s), two letters have also been discovered that were written by Bar Kochba to one of his commanders. They were found in excavations at the Wadi Murabba’at and contain his concern for the loyalty of the ‘Galileans’ (Christians?) to his cause. Here is a case where Rabbinic sources, the ‘Bar Kochba Coin(s),” personal correspondence, Roman reports, and Christian literary witness all combine to point unconditionally to an historical person.
Although Freund has alluded to the revisionist era (especially taking place among Israeli [but not exclusively] scholars) several times before he takes up the issue in this chapter, it is here that he provides his fullest explication of the revisionist (Maximalist/Minimalist) motivation, as well as his own position within this controversy.(pp. 329-331) Those readers who have struggled with the ‘why’ of this issue will find his discussion succinct but illuminating. This chapter’s discussion of the chronology of the Bar Kochba Revolt is also important. Numerous theories exist as to just when the Revolt began as well as what actually sparked it. The numismatist, Aryeh Kindler, and the archaeologist, Hanan Eschel, have collaborated to conclude that the Revolt began as a result of Emperor Hadrian’s decision to build Aelia Capitolina (the non-Jewish city that replaced Jerusalem for a time [and rename Judea Palestina) before 132 B.C.E.
What archaeology could not answer to the satisfaction of either Maximalists or Minimalists was why the persons who sought refuge in either the Cave of Letters or the Cave of Horrors (located nearby–across the canyon of Hever) were actually there; when they were there, how important they were to the Roman commander(s) who built a fortress above the entrance to the Cave of Letters–from which they could also keep an eye on the entranceof the Cave of Horrors also; what caused the former inhabitants of Ein Gedi to choose nearby caves in which to seek refuge and not a more comfortable place if evading the Romans was their immediate goal; and why the burial practices obviously practiced there differed so radically from accepted Jewish burial practices of the period. And while
Freund has produced a cogent theory as to to the existence of numerous bronze vessels discovered in a hoard there–and their relationship to the bronze incense shovel that was discovered at Bethsaida–the late Professor Yadin and numerous Minimalists are caucusing to bring his thesis to task. Immanuel, if not Yadin, is happy to know that he was correct in maintaining: “Wir koennen das Ding wissen, aber nie das Ding an sich.” Freund agrees that archaeological research and the tools it now employs indeed have its/their limits, but that these limits have pushed the frontiers much further forward than they were before fifty years ago. This, too, is progress.
Conclusion
It is difficult to write for multiple audiences in the same work; if it is too general for the scholar, she gets bored, becomes disinterested, and terms the work pedestrian; if too involved, too technical, using too many foreign terms, and too many footnotes, the interested general reader will cast it aside as being pretentious. Freund has demonstrated herein that rare ability to address both audiences simultaneously, like the Prophet Hosea. I, as a critical scholar, have been both well-informed and well-entertained; finding neither the pretentious nor the boring.
Freund has posed the key questions, and placed the problems they address within a Kantian framework: Biblical archaeology provides the backdrop of a life, a place, and event, but it cannot provide a life, a place, or an event in itself. (p. 326) So if the bottom line is that archaeology cannot always help settle issues of existence or non-existence concerning extremely important personages in either the Bible or in history in general, what is all the buzz about continuously doing biblical and Jewish archaeology; isn’t one on a fool’s errand? Isn’t too much being made of too little? I reply with a story about visitor/tourist candidates to the palace of a given king (any king will do). Palace administrators had extended the invitation to several citizens, but had made it perfectly clear that they would not see the king himself nor be granted an audience with him. Thereupon all but one invitee declined the invitation out of hand, explaining that the inability to speak with the king made the offer essentially useless. When the invitee who accepted the invitation unconditionally was asked why he had done so, his reply included the possibility of seeing the place where the king lived, the king’s library, the king’s kitchen, the king’s bedroom, the king’s throne room, the king’s stables, from all of which he could learn much about the king whether he saw him or not. This was better than nothing at all. Moreover, he reasoned, it may just be that perchance being in the same general space occupied by himself as visitor and the king as resident he may luckily get a glimpse of the king as he perambulated in the palace; an unscheduled appearance, as it were. The possibility makes the tour more than worthwhile for the wise and optimistic.
With Freund’s pen, archaeology is presented as a mature endeavor that has come of age. It now has discernible boundaries of helpfulness as one tool in the arsenal of the scholar/researcher. But, happily, he has presented the ‘tool’ in an unadorned and realistic way. Archaeology is no soma pill.
This story appears in a work called “The End All of Knowledge” and is attributed to a famous European Jewish leader, the Baal Shem Tov, Rabbi Israel. Although Richard Freund never mentions him, one rabbi/archaeologist subscribes totally to the attitude toward the pursuit of knowledge expressed by another rabbi in a wisdom writing. Freund’s Digging Through the Bible thus sets the bar of doing biblical and Jewish archaeology at the proper level.The book reflects a hopefulness by Freund that archaeology does indeed provide a useful service to those who enquire seriously and professionally about the history of ancient Israel and the classics of literature it produced. The book makes a significant contribution to the subject, and I recommend it highly as a necessary read by both scholars and the intelligent and curious reading public.
