Blue Cord

Since many of my readers will be traveling to Boston this weekend for the Society of Biblical Literature Conference, I thought I would draw your attention to an exhibit that is at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

“Art and Empire: Treasures from Assyria in the British Museum” is currently on display. As the title suggests, these are all artifacts that are housed in the British Museum. They are on loan to the Boston Museum of Fine arts from September 2008 to January 2009.

I have not seen the exhibit yet, but a colleague of mine at Merrimack College said it was very well done. She is not a biblical scholar, but by her description of one of the reliefs, I believe the scene depicting Sennacherib’s siege of Lachish is one of the pieces on display. I have not been able to find an official list of the artifacts in the exhibit, so I cannot confirm this.

If you want to attend, please keep in mind that tickets are required. You can purchase tickets for specific times of entry on the MFA web site, and the ticket is only good for that time slot. The exhibit tickets are $25 (plus “convenience fee”), and that is on top of the general admission of $17 (plus “convenience fee”).

You can visit the exhibit’s web site for more details.

This month’s Review of Biblical Literature contains a review of Maria Brutti’s The Development of the High Priesthood during the Pre-Hasmonean Period. I had not heard of this book. It is published by Brill, but since I am not independently wealthy I cannot afford books published by Brill, so I rarely go by their exhibit at SBL meetings. I was excited when I saw the title, however, because of my interest in the history of the priesthood. I am not as concerned with the period that this book covers (301–152 BCE), but knowing the state of the priesthood at the point would make it possible to work backwards into the periods that do interest me.

Unfortunately, the book review, written by Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer, does not leave me hopeful about the book’s usefulness. Here is her opening paragraph, which sums up what she has to say in the rest of the review:

This erudite and meticulously researched book, the author’s revised doctoral thesis from the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome, leaves the reader with mixed feelings. On the one hand, the book constitutes a wealth of information about the pre-Hasmonean high priesthood. The author is very well read, confidently citing Anglo-Saxon, German, French, and Italian research, and she is fully in command of the primary Greek sources. On the other hand, the book is somewhat unsatisfactory. After reading the book, I have undoubtedly become more knowledgeable about the state of research in the field of the pre-Hasmonean high priests, but I do not know very much more about the high priests. Brutti does not pursue a specific thesis, nor does she advance a particular theory pertaining to the role of the Jerusalem high priests during the Ptolemaic and the Seleucid periods. Rather, the book is descriptive, as it outlines what we can or, more often, cannot know about the tasks and roles of the high priesthood during these time periods. Caution is a virtue, but this book is overly cautious, leaving the reader ever so slightly disappointed. [emphasis mine]

While I appreciate a good review of the literature and a survey of the data as much as the next scholar, those are only the first two steps in scholarship. Analysis is only the beginning. At some point we have to do a synthesis. It sounds like Brutti never gets around to that step. The italicized sentence in the paragraph above is particularly damning. When we read a book, we ultimately want to find out about the topic at hand, not just about the state of research on the subject.

I don’t think this book would be on my “to buy” list for the SBL this year even if I could afford it.

A new book out by Alan Bond and Mark Hempsell entitled A Sumerian Observation of the Köfels’ Impact Event claims that an Assyrian tablet from around 700 BCE is a copy of a Sumerian tablet that recorded a sighting of the impact of a asteroid [sic, not “meteor”] that hit in the Alps on June 29, 3123 BCE. The story has been reported in several news outlets, including a piece at Fox News.

In and of itself, the claim is not surprising. Mesopotamian astronomers kept excellent records and very detailed notes on astronomical events. The Ammisaduqa Venus tablets, for instance, contain notes on the appearance of Venus in the morning and evening skies in the Old Babylonian Period (around the 17th century BCE). These observations are precise enough to be correlated with calculations of planetary positions during that time, which makes them one of the lynch pins in chronology for that period.¹

I find three problems with Bond and Hempsell’s claims. One is that they try to connect this asteroid with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and a number of other cataclysmic events recorded in ancient documents. According to the Fox News story:

[Hempsell] said the size and route of the asteroid meant that it was likely to have crashed into the Austrian Alps at Köfels. As it traveled close to the ground it would have left a trail of destruction from supersonic shock waves and then slammed into the Earth with a cataclysmic impact.

Debris consisting of up to two-thirds of the asteroid would have been hurled back along its route and a flash reaching temperatures of 400 Centigrade (752 Fahrenheit) would have been created, killing anyone in its path.

Even if we assume for the moment that Sodom and Gomorrah were real cities that actually were destroyed at some point (a rather large assumption), a number of details from the Sodom and Gomorrah story don’t match with the Köfels event. First, this event happened in 3123 BCE, whereas the Sodom and Gomorrah story in the Bible is placed somewhere in the early 2nd millennium BCE. Second, the path of destruction would have taken out a lot more than just five cities around the Dead Sea. If the conditions were as Hempsell described them, then the path of destruction would have run across the Karak Plateau in Moab, over the Jordan valley, and up across the Central Hill Country of Palestine. This is a much larger area than was covered in the Sodom and Gomorrah story.

The second issue stems from the claim that the planisphere is a copy of a text from 3123 BCE. Sumerian writing is in its earliest stage in 3100 BCE. I find it hard to believe that we have such a detailed text from this time period. We don’t start getting numerous text in Sumerian until later centuries, and true astronomical observations don’t really begin until the 2nd millennium BCE. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that this text records the Köfels impact, but it seems highly unlikely to me.²

Third, the tablet notes that the Sumerian astronomer says the object looked like “a white stone bowl approaching.” If the asteroid’s path took it on a low trajectory over the Dead Sea area on its way toward the Alps, an observer in Sumeria would not have seen it “approaching.” Instead, it would have moved low across the southwestern horizon and would not have appeared to approach. The description of object as a bowl also does not match the trail of smoke and debris that would have been left by an 1 km wide asteroid.

Obviously I cannot give a complete critique of their work until I read the book, but I find their theories to be highly suspect. Both Bond and Hempsell are scientists, not Assyriologists, and their lack of training in the ANE shows through. I suspect they would have similar critiques of my work if I ever chose to publish a book on physics, which is why I don’t publish academic books outside my field. Although their theories may be given credibility by those who are eager to latch on to any evidence that suggests the Bible is historically accurate, I doubt they will be accepted by most scholars.

Hat tip: Claude Mariottini.

1. Because of my interest in astronomy, I did some work with these tablets when I was a grad student at Johns Hopkins. [back]
2. Someone who is a specialist in Sumerian could speak to this better than I could. [back]

The connection between the story of the golden calf episode in Exodus 32 and the setting up of the golden calves by Jeroboam in 1 Kings 12:25-33 is well-known. One of the stories is dependent on the other, although the direction of dependence is still debated. The problem has been discussed in a number of places, but I wanted to draw out some implications of these stories for the history of the priesthood in ancient Israel.

There are three elements of the Exodus 32 story that bear on the priesthood. One is the anti-Aaron story that forms a main element of the story. It is unclear whether there was an original form of this story that did not include Aaron,¹ but in the story as it is currently found he is an inseparable part of the narrative. The second element of the story that bears on the priesthood is the pro-Levite story in Exodus 32:25-29. This story is an etiology for the service of the Levites as priests.² Noth judged this story to be a secondary addition to the original J narrative.³

It seems likely that these two elements came together at a time when there were two priestly factions vying for control. Obviously, that does not narrow the time frame that much. Opposition between the Aaronides and the Levites seems to have begun at least as early in the monarchy, Eli may also have been an Aaronide. The Aaronides, who were probably a sub-set of the Levites, rose to a position of prominence in Jerusalem and soon became the only priests who were allowed to serve in the Jerusalem temple.⁴ The rest of the Levites were left serving in other cities. This would mean that all the priests in the northern kingdom of Israel were Levities, at least originally.

We are told in 1 Kings 12:31 that Jeroboam appointed non-Levitical priests to serve at his shrines in Dan and Bethel. This pulls in the third element of the Exodus 32 story that bears on the history of the priesthood: the critique of the golden calf.  If we are looking for pro-Levite / anti-Aaronide authors who would have reason to critique golden calves, then the Levites in the north are the obvious choice. From their point of view, the story scores points against multiple adversaries: it critiques the religious practices of Jeroboam while painting the Aaronides in a negative light.

This means this story in its present form must have originated between 930-722 BCE. Some of the traditions are probably older, and this phase of the development of Exodus 32 may have been oral instead of textual. But to me these three elements indicate that the story in Exodus 32 is of northern origin and is based at least in part on the reforms of Jeroboam. It provides a brief but tantalizing glimpse into the development of the priesthood in the 9th-8th centuries BCE.

1. Aaron is barely mentioned in the parallel account in Deuteronomy 9:8-21. He shows up only in v.20 and his sin is unclear. [back]
2. Why Durham says that this story does not justify the Levites ordination as priests is unclear. John I. Durham, Exodus, Word Biblical Commentary 3 (Dallas: Word, 2002), 432. [back]
3. Martin Noth, Exodus, trans. J.S. Bowden, Westminster Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1962), 245. [back]
4. Zadok and Abiathar were both Aaronides, although Abiathar and his descendants were banished from Jerusalem for supporting Adonijah against Solomon in 1 Kings 2:26-27. [back]

There is another round of the minimalist vs. maximalist debate going on in certain parts of the biblioblogosphere right now. It appears to have started with Claude Mariottini’s post of Mario Liverani’s Israel’s History and the History of Israel. Jim West and Christian Brady have offered follow-up posts on the subject, as have a number of others.

I haven’t jumped into this debate when it has shown up in blogs before. I would probably call myself a medialist, since I fall somewhere between the minimalists and the maximalists. But I first got into this debate about ten years ago while I was in my doctoral program at the Johns Hopkins University. In order to make sure we got all sides of the debate, my dissertation director P. Kyle McCarter, Jr. invited Thomas Thompson, Israel Finkelstein, and William Dever to campus. In the course of one academic year, we go to hear papers by all three and have discussions with them afterwards. It was quite an experience.

I wanted to offer three thoughts on the debate.

First, I think arguing about whether what minimalists or maximalists do is right or wrong is a mistaken approach to the entire problem. We cannot say that all texts are historical reliable or that all texts are historically reliable. Some texts are and some texts are not, while most texts fall somewhere in between. The reliability of a text has to be determined on a case–by–case basis. If a minimalists has determined that an entire text is historically unreliable (as Liverani has done), we cannot argue against his position by claiming that all minimalists deny the historicity of the text (as Mariottini does). That is simply begging the question:

1. Liverani denies the historicity of the biblical text.
2. Liverani is a minimalist.
3. All minimalists are wrong because they deny the historicity of the biblical text.
4. Therefore, Liverani is wrong.

We have to look at the actual arguments made by the minimalists and show that they are wrong or — if we want to be intellectually honest — look at the arguments to determine whether they are right or wrong (we should not go into the debate assume that one side or the other is wrong). The best way to do this is to examine their claims about the origin of the text. Liverani claims that the DtrH is an invention of the post–exilic period. That in itself is a historical claim and is therefore open to debate. If we want to engage his argument, we have to look at the evidence he presents as well as the evidence of those who claim it is from an earlier period. Simply castigating him for using a minimalist approach will only convince people he is wrong if they are already convinced that the minimalists approach is wrong. As enjoyable as it is to argue in favor of something people already accept, it is not going to convince those who don’t already agree.

Second, I wanted to take issue with the claim made by West that it is the historian’s job to offer proof. Proof, however, is a luxury that we do not have as historians. All we have is evidence. That evidence may point in a certain direction, but it will never amount to proof. West is right that we cannot prove that Moses didn’t exist, but at the same time we cannot prove that he did exist either. All we can do is examine the evidence — both textual and artifactual — and attempt to write a history that best explains the evidence we have. Given the paucity of evidence, it is no surprise that people will come to different conclusions. As I always tell my students, writing the history of ancient Israel is like doing a 5,000 piece jigsaw puzzle when you only have 173 pieces and no picture on the box. The best to which we can aspire is to put the pieces in a meaningful order and sketch in what the other pieces might have looked like.

Third, we are doing things backwards when we are trying to use history to prove the biblical text. Our reconstruction of Israel’s history may inform our understanding of the text, but it cannot prove it because the reconstruction is based in large part on the Bible itself. Instead of using archaeological data and historical reconstructions to prove the text, we should be using archaeological data and the text to make historical reconstructions.