VERY OLD MYSTERIES

by Robert Lopresti

Last month I attended the Bible and Archaeology Fest in San Diego. This is one of those events that can best be described as “fascinating to people who are fascinated by that sort of thing.” I’m sure some people would rather listen to a dramatic recital of the phone book than to a lecture on, say, Ancient Gath, but I had a great time.

Let me clear up two possible misconceptions. The Fest is not a religious event. The speakers are archaeologists, linguists, historians, textual scholars, and so on, not preachers. And it is called a Fest rather than, say, a Conference, because it is aimed at laymen. The scholars were actually meeting across town (which is how the Biblical Archaeology Society could afford to bring in so many great speakers).

And by the way, if you keep reading I promise you this will tie all this to crime. Because that’s what this blog is about, right?

Shovel groupies

How many scholarly fields have something similar to this? Sure, the arts attracts fans and hopefuls – otherwise Bouchercon would just be a meeting of mystery writers. But do other sciences or less glamorous professions? I am pretty sure that there aren’t a lot of librarian wannabes hanging around the conferences I attend, waiting breathlessly for the latest news on serial aggregators and federated searching. Space scientists and paleontologists probably have their hangers-on. But does anyone else?

While there are popular magazines about archaeology in general, and also Egyptology, I doubt that any archaeologists get as obsessive a crowd of buffs as the biblical bunch, who get excited because it is biblical. Some of them are deeply religious people. There were a few people at this fest (both Christian and Jewish), who got upset over discoveries or interpretations that didn’t fit their view of of the universe. There weren’t many of them (at least not vocal ones), and I assume that’s because most of those in attendance have read Biblical Archeology Review for years, and that magazine tends to winnow out those who are unwilling to look a little beyond Sunday school teachings. (Almost every issue of BAR features a letter or two that reads something like “You said that the mountains around Jerusalem are ten million years old. The whole world was only created 6,000 years ago. Cancel my subscription!” And another literalist self-selects out.)

But even if you don’t believe the Bible literally (or at all) chances are you probably grew up on the stuff. And for some of us the chance to learn a little more about where all that stuff came from and what it meant – well, it’s irresistible.

Selling you a copper mine

Let’s see if I can explain why we get so hooked on this. The last speaker at the Fest was Thomas Levy, who discussed his exploration of an Edomite copper mine in Jordan, and in particular the question of whether the mine was from the tenth or ninth century BC.

The whole presentation was fascinating if you are interested in old technology, but for those of us in the BAR crowd our antennae shot up as soon as we heard the words “tenth or ninth century.” We all know why that’s important.

According to the Bible the political high-water-mark of ancient Israel was the United Monarchy under Kings David and Solomon. Most experts agree that if those people and that Kingdom really existed, it had to be in the tenth century BC. (The traditional date for David’s conquest of Jerusalem, for example, is 1000 BC.)

But a big kingdom like that, with a sizable bureaucracy taxing and organizing people, should leave a sizable archaeological footprint. There should be ruins of fortifications, public buildings, and industrial sites (hmm … copper mines … ). So, are there such traces left behind in the right place?

There are, and most experts say they date from the tenth century. But some, led by Israel Finkelstein, say they are from the ninth century, too late to be attributed to David and son.

If the king-size (sorry) ruins in Palestine are from the tenth century you can argue that there is what scholars like to call a “kernel of historical truth” in the Books of Samuel. But if those ruins are from the ninth century, then David and Solomon, if they existed at all, were just tribal chiefs with a great publicity department.

Do you see how a couple of tons of copper slag can suddenly become a weapon in an academic battle? A religious fight? Even a political one?

Forgers and loonies

I promised to tie this to crime, didn’t I?

At the Fest Bart Ehrman spoke about forgeries in the early Christian era. Apparently it was pretty common two thousand years ago for authors to claim they were someone else. Sometimes they did this for money (if you announce you will pay top money for letters from the church fathers, someone is going to turn up with ancient letters, possibly with the ink still wet), or to make your own opinion look more authoritative, or — and this is my favorite – to make somebody else look bad. Pagan and early Christian authors would sometimes write something nasty and sign their enemy’s name to it. See what evil stuff that no-goodnik has been preaching?

The scholarly view used to be that this was standard operating procedure back then and nobody minded it much. But we have plenty of evidence to the contrary, in the forms of contemporary authors complaining about such wicked deeds. Even better we have letters that read like this: “If you read something that claims to be by me saying thus-and-so, don’t believe it! It’s a forgery.” Except that in some cases the experts think that that letter itself is a fraud.

So we have forgers warning against other forgers. Or possible against the REAL author. You have to love it.

Ehrman gave us what you might call a modern instance. Konrad Kujau managed to fool a lot of experts with a supposed diary written by Hitler. When he got out of jail Kujau made a living forging paintings, but he did it legitimately, creating “Rembrandts by Kujau” and the like. Eventually people started forging Kujaus. Later his memoirs appeared — and they were a forgery too. To change religious metaphors, you might say the man had some karma to work through.

Another speaker, Eric Cline, urged his fellow scholars to speak up against “amateur enthusiasts,” by which he meant crackpots. I am talking about the people who make (and sell) videos explaining how they found the basket that baby Moses floated in, or something similarly unlikely. Most of these guys have no degrees in the field (or a Ph.D. from Joe’s University and Puppy Kennel, now offering 10 graduate credits with each pit bull). These shows often wind up on TV and usually feature tightly edited comments by scholars who are often astonished later to learn what opinions they were supposedly endorsing.

Someone asked Cline about the motives of people who create such products. He suggested that some of them were sincere, and some had just discovered a new way to sell gold bricks. But a third possibility is that some genuine researchers figure it might be easier to get funding for a dig if you say “I think I can find John the Baptists’ bathtub,” than if you say “I want to study olive production in ancient Samaria.”

I guess the moral is that there are still people willing to buy they want to believe, and there will always be someone willing to sell it. Whether the currency is Roman coins or U.S. dollars this basic fact doesn’t change.

Another thread from the web

Bruce Zuckerman is the go-to man for using technology to restore impossible-to-read ancient texts. His West Semitic Research Project has put 20,000 images of ancient documents on the web, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, the El-Amarna Tablets, ostraca and seals, etc. To see them all you have to do is sign a page promising not to use them commercially. Then you can start brushing up your Ugaritic.