Back in February, I discussed the misguided criticism of archaeologist Eric Cline (best known to the general public for his recent book From Eden to Exile: Unraveling Mysteries of the Bible [National Geographic, 2007]) leveled by Biblical Archaeology Review editor Hershel Shanks in the March/April 2008 issue of that magazine. Shanks has now responded—in the May/June 2008 issue—to Clines’s own objections to the treatment Shanks gave him in the aforementioned column.
If you don’t remember the issues involved, you might want to go back and read my earlier post, which quotes extensively from both Shanks’s March/April “First Person” column and Eric Cline’s e-mail reply thereto. To summarize: Shanks criticized Cline for criticizing Eilat Mazar’s identification of a particular structure in Jerusalem as “Nehemiah’s wall.” However, Cline had issued no such criticism. Cline wrote the statement that Shanks had—“Be wary of anyone with a Web site or multiple publications who claims to have been able to ’solve’ more than one Biblical mystery or locate more than one of the missing Biblical objects or places”—as part of an invited response to a National Geographic blog post on the Shroud of Turin. (Shanks actually begins the quotation in the middle of the sentence, without indicating such; Cline’s actual sentence read, “Therefore, as a general rule of thumb, I would also say that it would be prudent to be wary of …”) In an e-mail posted on the ANE-2 discussion list and one worded slightly differently, sent to BAR directly, Clines complained about Shanks’s misrepresentation of his statement as a criticism of Eilat Mazar, with whom the statement had nothing to do.
At the end of his letter, Cline wrote:
Hershel, I know that you want to sell magazines, but sowing discord and creating dissension between professional colleagues is not the way to do it.
I demand a retraction and a public apology from you for (1) wrongfully creating the illusion that I attacked Eilat Mazar and (2) creating potential conflict between colleagues where none had existed previously.
Shanks responds as follows in the May/June 2008 BAR:
My piece was not about what Eric Cline did to Eilat Mazar, but about what National Geographic did to Eilat Mazar. Read my piece carefully. It is about National Geographic. It is not about Eric Cline. It only quotes what National Geographic said, including a quotation from Eric Cline that National Geographic used to flog Eilat Mazar. If Cline has a complaint, it is against National Geographic. He should have complained to National Geographic when its piece went up, charging that National Geographic had misused what he said when it applied his words to Eilat Mazar’s discovery of Nehemiah’s wall.
Here’s the relevant paragraph from Shanks’s March/April column:
In no time, bloggers were feverishly discussing the finding of Nehemiah’s wall. Then an item appeared on the widely read Web site of the National Geographic Society. First, it quoted Professor Eric Cline of the George Washington University, whose book the National Geographic Society had just published and was heavily promoting; Professor Cline said, “Be wary of anyone with a Web site or multiple publications who claims to have been able to ‘solve’ more than one Biblical mystery or locate more than one of the missing Biblical objects or places.” No discussion of the evidence. No consideration of Mazar’s qualifications. Just the casting of an aspersion because she had made two important Biblical identifications. And no consideration of the fact that she was digging in the heart of Biblical Jerusalem, just where such Bible-related places and objects can be expected.
If Shanks wrote this consciously intending not to leave the impression that Eric Cline had criticized Eilat Mazar, he did an exceptionally poor job (especially for such an experienced editorialist!) of making that clear. Shanks certainly didn’t tell his readers that the National Geographic writer, Chris Sloan, was reapplying what Cline had written about different issues. The explanation also rings a little hollow when one compares Cline’s statement as it appears in the three sources:
Cline: Therefore, as a general rule of thumb, I would also say that it would be prudent to be wary of anyone with a web site or multiple publications who claims to have been able to “solve” more than one biblical mystery or locate more than one of the missing biblical objects or places.
Sloan:In an earlier blog, Eric Cline provided some guidance. One of his comments was: “… as a general rule of thumb, I would also say that it would be prudent to be wary of anyone with a web site or multiple publications who claims to have been able to “solve” more than one biblical mystery or locate more than one of the missing biblical objects or places.”
Shanks: First, [the National Geographic web site] quoted Professor Eric Cline of the George Washington University, whose book the National Geographic Society had just published and was heavily promoting; Professor Cline said, “Be wary of anyone with a Web site or multiple publications who claims to have been able to ‘solve’ more than one Biblical mystery or locate more than one of the missing Biblical objects or places.”
At the very least, Shanks fails to represent either Cline’s original statement or Sloan’s quotation of Cline accurately. Shanks—who elsewhere (see the “strike two” continuation of this post, coming soon) crows about his own achievements in publishing—declines to use either ellipses or the convention of placing the first letter of a word in brackets when you’re changing the case to fit a quotation into your own sentence structure. Sloan carefully used ellipses to show that he had skipped the single word “Therefore.” Shanks omits the words “Therefore, as a general rule of thumb, I would also say that it would be prudent to”—without any indication of having done so. Why, if not to give BAR readers the impression that Cline had sharply criticized Eilat Mazar? We have here either an intentional misrepresentation or sloppy writing—and as Shanks’s primary response is “read my piece carefully,” he seems to disclaim the latter possibility.
And since Shanks avers such an interest in careful reading, perhaps he should have read Chris Sloan’s National Geographic blog post of November 13, 2007 more carefully! In the first paragraph of the blog post, just a few lines before the quotation from Cline, Sloan wrote:
Today the World Net Daily reported that Dr. Eilat Mazar claims to have discovered Nehemiah’s tower. This blog has addressed the question of how a non-expert might evaluate such claims of biblical discoveries. If one reads the news report carefully, it is not clear whether Dr. Mazar is making the inferential leap between finding Persian era pottery at the site and the site being Nehemiah’s tower or if it is the media that is presenting it this way. Whatever the case (and I will try to find out) this is a good example of a sensational find that it is hard for a non-expert to evaluate. So, let’s put it to the test.
That is the entire first paragraph of Sloan’s post. By Shanks’s logic, Shanks should be apologizing to and printing retractions concerning National Geographic, and Chris Sloan in particular—after all, the post was about World Net Daily, not about Eilat Mazar. But the more important thing is to see what Sloan was actually saying. Please read Sloan’s post in its entirety before making up your mind on this issue, but here’s the short form: Sloan did not “flog” Eilat Mazar. As you can see from the paragraph quoted above, Sloan carefully noted that at the time of writing he did not know whether Mazar herself or the media had liked Mazar’s excavation specifically to Nehemiah. In his “First Person” column of March/April, Shanks certainly does not quote the final two paragraphs of Sloan’s post:
So, what are we to think? Is Dr. Mazar just an incredibly lucky archaeologist? How much of what we are hearing is the media and how much is Dr. Mazar? Is she motivated to make what appear to be sensational announcements because of her funding affiliation?
If we take the advice of Dr. Cline and Dr. Davies, a nonexpert would have to be cautious regarding the idea that Nehemiah’s Tower has been found. What do you think?
Overall, Sloan’s post asks a perfectly reasonable question, as he made perfectly clear in a comment posted on November 15, 2007 (remember that Shanks’s editorial appeared in the March/April 2008 issue, so Shanks had plenty of time to see this comment):
Remember this is not about whether Dr. Mazar’s claim is fact or fiction. I’m testing to see if there are some criteria the average person can use to evaluate “sensational” biblical claims. It is just by coincidence that Dr. Mazar’s claim fit two criteria suggested by Eric Cline and Philip Davies. See above.
This hardly constitutes “flogging.”
Further, on March 11, 2008, after seeing Shanks’s “First Person” editorial, Sloan responded as follows in a comment to his own November 13, 2007 blog post:
I’m sorry Shanks had such a strong negative reaction to this discussion, but I can understand where he is coming from.
Now let me reiterate the purpose of this discussion. It is an exploration of what factors a lay person can use to evaluate a sensational biblical find. The purpose here is NOT to besmirch Dr. Mazar or to evaluate the merits of her find. We’re simply looking for clues to how the average person reading the media can evaluate what they hear.
The Nehemiah’s Tower announcement was the first such claim to come along after this blog idea started. In my mind it was a particularly interesting case, since the claim did not come from a crackpot, but from a bona fide archaeologist. One can see cleary from the discussion above that there are many views as to whether this has been a useful discussion or not.
Dr. Mazar was very courteous to National Geographic when we visited her dig in Jerusalem and we remain very interested in her work. We have no interest in judging her actions or her work. We’ll leave that to scholars. And if Dr. Mazar feels offended by this blog, I am sorry. That was certainly not my intention.
We can know for certain that Shanks read the just-quoted comment before writing his response in the May/June 2008 BAR, because he quotes from it in that response! In the second paragraph of his response, Shanks writes:
Indeed, the National Geographic editor responsible for the piece now says “I can understand where [Shanks] is coming from.”
You can see that line (also a partial sentence) in its context in my quotation from Sloan directly above the quotation from Shanks. Yet in the May/June 2008 BAR, Shanks continues to claim that “National Geographic used [a quotation from Cline] to flog Eilat Mazar”! He has the audacity to actually quote Sloan saying “I can understand where [Shanks] is coming from,” but he ignores Sloan’s larger point, including his statement, “The purpose here is NOT to besmirch Dr. Mazar or to evaluate the merits of her find”!
In that same comment, Sloan also reproduces an e-mail that he sent to Mazar on November 13, 2007:
I am one of the editors here at National Geographic responsible for our archaeology coverage. I have a blog where I cover many things, but the current topic is “how does a non-exert evaluate sensational biblical archaeology claims.” The Nehemiah’s Tower story came to my attention as one that would be interesting to explore from this perspective. Since I was not at your announcement, all I have are the reports from World News Daily, etc… The big question I have is this: Are YOU saying this is Nehemiah’s Tower, or is it the media that is making that leap? All I can find from your comments is that the Persian era pottery suggests the tower dates from the right period to be the tower. I would very interested to hear your thoughts, either here, or directly in the blog at http://ngm.typepad.com/stones_bones_things/
The blog entry as it stands comes out advising people to be cautious about the claim. I’m trying to keep the discussion focused more on “how can the nonexpert evaluate for themselves” rather than challenge any particular find. Do you have any advice to add to the Cline or Davies comments?
Very best regards, Chris
As far as I know, Mazar did not reply to Sloan’s e-mail; to date, she certainly has not posted any comments on his blog entry.
I am not one of those people who loves to bash BAR at every opportunity, particularly because I quite like some of the people that work for the publication. (You know who you are.) But I can’t help being very disappointed, even angry, by Shanks’s evasive sidestepping on this particular issue. Even if we grant Shanks’s point that his March/April “First Person” column criticized National Geographic—Chris Sloan in particular—rather than Eric Cline, that criticism was as misguided as the apparent criticism of Cline. That the May/June defense of the March/April column quotes so selectively from Sloan’s own statement of his motives and goals presents a serious challenge to any attempt to regard Shanks’s behavior in this matter charitably. At least as regards this particular discussion, Shanks has shown himself either to be an incredibly poor reader or he has knowingly misrepresented Cline’s and/or Sloan’s comments. Neither speaks well for him or his magazine.