In part 1 of this series, I offered my own comments on Joe Cathey’s list of the “top five archaeological finds for Hebrew Bible” (and Joe has responded quite charitably). In part 2, I turned my attention to Keith Schoville’s 2001 article in Stone-Campbell Journal, where he offers his own “top ten” list of Bible-related archaeological finds in the twentieth century, surveying the materials related to the Hebrew Bible that Schoville includes in his top ten but that did not make Joe Cathey’s list. Here in part 3, I’ll be looking at the Hebrew Bible-related archaeological finds that appear on Walter Kaiser’s “top fifteen” list (which, like Schoville’s, includes the New Testament) but not on the other two.

I’ve already mentioned that Kaiser’s list is in order of descending importance, and that he places the Ketef Hinnom amulets in first place and the Dead Sea Scrolls in third. Coming in fourth is one of the few non-epigraphic items on any of the lists I’ve been surveying: the Beni Hasan wall painting depicting Asiatic traders in Egypt (the picture is dated to the early 19th century BCE). Kaiser writes, “The kilts of many colors remind us of Joseph’s coat (Gen 37:3; cf. 2 Sam 13:18), and provide a picture as to what the Patriarchal culture and its economic and political contacts with Egypt may have looked like. It is a fascinating picture of life about the time of the Patriarchs.” While I was glad to see something non-epigraphic make the list, I think Kaiser may have vastly inflated the significance of the Beni Hasan paintings for biblical studies. Kaiser’s point about the colored kilts falls flat. The Hebrew text describes Joseph’s special garment as a כתנת פסים, which the Septuagint translator(s) rendered as a χιτῶνα ποικίλον (which was then taken over in the Vulgate as tunicam polymitam and thence into other European languages as the famous “technicolor dreamcoat”). The Greek text unambiguously means “multi-colored tunic” or “variegated tunic,” but not so the Hebrew. In order for the Hebrew description to be rendered as “multi-colored tunic” it would need to literally be “tunic of colors,” and we would need to show that there was such a word in biblical Hebrew as פס meaning “color.” The only פס attested (elsewhere than Gen 37:3 and 2 Sam 13:18) in the Tanakh, however, is an Aramaic word in Daniel 5:5, 24 apparently meaning “the palm of the hand” (it doesn’t just mean “hand,” it seems, because it stands in the phrase פס ידה). The question is whether to take our translational cue from the Septuagint or from the Aramaic portion of Daniel. Very few modern translations render פסים as “multi-colored”:

JPS: “an ornamented tunic”
NET: “a special tunic”
NIV: “a richly ornamented robe”
NRSV: “a long robe with sleeves”
NCV: “a special robe with long sleeves”
GW: “a special robe with long sleeves”
BBE: “a long coat”

Only the WEB and the HCSB still retain “coat of many colors.” It seems me that the JPS, NET, and NIV translators are persuaded that there is little philological support for the “multi-colored” translation, but they don’t want to get too far from the idea of “ornamentation.” NRSV, NCV, GW, and BBE are following the philological evidence internal to the Bible just where it goes, by understanding פס as an Aramaism (or, as Gary Rendsburg might have it, a feature of nortern Israelian Hebrew), understanding כתנת פסים as “tunic of palms/soles,” and then trying to render that in smooth English as something like “long robe with sleeves.” Now, having said all that, the Beni Hasan painting does—though by no means exclusively—suggest something interesting about Joseph’s tunic, even if rendered more plausibly as “long tunic with sleeves.”

Item #4 in Kaiser’s list is tablet 11 of the Gilgamesh epic, which contains the story of Utnapishtim, survivor of the great flood sent by the gods to wipe out humanity. (I am not 100% sure that the photograph here is of tablet 11; however, it is identified as such on K. C. Hanson’s web site.) After briefly summarizing Utnapishtim’s story (and the story of the discovery of the Gilgamesh tablets), Kaiser concludes: “Both accounts seem to reflect a similar event, but the Gilgamesh Epic has numerous legendary additions with a tone that is vastly different from the biblical account.” The phrase “legendary additions” immediately raises the question: “additions to what?” It seems like Kaiser must be thinking either that the story of the flood on Gilgamesh tablet 11 is based on the biblical story of Noah and the flood in Genesis—which some people have suggested by which seems wildly implausible (not least because the Gilgamesh story seems to long predate the composition of Genesis, even if Genesis were to have [again improbably] been written by Moses [in mid-Iron Age Hebrew])—or that the Utnapishtim and Noah stories share some common (folkloric? mythological?) antecedent which the biblical story has reproduced more faithfully. The latter idea—without the caveat about the faithfulness of reproduction—seems more plausible. As shown not just by Genesis and Gilgamesh, but also by the stories of Atrahasis and Ziusudra (which are incredibly similar to the Gilgamesh story, but probably predate it), the idea of a great flood with a single survivor warned by the gods is more or less the common intellectual property of all Mesopotamia, and the biblical writer(s) have picked up on this tradition. Kaiser’s mention of a “vastly different tone” may be exaggerated for rhetorical effect, but it does seem to me that the author(s) of the Genesis flood narrative (in either its J form or P form, if those ever really existed independently, or its canonical form), have adapted the common story in at least three striking ways. In the stories about Ziusudra, Atrahasis, and Utnapishtim (I take this to be the approximate chronological order), the storyline as basically the same, though the name of the human hero, the city in which they live (Eridu or Shurrupak), and the god who warns the human (Enki or Ea) change slightly. In the biblical story, however, the God who sends the flood is the same God who saves Noah, that God has a much more understandable motive for sending the flood (human evil), and the flood survivor is not divinized at the end of his experiences. I think it is far more likely that what we see in the differences between the Gilgamesh epic (and its antecedents) and the Genesis flood story is not a case of “legendary additions” in the Mesopotamian epics but something more like a “demythologization” in the Genesis story.

Kaiser’s seventh slot goes to the Pool of Gibeon, mentioned in 2 Sam 2:13 and Jer 41:12, which Kaiser identifies with the “stepped tunnel” water system at Gibeon (el-Jib). The identification of el-Jib as Gibeon is not in doubt, but there is considerable doubt whether the stepped tunnel water system is the biblical “pool of Gibeon.” For one thing, it’s not clear that the stepped tunnel water system was in use as early as the 10th century BCE, the time frame for 2 Sam 2:13. Clearly, Kaiser is assuming that it was, as he writes, “It was around this pool that 12 of King David’s men, under commander Joab, met 12 of King Saul’s men, under commander Abner, in a wrestling contest in which all 24 died as they grabbed each other by the hair and plunged a sword into one another.” Personally, I’m having a hard time picturing how this “contest” could have played out in the stepped tunnel “pool”; I keep trying to visualize where the men would arrange themselves, and where they would actually do the fighting, and it’s not working for me (but this could just be a failure of my own imagination). More importantly, the existence of a water installation where such a thing could have happened is, of course, no proof that such a thing did in fact happen at that place. The water systems at Gibeon certainly advance our knowledge of daily life in Gibeon, at least for Iron II (whether for Iron I or not is debated), but it actually contributes quite little to debates over the historicity of 2 Samuel. (By the way, the men who wrestled with Joab’s company weren’t “King Saul’s men,” as King Saul was dead; they are in fact described in the text as men of Saul’s son, Ishbaal.)

The #9 entry on Kaiser’s list is not really an “archaeological find” as such, but a person: King Sargon II of Assyria. For a long time, this Sargon was known only from Isaiah 20:1, until the ruins of his palace at Khorsabad (rather than at Nineveh, where it might have been expected) was excavated in the 1840s. While absolutely wonderful for Assyriology, I’m not convinced that the verification that Sargon II was a real king of Assyria does a whole lot for biblical studies. The archaeological discovery of Sargon II certainly does show that the mention of Sargon in Isaiah 20:1—which is really just a “hook” for dating the oracle that follows—refers to a real person, but that’s about all. Sargon isn’t even mentioned anywhere else in the entire Hebrew Bible. I don’t think this one belongs in the top fifteen.

The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III comes in at #10 on Kaiser’s list. Biblical scholars find this item so interesting because it includes an illustration whose caption marks it as an illustration of Jehu, “the man of the House of Omri” (we would say, “king of Israel”), presenting tribute to Shalmaneser III. The relief depicting Jehu is stylized, of course, and probably shouldn’t be considered a precise portrait of Jehu’s face and form. Nevertheless, it is the only visual depiction of an ancient Israelite ruler that survives from the Iron Age (as far as I know), which makes it a treasure for historians investigating the kingdom of Israel. As far as biblical studies goes, the Black Obelisk certainly agrees with the biblical picture that Israel had a king named Jehu, and it helps to fix Jehu in the appropriate time frame. Beyond that, however, there are no contacts between the Black Obelisk and the biblical narrative. That in itself may be significant, for the fact that 2 Kings doesn’t seem to mention Shalmaneser III or Jehu’s tribute to him, or indeed any contact between Israel and Assyria before Tiglath-pileser III (“Pul” in some passages of the Hebrew Bible), even though the Assyrian kings prior to Tiglath-pileser (or, rather, their publicists) considered Israel significant enough to mention in multiple inscriptions. The absence of Shalmaneser III from 2 Kings and the presence of Jehu on the Black Obelisk together point up the biblical writers’ selectivity in reporting, or ignorance of Israel’s international relations in the ninth century BCE, depending on how you interpret the biblical silences. The Black Obelisk does raise the interesting question, “Why didn’t the biblical writers mention Jehu’s subservience to Shalmaneser III?” They have no reticence about mentioning Israel’s subservience to Tiglath-pileser III or later kings of Assyria. Why do they omit any references to Assyrian kings before Tiglath-pileser? It’s an interesting question, open to multiple answers.

Kaiser’s next three entries pertain to New Testament-related inscriptions or locations. He returns to the Hebrew Bible with #14, the Beersheba horned altar. Once again, I was pleased to see something non-epigraphic on the list, and this is a really interesting artifact. The altar was not excavated in the shape or place shown in the photograph here. Rather, it had been disassembled and its stones had been reused in a wall. By piecing the stones together, archaeologists gave us a concrete (well, okay, it’s stone, not concrete, but you know what I mean) image of an altar with “horns,” as the biblical terminology has it. This altar happens also to have an image of a serpent incised on one of the blocks, but as far as I know there is no way to tell whether that incised picture was on the altar while it was in use as such or whether it was only made on the block after the altar was disassembled and put to other uses. Kaiser writes that “all agree it gives us a good picture of an illegitimate place of sacrifice,” though I sincerely doubt that all scholars who have considered the altar would be so quick to apply the word “illegitimate.” That adjective is a reflex of Kaiser’s adoption of a Deuteronomic perspective on cultic centralization (he also criticizes the altar for being made of “hewn stones,” though I seriously doubt that the description of Solomon’s altar implies unhewn stones!), or an assumption about the significance of the incised serpent, rather than a demonstrable historical fact (indeed, adjectives like “illegitimate” are value judgments, not historical judgments). Even so, since the building whose wall held the altar stones in their secondary setting was destroyed c. 701 BCE, it is tempting—though far from “safe”—to speculate that the dismantling of the altar took place under the influence of King Hezekiah’s “religious reforms” (Kaiser himself does not actually mention this possibility).

Kaiser’s list ends with the Cyrus cylinder. The inscription on this well-known artifact describes Cyrus the Great’s policy of “repatriating” the descendants of some groups who had been deported from their homelands by the Babylonians. Kaiser naturally draws a parallel with the “edict of Cyrus” as given in Ezra 1:2-4 and 2 Chronicles 36:22-23, writing: “the cylinder announces the Persian policy of Cyrus toward captive peoples, such as the exiled Israelites. All those exiled peoples would be allowed to return to their homelands where permanent sanctuaries would be established for them.” Kaiser’s wording here is interesting. An unwary reader who did not know the text of the Cyrus cylinder might be misled into thinking that the “exiled Israelites” were actually mentioned on the Cyrus cylinder, which they aren’t. Moreover, the Cyrus cylinder is specific to certain groups of deportees, and is not a blanket order of repatriation for all such groups. Another problem with Kaiser’s wording is that it was the (grand)children of exiled Judeans, not of exiled Israelites, to whom any such policy would pertain. Even with these caveats and corrections, it is true that the Cyrus cylinder demonstrates that the biblical “edict of Cyrus” is consistent with Cyrus’s edicts concerning other similar groups of exiles, which does make the biblical edict that much more believable (though if there was such an edict, the biblical books of Ezra and 2 Chronicles present not the text of the edict itself, but a Hebrew translation of that edict or part of it, undoubtedly with some strong theological editing that makes Cyrus sound like a Yahwist).

Speaking of Cyrus the Great, he was recently added to one of my new favorite games, Anachronism. In Anachronism, warriors from various time periods and cultures meet for one-on-one gladiatorial combat in a small arena. In the game, though, poor Cyrus turns out to be more like “Cyrus the Above-Average.” Almost all the Persians lag behind the warriors from other cultures—though they’re better than the Romans. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you need to rush out to your local strategy games store and pick up some Anachronism cards (and, of course, add my Anachronism blog to your RSS reader).

Thus ends my survey of Joe Cathey’s “top five” list (limited to “finds” related to the Hebrew Bible), Keith Schoville’s “top ten list” (limited to “finds” from the twentieth century), and Walter Kaiser’s “top fifteen” list. But do not mourn, sports fans. This doesn’t mean this series of posts is over. In part 4, I’ll comment on Jim Davila’s suggested tweaks and/or additions to Joe’s list, and then (either in part 4 or part 5, depending on how much blogging time I have for part 4) I’ll suggest a few additions of my own.