PART I
Periodical stocktaking is a necessity in all progressive fields. The more recent the development of any scientific or scholarly field of investigation, the more necessary does such stocktaking become. What is a common place in nuclear physics or genetics should also be taken for granted in any archeological field. In Biblical archeology the past generation has been revolutionary in every sense of the word. In 1951 the present writer contributed to a symposium two chapters on the progress of the archeology of Palestine and surrounding Bible lands in the thirty years from 1920 to 1950.* Just twenty years have elapsed since he published his first book intended for the general reader: The Archaeology of Palestine and the Bible. The advance made since that book was written is almost incredible; it easily dwarfs the sum of all relevant discoveries during the preceding century in its total impact on our knowledge of the Bible.
In surveying the most important discoveries since 1932 which bear on the Bible it is hard not to include all archeological finds in Bible lands, since the greatest achievement of archeology during this period has been to consolidate fragmentary materials into a synthesis of the history of ancient Eastern civilization, in which the Bible appears in its true historical perspective. However, if one must choose, one may suggest the following subjects as particularly important: (1) stabilizing the chronology; (2) the tablets of Mari and Ugarit; (3) new documents bearing on the exilic and postexilic periods, especially the Lachish letters and new Aramaic papyri and ostraca from Egypt; (4) the Dead Sea Scrolls and similar finds in Palestine; (5) the early Gnostic and Manichean codices from Egypt.
Stabilizing ancient chronology may not seem very important, but it is impossible to understand the course of events or the history of civilization unless one can set events and cultures in correct time relation. Twenty years ago the archeological chronology of Palestine was still in a state of chaos, with scholars differing in their dates by centuries in the Iron Age and even by thousands of years before the second millennium. At that time there was no agreement on the correlation of Babylonian, Egyptian, and Syro-Palestinian chronologies before about 1500 B.C. Now we have many cross-checks, both documentary and archeological, on the relation between successive cultural stages in these countries; we also have much more abundant information for the political chronologies of Mesopotamia and Egypt, checked by astronomical data. . . .
Second (in chronological order) come Mari and Ugarit. The excavation of Mari began in 1933, under the direction of Andre" Parrot. Situated on the Middle Euphrates, Mari was one of the most important centers of the Northwest Semetic life of Patriarchal times. In 1936, M. Parrot unearthed many thousands of cuneiform tablets dating mostly from about 1700 B.C., which are now in course of being studied and published. These tablets throw direct light on the background of the Patriarchal traditions of Genesis.
Four years before the commencement of the Mari excavations, C. F. A. Schaeffer had begun excavations at Ras Shamrah on the coast of northern Syria, finding rich remains from the wealthiest of all Canaanite cities immediately before the Mosaic Age. He started almost at once to find tablets, and by 1933 he had un earthed extensive fragments of a whole temple library. The cuneiform alphabet of Ugarit was deciphered in 1930, and the first recovered tablet of the great Baal Epic was published by Ch. Virolleaud at the end of the following year. In 1931, several scholars took up the study of the new texts, which were not long in yielding most of their secrets. By 1940 it was possible for C. H. Gordon to publish an admirable pioneer grammar of Ugaritic, which was revised and expanded in 1947. The excavation of Ugarit, interrupted in -1939, was resumed by M. Schaeffer in 1948, and we look forward to continuation of this most important undertaking. The remains of three epics, which had been composed previously in Phoenicia, have survived in copies made not long before the great earthquake of c. 1360 B.C.; the light they shed on the earliest poetical literature of the Bible has completely revolutionized our approach to it.
New Documents
Third in our brief survey we mention the new documents from the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. which have come to light since 1935. In 1935 the late J. L. Starkey discovered the Ostraca of Lachish, consisting chiefly of letters written in ink on potsherds. 'Together with several additional ostraca found in 1938, they form a unique body of Hebrew prose from the time of Jeremiah. Further light on the time of the Exile comes from the ration lists of Nebuchadnezzar, found by the Germans at Babylon and partly published by E. F. Weidner in 1939. Other new evidence will be discussed below. Somewhat later but of decisive value for our understanding of the history and literature of the Jews in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah are the continuing finds and publications of Aramaic papyri and ostraca from Egypt. Four large groups of this material are being published, and their complete publication will more than double the total bulk of such documents available twenty years ago.
In 1947 some Bedouin made a discovery south of Jericho which could not have been foreseen by the most optimistic specialist a cave containing many scrolls of leather covered with Hebrew and Aramaic writing, to say nothing of over 600 fragments. News reached the world in the spring of 1948 and publication began a few months later. In early 1949 the cave was redis covered and cleared by G. L. Harding and Pere R. de Vaux, the most competent archeologists in the Kingdom of Jordan. The first lot of manuscripts went partly to the Syrian Archbishop, Athanasius Yeshue Samuel, and partly to E. L. Sukenik at the Hebrew University. John C. Trever was responsible for recognizing the approximate date and importance of the Syriancollection; Sukenik had previously recognized the age and value of the manuscripts in the Hebrew University, but did not announce his acquisition until later. In early 1952 new caves containing fragments of later scrolls in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek were discovered, and the announcement of this find was followed by news of the recovery of additional scrolls in still another cave.
The discovery of the original group of these scrolls was followed by a series of fantastic onslaughts on their antiquity and even on their authenticity, over the signatures of some well-known scholars in America and Europe, both Christian and Jewish. Only in Palestine, where the finds were too well known to be suspect, was there virtually unanimous agreement about their general age. It is true that such sensational discoveries are always challenged, but in this case the data are so well substantiated that the attacks must be connected with the fact that the new finds disprove the already published views of the attacking scholars.
Here we have threefold evidence in support of a date for the Dead Sea Scrolls well before A.D. 70. The vases (over forty of which were found) in which the scrolls had been placed, as well as lamps found with them, are Hellenistic and cannot have been manufactured after the time of Herod the Great (37 B.C.-A.D. 4). The linen in which the scrolls were wrapped has been dated by radiocarbon count to the period between c. 175 B.C. and A.D. 225 (in round numbers). The forms of letters used by scores of different scribes over a period of more than a century are intermediate between the known script of the third century B.C. and of the Apostolic period. All competent students of writing conversant with the available materials and with paleographic method date them in the 250 years before A.D. 70,** and most are divided between dates for the sealing of the cave between about 50 B.C. and just before A.D. 70; the writer's own preferred date for nearly all the scrolls remains in the last century B.C. Subsequent finds date partly (when coming from the first cave) from the same period and partly from the second century A.D. (when coming from later caves). These latter fragments are in considerably later script, bridging the gap between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the earliest previously known papyrus and parchment fragments in Hebrew from the third and fourth centuries A.D.
The contents of the new scrolls are partly Biblical (two scrolls of Isaiah, one of which is complete, most of the first two chapters of Habakkuk, etc.), and partly intertestamental. Their historical and philological importance is very great indeed, and they are already revolutionizing our approach to the text of the Old Testament and the background of the New Testament.
Our last category of outstanding discoveries carries us down into the Christian era and may seem too late to be of significance for Biblical studies. First comes the discovery in 1930 of seven Manichean codices composed in part by Mani, founder of this Gnostic sect, in the third century A.D., translated into Coptic soon afterwards and copied for us by fourth-century scribes. The publication, chiefly due to the talent of H. J. Polotsky, began in 1934 and was interrupted in 1940 by the war. Before this our only firsthand knowledge of Manichean literature came from fragments translated into Central-Asiatic languages and discovered in Turkestan by German explorers before the First World War. Now we have a mass of original material, which, among other things, establishes the secondary character of Mandeanism in relation to Manicheism; the former has been regarded by many scholars as in part older than the Gospel of John.
In 1947 a second, even more remarkable, discovery of Gnostic books was made in Egypt, this time a lot of some forty treatises bound together in codices, at Chenoboscium (Chenoboskion) in Upper Egypt. These books are also in Coptic; the extant copies date from the third and fourth centuries and the original Greek works from which they were translated must go back to the second and third centuries. We have here for the first time the original writings of the strange early Gnostic groups called the Barbelo Gnostics, the Ophites, Sethians, and others, as well as several Hermetic treatises. At last we can control and expand the information given us by Hippolytus, Irenaeus, and Epiphanius about these early Gnostics and their beliefs. The new documents will have extraordinary significance in connection with the debate about the alleged Gnostic affinities of the Gospel of John. Fortunately all (or nearly all) of these codices have been acquired by the Egyptian government, and it is to be hoped that they will be published before long. Meanwhile we have very re liable information from the first student of these texts, Jean Doresse. . . .
Contrast Between Israelite and Canaanite
Faiths Until the Ugaritic tablets were published, it was impossible to make an effective contrast between the early faith of Israel and the religion of ancient Canaan, since we had scarcely any original Canaanite literature on which to base such a contrast. Before the discovery of the Ugaritic epics the present writer had emphasized that the leading Canaanite deities, such as Baal, were "high gods/' not merely vegetation spirits or local deities. This was proved conclusively by the Ugaritic texts, where Baal plays a role closely comparable to that of the Ho meric Zeus, who was "father of men and of gods" and whose authority was limited only by the boundaries of the world. The first scholar after the publication of the new material to stress the impossibility of the views of Wellhausen on the evolution of Israelite religious culture was, strangely enough, no conservative theologian, but a leading French agnostic and anticlerical, Rene Dussaud.
The days when Yahweh was thought to have won a victory over Baal because he was chief god of a whole tribe, whereas Baal was merely a term designating a host of local deities, each ruling only in a single town and its vicinity, are over. We now know that the followers of Yahweh and of Baal both considered their own gods as cosmic in power; the main difference between them was that Baal was storm-god, head of a whole pantheon of deities, while Yahweh was sole God of the entire known universe, with no pantheon. The gods of Baal's pantheon included relatives and even foes; neither the gods nor the world were in general his creation. Yahweh, on the other hand, was creator of all that existed. This is not the place to describe the total breakdown of Wellhausenism under the impact of our new knowledge of antiquity; suffice it to say that no arguments have been brought against early Israelite monotheism that would not apply equally well (with appropriate changes in specific evidence) to postexilic Judaism. Nothing can alter the now certain fact that the gulf between the religions of Israel and of Canaan was as great as the resemblance be tween their material cultures and their poetic literatures. . . . (To be continued]
Jehovah, Not the Hills
HERMAN C. RAY, Assistant Chaplain, Walker Memorial Sanitarium and Hospital
In a recent issue of a denominational periodical Psalms 121:1 was used as a source of comfort for one in trouble. The Authorized Version of this verse reads, "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help."
Until recently, when this scripture was used my mind associated the everlasting hills with the ever-present power of God. When in difficulty one was to look to the hills for strength and comfort. Rightly understood, this verse teaches exactly the opposite. The prophet Jeremiah describes backslidden Israel as looking to the hills for help. Jeremiah 3:21-23 says, "A voice was heard upon the high places, weeping and supplications of the children of Israel: for they have perverted their way, and they have forgotten the Lord their God. . . . Truly in vain is salvation hoped for from the hills, and from the multitude of mountains: truly in the Lord our God is the salvation of Israel."
In Patriarchs and Prophets, page 538, the messenger of the Lord pictures the journeyings of the children of Israel to the annual feasts in Jerusalem. As they saw the hills around them upon which the heathen had worshiped, they broke forth in the song:
" 'Shall I lift up mine eyes to the hills? Whence should my help come? My help cometh from Jehovah, Which made heaven and' earth.' "
Thus we see that instead of statement, in reality there are two questions in Psalms 121:1, pointing out the fact that help cometh not from the hills. The majority of modern translations give the second part in the form of a question.
To "rightly divide the word of truth" requires thorough searching, but ample reward comes when the sparkling jewels of truth lie before us in all their beauty.
