Biblical History Studies

Judges     Sources in Commentaries on Judges

koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Visiting Professor

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

17 October 2011

The role of Sources in the descriptive task of Archaeology and Commentaries

Problems with the sources for archaeological description in commentaries on Judges

A1   The greatest problem in Biblical Archaeology, is hermeneutical. It is the problem of sources. The source problem is a very complicated issue that is a combination of various levels of dependency. Through the centuries there was an interaction between Palestine and the Umwelt, so that the Universities and schools of higher learning of these early years were to a lesser and greater degree influenced by either the Jewish scholars who lived in exile or Greek travelers who visited Palestine and acquainted themselves with the current traditions of their own time.

A2   Although Josephus is well used by many scholars for identification of topographical sites, or explanation of events in the history of Israel, it is nevertheless clear from an investigation into the textual criticism of the works of Josephus that to identify the "true Josephus" is not that simple a task (Conzelmann and Lindemann, 1988: 17). In his doctoral dissertation at Duke University, Carl Gross looked at the 5 extant manuscripts on Josephus: P from the 9th or 10th century, and M from the 15th century and he indicated that in the past century four editions appeared as attempts to uncover the true Josephus: Niese, Naber, Thackeray and Pelletier. Niese relied on P. Naber preferred another group: AMW (11th century, 1354 CE, and 15th century) and Thackeray followed Pelletier who tended to prefer PRA (9th century, 14th and 11th century). Louis Feldman analyzed these editions and he concluded that Niese overestimated the value of P, leaving many readings in the apparatus. Naber attempted to improve on Josephus's Greek. Thackeray's use of Niese was unreliable. It illustrates the complexity of the uncovering of the original sources on Josephus.

A3  Not only is the source on Josephus a rather elusive aim, his methodology in the application of the biblical text should caution anyone employing him as a prooftext for whatever topic or item. It is shown that Josephus made haggadic additions to the biblical text, mixed other sources with the Bible, made his own contributions and interpretations, condensed at times the text of the Bible, enlarged it at times, made many anachronisms, verifying the narrative of the biblical text at many places, at times contradicted the biblical text, discussed abiblical aspects, omitted, amalgamated the themes of the Bible, invented other themes, harmonized the sources, employed the LXX as well as the Hebrew text, inverted the sources, remoulded the sources, simplified the sources, anticipated the sources, filled in apparent gaps in the description of events, corrected source texts, and at times is not consistent within his own books (Varneda, 1986: 268-272). In a very elucidating example, Varneda indicated how Josephus employed the Greek sources of Thucidides II, 77 in order to elaborate on the fire that killed Korah and the others in Numbers 16:31-35 (Varneda, 1986: 168). In Numbers 31:16 Varneda showed how Josephus employed elaborations that can also be found in Philo and in the Talmud (Varneda, 1986: 227).

A4   Philo is not that simple to analyze either. D. Gooding demonstrated that the lemmata do not correspond to the citations in Philo's expositions since later copyists attempted to bring their wording in line with the LXX (Gooding, 1983: 89).  The Talmud was a very important source for scholars and commentators through the centuries. The rabbis employed the scripture as well as their own oral traditions to interpret and comment on the Bible and sometimes the Saboraim made additions in the sixth and seventh centuries that became part of the Talmud. However, as Solomon Zeitlin showed, the problem with the Talmud is that the rabbis of the Middle ages who copied the manuscripts did not differentiate between what are Amoraic (earlier) and what are Saboraic (later) interpretations and additions to the Talmud (Zeitlin, 1967: 1-2).

A5   Patristics consulted the Greek sources, numismatics of their own time, rabbinical sources and the Bible to interpret the Bible. Space does not permit us to discuss every patristic father, but one can select some of them. Eusebius knew Greek, Hebrew and Syriac in the fourth century CE. In his commentary on Judges, he employed the Syriac text in two references in Judges 6:15 and 15:8 (Lehmann, 1987: 76). The problem with Eusebius' commentaries is again one of sources. As was demonstrated by H. J. Lehmann, there is a Greek and an Armenian tradition and translation of Eusebius' commentaries and they differ. There are many additions in the Armenian translation (Lehmann, 1987: 70). In his topographical reference on Ararat, Eusebius consulted the Syriac by saying that it is called Kardus in Syriac (see Genesis 8:4, Lehmann, 1987: 74). Many commentators, scholars and modern archaeologists quote Eusebius as prooftext for toponyms of the Old Testament, not realizing the complexity pertaining to sources and the phenomenon of cross-mutation surrounding this scholar of the fourth century CE. By the time the Arabic reporters and writers commented on people and places in Palestine, there was already a Byzantine church on nearly every tell as the numismatics of 218 CE and the Madaba Map illustrate. A good source on the article of Judges in the Medieval times is: M. Sokolow, "The book of Judges in Medieval Muslim and Jewish Historiography", Journal of the Ancient Near East Society. Columbia University. 11 (1979): 113-130.

A6   Thus, when the Arabic writers mentioned a place-name, they are merely echoeing a Christian and Jewish identification of a place in the centuries preceding the report. When the travelers in later centuries visited Palestine, they were employing the Arabic sources, Greek sources, rabbinical sources, patristic information and the Bible. However, the interdependency of all these sources points to a hermeneutical circle.

A7   When books appeared on the Bible and monuments, the Bible and customs and manners of the ancient Near East, they were employing these sources echoeing only what others already said before. This is the case with A. Montanus (1593) who wrote on places, times, rites and persons of the Bible; P. Cunaeus (1617) who employed rabbinical works and Greek sources; S. Bochart (1646) in his ethnographical descriptions; H. Reland (1714) in his book Palaestina ex monumentis veterum illustrata on aspects pertaining to ethnography, geography and zoology; O. Celsius (1725) in his work Hierobotanicon in which he employed Arabic reports, rabbinical sources and travel reports; J. Scheushzer (1731) in his Physica Sacra; and K. Niebuhr (1772). A similar situation is found in the works of J. Jahn (1814) who wrote on Biblical archaeology employing the Bible, monuments, numismatics, Philo, Josephus, Greek and Latin authors, the Mishnah, Talmud and Patristic sources.

A8 For the dilemma in the textual criticism of the Mishnah, one can see here the reference of Solomon Zeitlin supra on the Talmud. Herbert Danby indicated that the persecutions of the Jews in the Middle Ages are the reason why only a few complete manuscripts of the Mishnah survived and only one of the Babylonian Talmud.¹⁾  The Babylonian Talmud survived only in Codex Hebrew 95 in the Munich Staatsbibliothek of which a photographic facsimile was published by H. L. Strack (Leiden: 1912). The most important complete manuscripts of the Mishnah are: the Cambridge Manuscript published by W. H. Lowe in 1883. The Kaufman manuscript in the Konigliche Ungarische Akademie der Wissenschaften. A facsimile was published by G. Beer (Haag, 1930). The Parma manuscript (De Rossi no. 138) was published by J. B. Rossi, MSS. Codices Hebraice Biblioth. i 99 (Parma, 1803). Portions of the Mishnah survived also. Editions of the Mishnah first appeared in Naples in 1492. In 1546 it was published again and at Venice it was published in 1548 with a commentary of Obadiah of Bertinoro. In 1559 the folio edition of Riva di Trento was published. The quarto edition of Sabbioneta and Mantua was published between 1559-63. In 1606 the folio edition of Venice appeared. The Mishnah with the commentaries of Bertino and Yom Tob Lipmann Heller (Tosefoth Yom-Tob) was first published at Prague in 1614-17. The second edition and revision by Heller appeared at Cracow in 1642-4. This version with two commentaries has since then been reproduced in the common six-volume Mishnayoth editions (Strack, 1912: xxxi). The present text of the Mishnah, the printed Mishnayoth editions, represent a fusion of two types: a Babylonian and Palestinian type. Any scholar who quotes from the Mishnah or who is employing the text as a prooftext for whatever topic should be aware of the lateness and formal complexity of the manuscripts.

A9  W. M. de Wette wrote in the same year the first systematic work on Biblical Archaeology (Nowack, 1894: 21).

A10  The travelers L. Burckhardt (1823-1831) and E. Robinson (1841, 1851). It is very important to take note of this scholar's methodology in description of site identification and his attempts to bring the realia of Palestine and Syria in a relation to the descriptions of the biblical text. Many modern scholars are still citing his works as illustrations, or as legitimizing sources. His dependency on the past traditions brings with it a very complex case of cross-mutation: what manuscripts were used? At what stage in the transmission of a particular person's manuscripts did he enter the consultation process?

A11  The Victorian scholars were also keen readers of the ancient sources and the Bible. C. Fleury wrote in 1832 a book on the customs and manners of the Israelites, and he was also dependent upon the sources of those who were before him. The same can be said of E. Sears (1845) and J. W. Nevin (1849) who wrote a summary of biblical antiquities to be used in schools.

A12  By this time three important modern commentaries appeared on the book of Judges, namely that of G. L. Studer (1835), G. Bush (1844) and E. Bertheau (1845). These commentators on the book of Judges at this time depended upon the ancient sources and the reports of travelers. At this very early stage in the investigation of the literature under discussion, it is clear that the main methodological issue in our research is a matter of sources (from a textcritical point of view) and their application as prooftexts to identifications or interpretations. One should attempt to identify the network of dependency before the facts are employed in the process of interpretation of the book of Judges.

A13 When C. F. Keil wrote his book on Biblical Archaeology in 1858 he used the Bible, Talmud and Robinson as sources. His commentary on the book of Judges in 1863 as well as those of P. Cassel (1865) and J. Bachmann (1868) reflect the sources until his time. C. R. Conder published his mapping of Palestine in 1882 and also H. H. Kitchener and R. Rohricht (1890). During this time a number of commentaries appeared on the book of Judges but nearly all of them were involved in the source-critical discussion of the book, as one can see in the work of E. Meyer (1881), B. Stade (1881), W. Böhme (1885), A. Kuenen (1887), K. Budde (1888) and S. Driver (1889). In 1894 the archaeological book of W. Nowack appeared that became a source to many commentaries on the book of Judges. In his Lehrbuch der Hebraischen Archäologie Nowack employed the results from archaeology in Assyriology by Layard, Sayce, Perrot, and the dictionary of Riehm (1875). For Egypt he consulted Erman, Reeber for the art, Benzinger, Kitto for the Encyclopaedia of 1869, and Smith's dictionary of 1860. He employed in his book information from 1. ruins and tombs, 2. inscriptions, 3. coins, 4. Bible, 5. Josephus and Philo, 6. rabbinic literature, 7. works of Manetho and Berossus, 8. Arabic sources on geography and nature and works of Bochart (1646), Celcius, Herodotus, Polybius, Strabo, Pliny, Tacitus and Justinus. The commentaries during this time are those of J. Lias (1890), K. Kittel (1892), E. König (1893), H. Winckler (1893), J. Wellhaussen (1894), W. Frankenberg (1895) and G. F. Moore (1895).

A14 An attempt to interrelate the discoveries of archaeology of the Umwelt with the Bible was made in 1896 by H. Hilprecht and F. Vigouroux. In 1883, 1888, 1892 and 1893 appeared a book by A. H. Sayce that could be classified as apologetic archaeology since discoveries until his time were employed as a defence against source-criticism. A similar work appeared in 1897 by F. Hommel in which he protested against the critical stance of scholars on the biblical text with the help of illustrations from monuments. The same can be said of the work of D. Hogarth in 1899. In the case of Hogarth, he employed monuments and classical literature to make an apology for the Bible. In that year T. Nicol wrote a book on archaeology and the Bible.

A15 Some writers employed ethnological investigations in order to explain the Bible. The studies of G. Wad-el-Ward (1907) and G. R. Lees (1909) are examples of this. S. R. Driver (1909) wrote a book considering how research illustrates the Bible. Commentaries on the book of Judges appeared (W. Nowack, 1902; R. Smend, 1902; P. M. Lagrange, 1903; G. W. Thatcher, 1904). G. A. Barton wrote a comprehensive book on archaeology and the Bible (1916-1917) employing all the available information up to his time in order to understand and interpret the Bible. An apologetic archaeological book that appeared at this time was that of E. J. Banks (1913). Several commentaries appeared on the book of Judges, but none of them employed archaeology in the way that is envisaged by this dissertation, namely, those of G. A. Cooke (1913), E. L. Curtiss (1913), H. Gressmann (1914), H. Lanchester (1915).⁵⁾ In 1921 S. A. Cook wrote a book on the religion of Palestine employing archaeology and inscriptions. An apologetic archaeological work that appeared the next year was that of J. Peters.

A16 The book of A. Jirku in 1923 is a work that comes close to the methodology that is in mind here. Jirku wrote this commentary on the Old Testament using the archaeology and literature of the Umwelt to understand the Bible. He treated the book of Judges in  few pages (137-145). What is valuable for our purpose is that he considered iconographical and epigraphical information from Egyptian, Palestinian and Assyrian archaeology in order to understand the Bible better. The commentaries on the book of Judges by O. Eissfeldt (1925), K. Wiese (1926), and H. M. Wiener (1929) appeared, but archaeology was not employed for an interpretation of the text. S. A. Cook studied in 1930 the religion of Palestine in the light of archaeology. The work of S. Schor in 1931 investigated the manners and customs of the people of the Bible lands. Apologetic works on the accuracy of the Old Testament appeared by J. G. Duncan (1930), W. Prescott (1933), H. U. Petrie (1933), W. F. Albright (1935), T. W. Fawthrop (1937), P. Enniss (1939). The book of J. Garstang in 1931 accomplished finally what was envisaged by Jirku and Barton, namely, a commentary that employed all the information available from the Umwelt. Garstang made use extensively from iconographical and epigraphical information from Egyptian, Assyrian and Palestinian sources in order to comment on the book of Judges. He selected his examples very close to the chronological scheme that is presented in the book of Judges.

A17 When the work on Judges of M. Buber appeared in 1933, 1936, as well as those of P. Volz (1933), W. Rudolph (1938) and M. Noth (1930, 1941, 1943), they did not focus on archaeology as was done by Garstang in his commentary. The apologetic archaeological work by M. Burrows in 1941 as well as those of K. Sabiers (1943), R. Cottrell (1947) and J. Huffman (1948) all attempted to defend the accuracy of the Bible.

A18 The commentaries of the fifties by N. Snaith (1951), J. M. Myers (1953), W. Hertzberg (1953), C. A. Simpson (1957) and G. Manley (1959) are all void of any employment of archaeology for the interpretation of the text. Various apologetic archaeological works appeared  in which the book of Judges is dealt with in only a few pages, by J. Free (1950), R. F. Cottrell (1953), A. J. R. Short (1953), S. Horn (1954, 1955, 1957), W. Keller (1956), and J. Stirling (1955).

A19 A number of archaeological handbooks appeared in the sixties by G. F. Owen (1961), W. G. Williams (1965), H. J. Franken (1963) and E. J. Vardeman (1965). The book of K. Kenyon in 1960 dealt with the coming of the Israelites in the Late Bronze Age in chapters 8 and 9. The book of J. Gray appeared in 1962. The book by B. Mazar et al. appeared in 1960 and is well illustrated but dealt with the book of Judges in only a few pages. Commentaries on the book of Judges are books and articles by J. Steinmann (1960), G. Mendenhall (1962), A. Alt (1966), W. Richter (1963, 1964, 1966), J. Gray (1967), A. E. Cundall and L. Morris (1968), M. Ottosson (1969), S. Mittmann (1969) and W. F. Albright (1970).

Biblical Historial Studies is about people, places, dates and events as real as we are