Biblical Archaeology Review

Shmuel Ahituv and Baruch A. Levine, ed., The Early Biblical Period: Historical Studies (Israel Exploration Society, 1986).

Unfortunately, this book is marred by frequent errors like this; another example “The Teacher of Righteousness do [sic] not intended [sic] to create a community” (p. xvi).

Cross reminds us that the rabbis did not always choose the shorter text “The Rabbis rejected the short, superb text of Jeremiah we find at Qumran in a single exemplar and in the Greek Bible [Cross’ terminology for the septuagint tradition].”

See Frank Moore Cross, “The Text Behind the Text of the Hebrew Bible,” Bible Review, Spring 1985, reprinted in Hershel Shanks, ed., Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York Random House, 1992), pp. 139–155.

See “BAR Editor Unwelcome in Madrid Disinvited to Dead Sea Scroll Congress,” BAR 17:03.

See Moshe Kochavi, Timothy Renner, Ira Spar and Esther Yadin “Rediscovered! The Land of Geshur,” BAR 18:04.

I should caution the reader that I in no way mean to suggest a direct, or even indirect, cultural relationship between the evolution of the site at Rogem Hiri and what happened elsewhere, but intend simply to compare it to the megalithic phenomenon elsewhere.

The same considerations seem also to rule out a coincidental similarity to paleo-Hebrew if these signs were written in Cherokee syllabic-a system about which I would presume to say nothing except to point out that, as I understand it, it was devised by Sequoyah in the 1820s and would therefore be as out of place as paleo-Hebrew in a Woodland mound.

The omission of the yod cannot be considered an orthographic option, as if it were an anachronistic “defective spelling,” reverting to practices in use over half a millennium earlier; after all, this “scribe,” when writing yeáhudim, indicated the u by waw (letter 6); he did not omit this mater lectionis. Therefore, he would not have failed to indicate the i by yod.

“‘Yigal Shiloh—Last Thoughts,’ Part 2,” BAR 14:03.