FREEING THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

Freeing
The Dead Sea

Scrolls
and Other
Adventures of
an Archaeology
Outsider
b o o k s b y h e rs h e l s h a n k s
Jerusalem’s Temple Mount: From Solomon to the Golden Dome
The Copper Scroll and the Search for the Temple Treasure
Jerusalem: An Archaeological Biography
The Mystery and Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls
The City of David: A Guide to Biblical Jerusalem
Judaism in Stone: The Archaeology of Ancient Synagogues
The Dead Sea Scrolls After Forty Years (with James C. VanderKam, P.
Kyle McCarter, Jr., and James A. Sanders)
The Rise of Ancient Israel (with William G. Dever,
Baruch Halpern, P. Kyle McCarter, Jr.)
The Brother of Jesus (with Ben Witherington III)
b o o k s e d i t e d b y h e rs h e l s h a n k s
The Art and Craft of Judging: The Opinions of Judge Learned Hand
Scholars on the Record: Insightful Interviews on Bible and Archaeology
Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of Jerusalem
Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism: A Parallel History of Their Origins
and Early Development
Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls
Archaeology and the Bible: The Best of BAR, 2 vols. (with Dan P. Cole)
Feminist Approaches to the Bible (with Phyllis Trible, Tivka
Frymer-Kensky, Pamela J. Milne, Jane Schaberg)
Recent Archaeology in the Land of Israel (with Benjamin Mazar)
The Search for Jesus (with Stephen J. Patterson, Marcus J. Borg, John
Dominic Crossan)
Frank Moore Cross: Conversations with a Bible Scholar
Abraham & Family: New Insights into the Patriarchal Narratives
Freeing
The Dead Sea
Scrolls
and Other
Adventures of
an Archaeology
Outsider
h e rs h e l s h a n k s
Published by the Continuum International Publishing Group
The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane
11 York Road Suite 704
London SE1 7NX New York, NY 10038
www.continuumbooks.com
Copyright © Hershel Shanks, 2010.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval
system, without prior permission from the publishers.
First published 2010
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1441-15217-6
Designed and typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed and bound in the United States of America
contents
Acknowledgments vii
Preface ix
I. In the Beginning 1
II. The Sharon Years 13
III. My College Years 25
IV. Columbia, Harvard and the Department of Justice 31
V. Practicing Law 39
VI. Our Year in Israel 59
VII. Starting BAR 81
VIII. Maturing BAR 97
IX. Freeing the Scrolls 125
X. Losing in Court 161
XI. Two Extraordinary Inscriptions—

The Pomegranate and the Ossuary 177
XII. A Royal Israelite Inscription—

The Yehoash Plaque? 193
XIII. “The Forgery Trial of the Century” and Beyond 203
XIV. My Credo 231
Notes 237
Illustration Credits 243
Index 245
v
to judith
my wife of 43 years, the mother of my children
Elizabeth and Julia and the grandmother of my
grandchildren Charlie and Nancy, to whom, then Judy,
my first book was dedicated in 1968
Acknowledgments
i should like to begin these acknowledgments by venting my
anger at the contractor I hired to build my treadmill room in the base-
ment. He left a pile of sawdust overnight near an outside drain; a
heavy rain that night swept the sawdust over the drain and blocked it.
The result was a flooded basement that destroyed, among much else,
my family photos. I am grateful to my sister Leah Gordon for supply-
ing the family pictures in this volume.
Three excellent editors reviewed my text and each made a signifi-
cant contribution to it. I thank Steven Feldman, G. Joseph Corbett
and John Loudon for their help.
Most important was the staff of the Biblical Archaeology Society—
my longtime colleague, BAS president and Biblical Archaeology Review
publisher Susan Laden; BAR administrative editor Bonnie Mullin;
production manager Heather Metzger; and Janet Bowman who does
everything.
The inside of the book was designed by graphic designer Rob
Sugar, with whom I have worked happily for more than 30 years, and
his assistant Jinna Hagerty of Auras Design.
Hershel Shanks
washington, d.c.
november 2009
vii
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Preface
i am sitting in an unfamiliar courtroom in Jerusalem.
In general, I am accustomed to courtrooms. For years, I repre-
sented the United States of America in courtrooms all over the country
when I was a lawyer with the Department of Justice. I know how to
question my witnesses on direct and how to examine the other guy’s
witnesses on cross.
But this is different. I am here not as a lawyer representing
someone. I am the defendant!
The testimony is in Hebrew, which I do not understand. My
daughter, who is fluent in Hebrew, sits beside me to provide the gist
of the testimony against me.
The plaintiff is a distinguished Israeli scholar named Elisha Qimron,
a professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheba.
I had published without permission Professor Qimron’s one-page
Hebrew reconstruction of a fragmentary Dead Sea Scroll known as
MMT, in an effort to break the scroll monopoly. Although the recon-
struction had circulated widely in samizdat copies, it had not been
officially published by Qimron and Harvard professor John Strugnell
to whom it had been officially assigned. Moreover, I had not men-
tioned Qimron’s name in my publication; Qimron was anonymous.
I listen as Qimron testifies: For 11 consecutive years, he had
worked on the reconstruction I had published. “During the years
I worked on it, I did almost no other work.” During this time, he says,
his “whole family lived very frugally ... When my wife complained,
I would tell her, ‘Look, this is our life; we will achieve fame.’”
When I published his reconstruction, he was “shocked ... I can’t
describe the feeling ... It’s as if someone came and took away the thing
I had made by force, telling me: ‘Go away! This belongs to me!’”
I watch the judge and see those tell-tale half-expressions that
reveal her sympathy for the plaintiff, as she indeed turned out to
ix
Preface
have, ultimately awarding Qimron 100,000 shekels in damages (about

$40,000). She was not alone in her sympathies. Both the Israeli aca-
demic community and the Israeli press considered me a thief. The
unbreakable academic convention was that a scholar assigned the
publication of an ancient text had exclusive right to it until it was
published, even if that took more than a generation.
As I sit in the courtroom listening to Hebrew testimony I cannot
understand, my mind wanders. I am no longer the Harvard-trained
lawyer. I am back in the little town in western Pennsylvania where
I grew up, the son of parents who had never been to college, of a
father who sold shoes for a living, the kid who always seemed to be
getting into trouble. How did I get here?
Today the angst I felt in that courtroom has passed. Everyone—
scholars as well as the press—is happy that the scrolls have been freed.
The scholars who once reviled me are now my friends (all except
Qimron who is still bitter).
I think of this now as I am involved in another scholarly battle:
I am almost the sole public voice defending the authenticity of a first-
century bone box inscribed “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus”
and a small ivory pomegranate that, if authentic, is probably the only
relic to have survived from Solomon’s Temple. Both are enormously
important— if real. However, two committees of the Israel Antiquities
Authority (IAA) have, supposedly unanimously, judged both these
ancient inscriptions to be modern forgeries. In what has been dubbed
“the forgery trial of the century,” a criminal indictment likewise alleges
that these inscriptions are forgeries. The trial against the two remain-
ing defendants (the others have been dismissed) is now in its fourth
year. The defendants deny the charges. In light of the findings of the
IAA committees and the indictment charging that the inscriptions are
forgeries, the press—from 60 Minutes to the BBC—has almost unani-
mously agreed (and assumed) that the inscriptions are forgeries.
That too will change—perhaps by the time these words appear
in print. Perhaps in time for my 80th birthday in 2010. Or perhaps
not for a generation.
x
a portent of things to come. Even at the age of two, I was
already doing my best to let the world know how I felt about things.
chapter i
In the Beginning
i guess i better explain at the start. This autobiography is not about
my sex life. And it is not about my wife Judith to whom I’ve been happily
married for 43 years, nor my daughters Elizabeth and Julia. Nor is it about
my lifelong efforts to play the piano. All these things have humbled me,
each in its own way. But that is not what this book is about. It is about
other things.
I was born on March 8, 1930, in Sharon, Pennsylvania, a small mill
town of 15,000 people on the Ohio border and home of the Sharon Steel
Corporation. My father sold shoes in a store across from the steel mills.
When the store went bankrupt in the Depression, my father and Chubby
Rome, a cheder buddy (a cheder is a young boys’ Hebrew school taught
after regular school), acquired the store at the bankruptcy sale. But Chubby
(actually Ben, but nobody knew that was his name) had to keep work-
ing in the mill. The store could not provide an income for both of them.
Eventually, the partners acquired another store for Chubby in Warren,
Ohio, about 20 miles away.
One of the finest things I can say about my father is that he and
Chubby remained partners until Chubby was an old man and retired.
And they never had a disagreement. My father was rather humorless and
impatient, all business. Chubby was just the opposite—full of jokes and
laughter, never in a hurry. But they got along famously. They talked every
day after the stores closed, gossiping like fishwives. My father did most
of the work. He believed in work. He kept the books. His store, unlike
Chubby’s, was immaculate. He dusted every shoebox in the store every
week. That included the boxes of rubber goulashes in summer.
1
In the Beginning
A FAMILY PORTRAIT taken when I was in high school. By then, my

father Martin, who had been born in Kiev and immigrated with his
family to the United States at six years old, owned a shoe store in Sharon,
Pennsylvania, on the Ohio border. My mother Mildred, with occasional
help from my father, raised me and my sister Leah there.
My mother, on the other hand, was young and beautiful and charm-
ing. She never went to college, but she was the smartest woman I have
ever known.
But that is getting ahead of the story. My story really begins several
thousands of years ago in that little patch of land called Israel. (I’ve been
learning the details of that fascinating story for the past 35 years as the
editor of Biblical Archaeology Review.) But the last couple of generations
are more personal. It starts in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century.
My father’s name was originally Sushansky—or perhaps Shushansky.
We’re not sure which. My mother thought that if the name were Shushansky
then perhaps our family came from Shushan, where the biblical Mordecai
and his foster daughter Esther came from. Shushan (Susa) was the capital of
2
Adventures of an Archaeology Outsider
ancient Elam in what is now southwestern Iran. There sat King Ahasuerus
who made Esther his queen and she saved all the Jews. We read their story
at Purim. Perhaps that’s where we came from, my mother thought. The
etymology, almost surely fanciful, gave us a little yichus (pedigree), at least
in our own eyes.
In fact, my father was born in Kiev, in the Ukraine. His father was
a tailor who made uniforms for the soldiers of the czar, which appar-
ently was something to be proud of. At one point the family moved to
Odessa, a port city on the Black Sea. When my father was six years old,
there was a pogrom. The Jews in the neighborhood fled to the basement
of a friendly Christian neighbor. The Cossacks came into the house look-
ing for Jews. An infant in the basement began to cry and a pillow was
pressed on the baby’s face so the crying wouldn’t be heard upstairs. When
the Cossacks left, the pillow was removed. The Jews had been saved, but
the baby was dead. That was the incident that caused the family to leave
for America.
The story has the ring of truth. The infamous Kishinev pogroms
occurred in 1903 and 1905. Kishinev is a bare hundred miles northwest
of Odessa. More than 7,000 of Kishinev’s 60,000 Jews left between the
first and second pogroms, “many emigrating to the United States ..., while
many more left after the second [1905] attack.”1 A number of pogroms
also occurred in Odessa over the years. “The severest pogroms occurred
[there] in 1905 ... Over 300 [Odessa] Jews lost their lives, whilst thou-
sands of families were injured.”2 These facts could not have been known
by my father from literary sources. His stories of pogroms (which we got
via my mother) must have been based on stories handed down and on
dim memories.
According to immigration records, my grandfather Chane (Chunyeh),
his wife Lane (Laneh) and four children, one of whom is listed as Abram,
six years old, sailed on the SS Marion from Liverpool on March 28, 1906,
and docked in Philadelphia on April 9, 1906. The immigration manifest
lists them as Hebrews who last resided in Odessa. Their passage was paid
for by Chane himself. They were bound for Youngstown, Ohio, where a
brother Haim and his son Joseph had lived for three years.
3
In the Beginning
The family name is written twice on the manifest, once in connec-

tion with Chane and once in connection with Haim. In both cases it is
spelled Susanschky. But that is not conclusive. That is just how the immi-
gration officer spelled it.
In any event, the family went to Youngstown, Ohio, where they made
their home. The little boy who would become my father had a paper route
that he remembered with some pride. He knew just who paid him more
than the minimum amount. He eventually forgot his Russian (but not his
Yiddish) and spoke English without an accent. He graduated from Rayen
High School in Youngstown. Shortly before, however, his father died of
cancer. Instead of going to college and medical school as he had intended,
he became the breadwinner of the family. He got a job in a steel factory in
Youngstown. After a short time, he got a job as a shoe salesman at Reed’s
Shoe Store in Farrell, Pennsylvania, a small town about 15 miles from
Youngstown. He took a street car to work.
Reed’s Shoe Store was located on Broadway, just over the state line.
The little town was called South Sharon at the time. It was the poor neigh-
bor to Sharon, which was an adjacent town not much larger. One side of
the street—the better side—was Sharon; the other, Farrell.
Stores lined only one side of Broadway. On the other side, in the
near distance, were the steel mills that provided the customers to the stores.
It was while he was working at Reed’s that my father became a citi-
zen. On April 14, 1921, he signed under oath his declaration of intention
to become a citizen. This declaration confirms much of his personal his-
tory: He was born in Kiev; his last foreign residence was Odessa; he arrived
in Philadelphia on the SS Marion on April 9, 1906. According to this dec-
laration, however, he sailed from Rotterdam, not Liverpool. Apparently,
Rotterdam was the previous port of embarkation; the ship then sailed
to Liverpool. I suspect that the family traveled by land from Ukraine to
Hamburg, Germany, and that the ship sailed first to Rotterdam and then
to Liverpool before landing at Philadelphia.
He gives his birth date as December 10, 1899. In the family, he always
gave his birth year as 1900. We could always tell his age by the year. In 1950
he was 50, and so on. Was he lying when he swore he was born in 1899?
4
DRESSED FOR SUCCESS. An early photo of me with my sister Leah.
5
In the Beginning
Perhaps. He may have lied in order to swear he was 21. He was actually
20. On the other hand, the immigration manifest shows his age as six in
April 1906, a date consistent with his birth in 1899.
From the Declaration of Intention to become a citizen, we also get a
picture of what he looked like in 1921—five-feet, four-inches; 145 pounds.
“Color: White; Complexion: Light; Eyes: Gray; Color of Hair: Brown [his
hair must have already changed; as a boy it had a reddish cast and he was
called “Red”]; Other Visible Distinctive Marks: None.” He lists his occupa-
tion as “salesman.”
He also swore, as required, that he was not an anarchist, nor a polyga-
mist, “nor a believer in the practice of polygamy.”
His name is listed as Martin Shanks, and he signed his name Martin
A. Shanks. His petition to become a citizen was granted three years later—
on June 27, 1924. In the oath of allegiance and in the order of court
granting the petition, however, his name is listed, and written in his own
handwriting, as Martin Abraham Sushansky (a third spelling). He had
apparently already adopted the name Shanks but only informally.
In 1995, I traveled with my long-time colleague Suzanne Singer to
the former Soviet Union in search of stories on Jewish life for Moment,
a magazine of Jewish cultural affairs of which we were serving as editor
and managing editor. (I wrote a lengthy report in the February 1996 issue
entitled “Can Jewish Life Be Restored in the Former Soviet Union?”) In
preparation for the trip I decided to do a little genealogical research.
On the assumption that the name had been spelled correctly by
my father on his citizenship application as Sushansky, I speculated as to
where it might have come from. The suffix “...sky,” of course, is common. It
means “person of.” In the early 19th century, people in Russia didn’t have
last names. When this was required, many people took as their last name
the place where they were from. The “Sushansky” family would have been
“People of Sushan.”
I began looking at books with Jewish shtetl lists for a shtetl (a
small Jewish village) with a name close to “Sushan.” No candidates. So
at the Library of Congress I started looking at old maps of the area that
included Kiev for a possible name. I noticed that almost all the little
6
villages included the feminine suffix “...ka.” Then I came upon it: Sushanka.
Take off the suffix and you have Sushan, the same name you get when
you take off the suffix “...sky.”
Sushanka was about 10 miles from the center of the city of Kiev.
Kiev, where my father was born, designated an area, not just the city itself.
Maybe my father’s family came from Sushanka. True, Sushanka was not
listed as a Jewish shtetl, but the books could easily have missed some. I
decided to try to visit Sushanka.
Inside the FSU (Former Soviet Union) we were supported by the
Joint Distribution Committee, a Jewish relief agency. On our visit to the
city of Kiev (where we saw the Great Gate immortalized in Moussorgsky’s
“Pictures at an Exhibition”), we were supplied with a car and driver to take
us to Zhitomir, an important Hasidic center in the 19th century. At the
turn of the 20th century, the town had about 60,000 residents, nearly half
of whom were Jewish. Then the old story—pogroms, emigration mostly
to the United States, the disintegration of Jewish life under the Soviets,
the flight of the town’s remaining Jews from the Nazis—and now it was
attempting a revival led by a Lubavitcher (Hasidic) rabbi. Zhitomir lies
about 75 miles west of Kiev. After a day meeting with the Jews of Zhitomir,
we headed back to Kiev along a road that on the map looked as if it almost
passed through Sushanka.
I asked the driver (through our interpreter) if he could go there on
the way. He had never heard of the place but he was glad to comply. I
showed him my copies of the ancient maps, and he thought he could get
us there. He continually asked people from the area where it was supposed
to be, and they kept pointing. We ended up driving through a forest, not
even on a path. I was afraid: If we broke down, we would be in the forest
for the night. The car was what my father would have called a tradikeh (a
tin-lizzie in 1930s Yiddish jargon) and the area was, at least in my mind,
lawless. But the driver had no such fear (nor did anyone else in the car),
and we just proceeded through the route, confirming with an occasional
woodsman that indeed Sushanka was on the other side.
We emerged from the forest in a field, drove down the hill, crossed
a stream and soon came upon Sushanka. A herd of cows was passing
7
In the Beginning
through the center of the village, but stopped us only momentarily. We

inquired whether there were any Jews in the town. The reply was no. We
then asked whether there had been any in the past. Our friendly respon-
dents replied no, but directed us to the town’s only old people, a couple
who lived down the road.
“Down the road” we found the couple, who invited us into their
poor but neat home. They confirmed that there were no Jews in town,
nor had there been before the Second World War, but the wife recalled
that when she was a little girl, someone mentioned that there had been
some Jews there, and there were knives. That is all she knew. Were the Jews
driven away with knives? She didn’t know.
She wouldn’t allow us to leave without a gift: a handful of small
gnarled apples that grew in their yard. We graciously thanked them and
returned to Kiev. Had I been to the village where my father’s family came
from? I will never know for sure.
My mother’s family also had a name change—from Jacobovitch to
Jacoby, when my mother’s grandparents opened up a little confectionery
shop next to the bank in Farrell, Pennsylvania. The Jacoby’s had five beau-
tiful daughters who reached adulthood, one of whom, Fannie, became
my mother’s mother. The other four girls—Sarah, Rosie, Sophie and
Mary—made excellent marriages to men who earned a living that ranged
from adequate to wealthy. They lived with their husbands in Philadelphia
(Rose Klein), Cleveland (Mary Lurie and Sarah Gross) and Sharon (Sophie
Horowitz). Fannie alone had trouble finding a husband—or more pre-
cisely, they had trouble finding a husband for her. Although she too was
a beautiful girl, she had had smallpox as a child that left her face pock-
marked and bumpy. The disease also left her cross-eyed, which had to be
corrected with glasses. So a marriage was arranged with David Freedman, a
strapping six-footer from Hungary who was living with relatives in Wilkes
Barre, Pennsylvania, several hundred miles from Farrell. David was 18 at
the time and had a job carrying bricks upstairs for the construction of a
building several stories high.
David was brought to Farrell. Early efforts at introducing him to the
world of business failed. He soon got a job in the steel mills and worked
8
there for the rest of his working life, except for a short period when he
opened a grocery store with his son Phillip that failed. At the mill, he was
known as Big Dave and ultimately rose to the position of millwright.
I never knew my paternal grandparents. They died before I was born.
But I remember both my maternal grandparents clearly. The account I have
just written of Dave Freedman gives a wholly one-sided picture. He was a
man of character and quality. And so far as I ever saw, he was uncomplain-
ing, despite his difficult life. In those days, men worked six days a week. But
in the mills, the day off varied; the furnaces had to be kept going 24 hours
a day, seven days a week. Men worked in three shifts—a morning shift from
eight to four; an afternoon shift from four to midnight; and a midnight
shift from midnight to eight. The shift changed every two weeks—I can’t
imagine that, working a different shift every two weeks. But that’s what
my grandfather did all his life. As a boy and a young man, I remember
so many family gatherings in Sharon when one of “the boys”—his sons
Phil and Hersh—would have to drive “Papa” to work at 2:30 on a Sunday
afternoon. (Papa never had a car of his own.) They would drive Papa to
the mill entrance on Broadway, which had an open steel arch that in retro-
spect looked much like the steel arch at the entrance to Auschwitz. There
they would drop Papa off. Papa had to walk another half-mile to get to the
mill from the entrance. Private cars were not allowed inside the gate. But
worst of all, as I remember it, Papa had to miss the rest of the Sunday party.
When Dave’s father-in-law died, his mother-in-law, Lena Jacoby,
moved in not with her wealthy daughters, but with her poorest daughter,
Fannie. Lena was a difficult woman and, I am told, the source of much fric-
tion between Dave and Fannie. On one occasion, according to my mother,
Dave almost killed her with a knife. But I never saw this side of him. I
remember his lumbering gait and his powerful hands tightly closing the
jar lids on the delicious fruit and vegetables that Grandma canned and
lined up on the kitchen table for him to give the final touch to the warm
jars. When his corncob pipe wasn’t lit, he was chewing Weyman’s Cut
& Dried Tobacco, which we always gave him for Father’s Day and his
birthday. I recall his racing through the Passover haggadah in his heavily
Hungarian-accented Hebrew (no English) as we all urged him (especially
9
In the Beginning
Phil and Hersh whom I imitated) to go faster so we could get to the din-
ner. I remember his taking me by the hand as we walked together to shul
(synagogue). That is my earliest recollection of shul—sitting next to my
grandfather in his regular place on the bench, to the right of the raised
bima in the center of the prayer hall. My grandfather sat next to Litvak
Rosenblum. There were several Rosenblums in Farrell and Sharon, but
he was different; he came from Lithuania. So he was known as Litvak
Rosenblum. I don’t know if anyone knew his real name. Litvak Rosenblum
would pinch my cheek—hard, so hard it would sting for a few minutes.
But I liked it—and him.
Lena Jacoby was the source of friction not only between my grand-
parents, but also with my mother. My mother was an identical twin. Her
sister Jeanette was the weaker, more sickly one who, my mother felt, was
favored. In fact, Jeanette died at 52 from breast cancer. When the twins
graduated from high school, it was decided that Jeanette should go to
what was then called normal school, a two-year college that qualified
graduates to teach in public schools. To afford it, Grandpa could pro-
vide part of the money and Mildred could get a job and supply the rest.
That is what happened. My mother got a job in the high school where
they had graduated and soon was tapped as secretary to the principal,
Mr. Stillings. My mother always spoke adoringly of Mr. Stillings. She des-
perately wanted to go to college, however. The opportunity came: Mr.
Stillings was to have a sabbatical which he planned to spend at Slippery
Rock State Teachers College, and he offered my mother lodging in his
house down there so she could go to college despite her limited means.
With her meager savings, she would still have enough to get her through
the year. At this point, enter Lena Jacoby. She would not permit Mildred
to live in the same house with a married man. Mildred was defiant. She
would go anyway. The day before she was ready to leave, she packed
her bags and went to sleep. In the night, her father, doubtless at Lena
Jacoby’s instructions, hid her bags in the rafters under the roof. In tears,
Mildred surrendered. This created a permanent psychic wound. Mildred
still speaks of the two years she worked for Mr. Stillings as the happiest
years of her life.
10
Yet there is another side. Gossip had it that she had been seen at
Levine’s men’s store buying a man’s collar. Yes, Mildred had done this.
Mr. Stillings had an event to attend and had a dirty collar, so he asked if
Mildred would go down to Levine’s and buy him a fresh one. All very inno-
cent. But was it? When she was in her 90s, she told me that Mr. Stillings
had been divorced. We will never know the truth. I’m not sure I want to.
It was while my mother was working for Mr. Stillings that she met
my father. His friend Irv Barker had a date with Jeanette, and she asked
him to get a date for her sister. So Irv asked Martin. Not long after, they
married. In our family lore, it was a legendary wedding. Held at Aunt
Sophie’s home in Sharon, the crowds were so thick the police had to come
out to direct traffic.
I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. Once, at my insistence,
Papa gave me his lit pipe to draw on. One draw and I got sick—vomited.
Then my grandfather took me by the hand and we had a nice walk out-
side in the cool breeze.
On New Year’s Eve, my parents would deposit me and my sister Leah
at Grandma and Papa’s and we would play casino (a card game) with them
until ten or eleven at night.
I also had friends in my grandparents’ neighborhood. I recall digging
out the tar from between the bricks with which the streets were paved and
chewing it like gum, just as the rest of the kids did. When I got a penny
or two, we would buy candy at Pasconi’s, next to Magnatto’s gas station,
where my dad always filled up his Pontiac. If I were a poet I would lyricize
about the delights of Pasconi’s. Since I am not, I will say that only now
do I realize from the names that there was a large Italian population in
Farrell. (Two doors down from my father’s Reed Shoe Store was Marino’s
Hardware Store.) Farrell was a town of mixed immigrant communities—
Italians, Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Lithuanians, Jews, each with its own
“Home.” For the Jews, it was the shul. I’m sure there were some conflicts
between these ethnic communities, but I don’t remember any and I never
heard of any.
On one July Fourth, I had enough money to buy some firecrackers at
Pasconi’s. These included some Roman candles, which didn’t make noise
11
In the Beginning
but sent beautiful sparks into the air. Sammy Schermer, who lived across
the street from my grandparents, was with me. Sammy was considerably
older than I—perhaps by as much as three years—but I had the money
and they were my firecrackers. I was young enough that I was not yet able
to light matches, however. Sammy could. That is an important part of the
story. Impatient for the evening, we sought a dark place in the afternoon
where we could light the Roman candles. We found it in the Solomon’s
garage, next door to my grandparents. It was a dilapidated wooden struc-
ture, an ideal place to light Roman candles in the afternoon. Sammy lit the
match. We lit—or rather he lit—the Roman candles, and they were beauti-
ful. We then went out to play, entirely forgetting about what we had done.
A half-hour later, there were shouts in the neighborhood. We ran back to
my grandparent’s house and there saw the most beautiful fire that I have
ever seen: The Solomon garage was all ablaze, every bit of it. It was not
long before the sirens of the fire truck announced its arrival, and the whole
neighborhood watched as water doused the flames. But, alas, nothing was
left of the garage. It was never rebuilt, just cleared away. Mr. Solomon
didn’t need it anyway because he sold vegetables from a horse-drawn cart
and didn’t have a car. Because the firecrackers were mine, however, I was
blamed. But, as I said, it was really Sammy who lit the match. Later that
summer, I saw Sammy at the Buhl Farm swimming pool and told him
that he had lit the match. He just ignored me and jumped into the water.
My grandparents died within three days of each other in 1955 when
I was in law school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. My parents called to tell
me my grandmother had died. But it was too expensive for me to come
home for the funeral. The same conversation was repeated three days later
when my grandfather died. I have always been sorry that I didn’t come
home for their funerals. I had nothing to mark their passing. For years
when I would come home, I would think about visiting Grandma and
Papa, forgetting that they were no longer there.
12
chapter ii
The Sharon Years

as i try to call up memories of my childhood and the small west-
ern Pennsylvania town where I was raised, I have no memories of being
happy—or unhappy. I just was. I didn’t think in those terms—even of
being satisfied or unsatisfied. I am told that when my sister Leah arrived
(I was four), I tried to sell her.
I recall one supper (which is what we called it, not dinner) that
affected me for years. I must have been eight or nine at the time. My
mother never liked to get up once supper was served. “Once I sit down,
I’m not getting up,” she would say, so if there was something you wanted,
ask for it now. We sat at a kind of picnic table in a dining nook in
the kitchen.
So that she wouldn’t have to get up even for dessert, she would put
the four desserts on plates at the end of the table, near the wall where
I sat, opposite my sister. On this particular occasion, it was cheesecake.
I accidentally spilled my water into one of the plates of cheesecake. I
quickly finished my meal and ate one of the other plates of cheesecake.
When my parents, sitting on the outside, finished their meal, I passed
them each an unwatered plate of cheesecake. When Leah finally fin-
ished eating, she took the remaining plate of cheesecake—it was full
of water! She began to cry and it was apparent to everyone what had
happened. My mother yelled at me and pronounced the punishment:
I would have to eat the watered cheesecake. That couldn’t have been so
bad, but I remember that it tasted terrible and I was full besides. I had
to stuff myself with this terrible cheesecake. For years after that—I think
until I went to college—I would not eat cheesecake, even the unwatered
kind. I had no taste for it.
13
The Sharon Years
I suppose this sounds like a kid’s prank. And it was. But there is
perhaps something deeper in it. For better or worse, in some ways it pre-
saged the man.
I had a happy, normal childhood. I suppose I occasionally wished I
had other parents, but only fleetingly. When I would get mad at my parents,
I would “get even” with them by sleeping on the wooden hall floor using
the throw rugs for covers. It was quite comfortable, they would feel sorry
for me I thought, and I knew I would awaken in the morning comfortably
ensconced in my own bed with the covers carefully folded under my chin.
I never thought about living in New York, or even Youngstown,
Ohio, the big, sophisticated city about 15 miles from Sharon. Sharon sim-
ply was. That was the only world I knew. In my mind, it had no description.
Of course it was where I lived, but that was all.
A recurring theme in this tale is a certain rebelliousness, an unwill-
ingness to follow the accepted rules. But there was also something else:
An inability to appreciate or even realize that there was a world beyond—
indeed, that there were other worlds. It was only years later, when I had
somehow miraculously escaped from Sharon that I appreciated that there
were other possibilities. As I did not think about this as a little child, so I
did not think about it until I went to college.
****
I still remember the names of my grade school teachers, from grades one
to six, all unmarried ladies of a certain age: Miss Franey, Miss Gaines, Miss
Elliot, Miss Ague, Miss Hoagland and Miss Evans. Each of these teachers
had her own reputation. Miss Franey was nice; Miss Gaines was mean; Miss
Elliot had a stiff leg and limped, and she was strict; Miss Ague was not
nice; but Miss Hoagland was very nice—couldn’t wait to get to fifth grade.
Miss Evans was old and fat. She became the principal when I reached sixth
grade so we changed teachers in the middle. I don’t remember the name
of the other one.
I was a bright, but not brilliant student—A’s and B’s. My only bad
subject was “Deportment”—usually D; sometimes I would get up to a C.
14
My mother would have to make her annual trip to school to discuss my

behavior with the teacher. I don’t remember what I did wrong. I couldn’t
understand rules that didn’t make sense.
In second grade, Miss Gaines told me in front of the class that I had
a button unbuttoned. I looked at the line of buttons down the front of my
shirt; they were all buttoned. So I denied it, but she insisted. Perhaps she
meant the buttons on my cuffs, so on the second round I looked there as
well, but they too were buttoned. I didn’t know what to do except deny
it. She told me to leave the room and not come back until I found the
unbuttoned button. So I retreated to the big hall outside “Miss Gaines’s
room.” Again I looked but didn’t find it. Then it occurred to me: my fly. I
looked down. Those were the days before zippers. Sure enough, a button
was unbuttoned. I buttoned it and, mortified, had to return to my seat
while the rest of the class silently looked at me.
My best friend was Joe Ellovich, who lived in a fine house across the
street from me. Although he was born only five months before me (on
October 29 to my March 8), he was a grade ahead of me. Second grade is
nothing, he would tell me. It’s easy. Wait until you get to third grade. Of
course when I got to third grade, thinking I had finally arrived, he would
tell me the same thing about third grade, and so on for several years. Finally,
it didn’t bother me. I showed myself I could make it.
Until the war (World War II), we had a middle-aged live-in maid
named Monica Jurino. Monica was always threatening to quit because of
my behavior. I never really believed those threats, but my mother took
them seriously. We had only one bathroom, and the rule was that you
washed the bathtub as the water ran out, being careful not to leave a black
ring. From the sounds emanating from the bathroom, I could tell when
Monica was taking a bath. When she got out of the tub, she began washing
around the tub, as I could tell by hearing the swishing. On one occasion I
quickly went to the landing of the stairs on the other side of the bathtub
drain. There was a small wooden door that I quietly opened, exposing the
back of the tub and its drain. I carefully moved the drain so that the water
was no longer draining out: Monica was swishing a bathtub that was not
draining. Finally, she realized the drain was closed and the water was not
15
The Sharon Years
draining out. She turned it, thinking the mistake was hers. Quietly listen-
ing on the balcony, I turned the drain so that it would again not drain.
This time, Monica suspected something. With a towel around her, she
stuck her head past the door and looked down at the landing. There I was
with the plumbing door open—caught red-handed, as they say. Monica
again threatened to quit—this time she really meant it—but my mother
succeeded in mollifying her. She stayed with us until she got a job in the
mill during the war. When the men were away in the army, high-paying
manual jobs opened up for women. Besides, it was the patriotic thing to
do. I never missed Monica, but my mother did. They remained friends for
many years, even writing each other letters when Monica married (for the
second time) and moved to Cleveland.
At the end of the school year in sixth grade, report cards were handed
out. As usual, mine stated that I had passed to the next grade. But seventh
grade was junior high, a different building, downtown, a delightful half-
hour’s walk each morning with my friends. Best of all, I was no longer
under the control or authority—under the jurisdiction, as I might later
say—of Jefferson Avenue Elementary School. Free at last. I took my hated
sixth-grade geography notebooks and tore them to shreds, strewing them
around the schoolhouse yard. Then I proceeded home where I would
scream to an adoring mother, “Mom, I passed. I passed.”
This time, my mother was waiting for me on the porch, arms
folded. My screams did not produce the anticipated response. Miss
Evans’s telephone call had preceded me. I was instructed to return to
school and pick up the torn pieces from my geography notebooks—all
of them. So I did. It probably took 20 minutes, but it seemed like 20
hours. Fortunately, Susie Hyde happened along and agreed to help me.
But even her assistance could not erase the humiliation. I had obviously
misjudged the jurisdictional issue.
In junior high, unlike grade school, we changed classrooms each
period, with a different teacher for each subject. My English teacher, whose
class I had immediately after lunch, was Miss Kahl. I remember her even
now as Patricia Kahl, as if I had risen to a new level of relationship. Miss
Kahl was not only young and pretty (all my other teachers had been older),
16
but she wore colorful cashmere sweaters with two rather prominent bulges
in front. Each day I would wisecrack or do something like hiding the girls’
books (left there during lunch breaks) and she would kick me out of class
and send me to the library. This became a habit, and it was fine with me.
Not that I minded her class, but the offense gave me a smart-alecky high,
which even now I am reluctant to confess to. Apparently, Miss Kahl was
a new teacher, although I didn’t know it at the time; kicking me out was
her way of preventing disruption and controlling the class.
I would usually get to class early, while everyone, including Miss
Kahl, was still at lunch. On one occasion, I took a coconut that she kept on
her desk that was cut out in the shape of a head with facial features and set
it as if it were looking at the figure seated at the desk. I placed her glasses
that she had left on the desk on the coconut. In front of it, I opened the
Bible (in those days, we still began the school day in “homeroom” with a
Bible reading, including the New Testament).
As the students straggled in, they snickered and laughed. Then came
Miss Kahl. She knew immediately who had done it. The class had not
even started and I was already kicked out, sent to the library. I didn’t mind.
While I was comfortably ensconced reading, however, six-foot-three Mr.
Crowell, the principal, came in, grabbed me by the ear, dragged me to his
office and proceeded to kick me out of school. Not just Miss Kahl’s class.
I was terribly frightened and began to cry. I pleaded with him to allow
me to stay in the library until my mother came in for a conference. He
agreed. I remember sitting in the library reading a book about baseball,
in which I had no interest whatever; it was the first time I had read a
complete book in one day. Whether my mother came in later that day or
the next morning I do not remember, but we met in Mr. Crowell’s office,
where she apologized and I was allowed back in class. Thereafter, at least
for a time, I was a model of good behavior.
Along with secular school, I went to chedar in the afternoon four
days a week where I learned to read (but not translate) Hebrew. Then shul
on Saturday and Sunday School on Sunday. At 13, I had an exemplary Bar
Mitzvah: I davened (chanted) the Prophetic portion, the musaf section of
prayers that followed and gave my little speech.
17
The Sharon Years
Even before my Bar Mitzvah, I was often in my father’s store sell-

ing shoes. It is hard to believe that I made my first sale at 11. It was at my
insistence, although I later came to hate “the store.”
By that time, my father had acquired another store on the main
street in Sharon, but I was assigned to Reed’s in Farrell where the cus-
tomers were more Old World. For lunch I would walk up the hill from
Broadway to 614 Wallis Avenue, where my grandparents lived, and my
grandmother would give me lunch, just like my mother’s brother Hersh,
who managed the store. It was a very grown-up feeling.
I worked at the store only sporadically then. I had other obligations.
But by the time I got to high school, it had become the primary obliga-
tion. It was not only Saturday, but whenever school was out—especially
Christmas vacation. “I need you in the store,” was my father’s constant
refrain. And I had to comply. By then I worked in the Sharon store.
I was an active member of AZA, a Jewish boys’ club associated
with B’nai B’rith with active chapters all along the river valleys south to
Pittsburgh and north to Erie. AZA would often bring the chapters together
for weekend conventions, but often I could not go because of my obliga-
tion to “the store.” The store also made my social life difficult: It was open
until 9 p.m. on Saturday. I could not leave for my Saturday night date, often
with a girl from Youngstown, until we cleaned up the store after it closed.
This meant my Saturday night date often began at 10 p.m.
I suppose you could say this hardly mattered because I didn’t miss
much. Dates were not really very much fun. We hardly knew the girls and
what we did together was often boring.
I recently went to the ballet with my wife. In the last third of the
program the troupe danced to nine famous old songs of Frank Sinatra,
recorded and sung by the crooner himself. The audience loved it. So did
the reviewer. So did my wife. I was ready to scream. In fact, I did yell about
it in bitter tones on the way home. It made me furious—at the memories
it called up. I heard songs like that when I was in high school at nightclubs
we went to with our dates on Saturday night. I had worked until nine, then
driven to Youngstown to pick up my date whom I had called earlier in the
week to see if she wanted to go out on Saturday night and from there to
18
a low one-story wooden building out in the country with a flashing neon
sign above the door. Inside was a smoky room with a small combo and a
tiny dance floor in front of it. The show consisted of a master of ceremo-
nies who would tell a few jokes and introduce a singer as we sat at a table
smoking cigarettes and drinking something like a rum and Coke. The big
question was whether you would get a kiss good night, usually signaled
by where she sat on the way home on the wide front-seat couch built, in
those days, to accommodate three people.
I am not bitter; I didn’t know I lived a narrow life. It was a con-
fined world in a way I cannot describe. I only know it because I somehow
escaped and now know there is another world.
Although I was not bitter, I was not happy about it either. You really
don’t think about life with other possibilities. That’s the way life is—or was.
At home, my father was active in the Sharon synagogue and the B’nai
B’rith chapter, and my mother was active in Hadassah, even traveling around
to make speeches to Hadassah chapters. She also taught Sunday School.
Every evening after dinner my father would wash the dishes and I
would dry them. Later he would take his bath, emerge in his pajamas and
robe and settle in to read the Sharon Herald. He was a creature of habit, a
trait I may have inherited somewhat from him. But he was not an intel-
lectual, like my mother. He did not read books. After my parents retired
to Florida, I saw him reading a book—the first ever. It was a biography of
Eddie Cantor.
We had several sets of books in the house. One was the 50-volume
set of The Harvard Classics, no doubt acquired by my mother. I now have
them, my mother’s legacy. Whether she read them, I don’t know. Volume
16 is Grimm’s Fairy Tales. As children Leah and I loved them. It is now the
only well-worn volume in the set. We also had a set of the works of Josephus,
but I never knew who Josephus was. A copy of Heinrich Graetz’s classic,
multi-volume, now-outmoded 19th-century History of the Jews completed
the major part of our home library. I think my mother read these books.
High school brought a sea change to my intellectual life—because
of two teachers, Smitty and Mac. Anna Grace Smith and Elizabeth
McMullin were the intellectual lights of the Sharon High School faculty.
19
The Sharon Years
Both taught English. They reached and inspired students not only through
their classes, but even more widely in the extracurricular activities they
directed. Smitty was the adviser to the Sharon High Gazette and Mac ran
the drama department.
Smitty was slightly disabled. She had a stiff leg. Her coupe had spe-
cial pedals to allow her to drive it despite her disability. She had a wry
sense of humor and a sly, twisted smile that often said the precise opposite
of her words. She laughed often and even told jokes: What goes 99-klop?
Answer: A centipede with a wooden leg.
Smitty was short—about five-feet, three-inches. Mac was tall, about
five-feet, eleven-inches. Mac carried herself elegantly. She had a voice to
match—smooth and soft and beautifully enunciated. Her large prominent
nose gave her an additional air of authority.
Both Smitty and Mac were unmarried, which I think was custom-
ary those days for teachers. They lived together at 142 Forker Boulevard,
where honored students would be invited to listen to and discuss the radio
program “Town Meeting of the Air.” (Three decades later, someone in this
group reported to the FBI that I had expressed Communist ideas at some
of these sessions at Smitty and Mac’s. By 1956, however, this kind of report
did not prevent me from getting a security clearance at the Department of
Justice. This report of 1948 discussions, however, reflects the atmosphere
at that time.)
Smitty and Mac made it clear that there was no room for what they
called “bathroom humor” at these meetings. And the thought that their
relationship was anything other than two single women of like minds
sharing living quarters never crossed our minds.
I never had a class with Smitty. I met her because I tried out and
worked for the school newspaper, ultimately becoming its editor. Eventually,
Smitty kicked me off the paper—a seeming repetition of one facet of my
character. Even before that episode, however, Smitty had to defend me. In
the entrance hall of the school was a trophy case with all the cups won
by teams from the school. In addition to the sports trophies were some
equally impressive trophies from the 1930s for our debating and oratory
teams. But these stopped in the 1940s. We no longer had a debate or
20
oratory team. I wrote an editorial describing these trophies that stopped in

the 1940s and asked why we no longer had a debate or oratory team. The
Monday morning after the Friday paper appeared, a messenger brought
a copy of the issue to the editorial office. Over my editorial, an orange
crayon had scrawled: “Who wrote this and why? CMM.” Clem M. Musser
had risen to be the superintendent of schools via the usual path: coach of
sports teams. I never learned how Smitty handled this. But she did. And
I was never taken to task for it. I did not need to be reminded, however,
not to pull this kind of thing again.
A second episode involved my social life, which had the usual unsuc-
cessful attempts and the customary adolescent heartbreaks. There was little
joy here. To make matters worse, I often had difficulty in getting access
the family car to drive to Youngstown and pick up my date after the store
closed at nine, especially as my father needed it to get home. To alleviate
this matter, I took a piece of school stationery from the newspaper office
and wrote a letter to my parents in the name of the guidance director, Mr.
Grimes. He was concerned, it said, at my studiousness. I was taking too
many courses. I was too occupied with my studies. My parents, he urged,
should encourage my social life—more specifically making the family car
available to allow me to have a social life. I had no doubt that my parents
would get the joke. They would never be fooled by antics like this. And
of course they immediately recognized my joke. But one day in the news-
paper office, I told a member of my staff about it. She told Smitty. And I
was removed as editor and kicked off the paper.
I did have Mac for senior English, but by that time I knew her well,
not only from the newspaper office where she often hung out, but from
school plays that she produced. The highlight was my senior play. At the
tryout I “performed” the climactic paragraph of Patrick Henry’s dramatic
“Give me liberty or give me death” speech. As I think about it, it is obvi-
ous that even prior to the tryout Mac had chosen me as the lead in “Death
Takes a Holiday.” The play was reviewed on the front page of the Sharon
Herald. To make sure that my memory had not exaggerated in the eighth
decade of my life, after writing this, I decided to check with the newspa-
per to see if I could get a copy of the review. The newspaper, surprisingly
21
The Sharon Years
still in business, kept issues only for the last two years; the library, however,
had a complete microfiche of issues. So I called the Sharon Public Library.
Indeed, they did have it, but it was not searchable; I would have to come
in to look for it. However, perhaps a woman from the genealogical society
might be able to help, the man said—and she just happened to be in the
library at that time. I talked to Toni Sheehan, a grandparent like me, who
was willing to look at the issues of April and May 1948. The next day she
sent me a photocopy of the front-page story from April 13, 1948, headed
“Difficult Play Is Presented by Sharon H.S. Students”:
. . . To Hershel Shanks, tall editor of the school newspaper the past year,
goes much of the credit for success of the production. It was his assign-
ment to make convincing the role of Prince Sirki (Death), who came
to the castle of an Italian Duke as a weekend guest to learn why men
fear him and to feel human emotions. Appearing in black hood and
cape and later as a suave nobleman, Hershel turned in a performance
quite remarkable for a high school boy. He handled his soliloquies on
the meaning of life and death with restraint, in a well-modulated voice.
The review was as wonderful as I had remembered it. That was the
highlight of my theatrical career. I knew that it would be all down hill
from there. I have never set foot on a theatrical stage again.
I graduated from high school in 1948. In a class of over 500 students,
I missed the top 10 percent by a few places; I did not graduate with honors.
However, when it came to electing the three best students to compete for
the Pepsi Cola scholarships, I was one of them. (None of us won a scholar-
ship.) Apparently I was known to be smart. But that did not translate into
grades. In contrast to the usual situation where a student’s class standing
drops as he climbs the educational ladder and the competition becomes
tougher, my class standing continued to rise from high school to college
to graduate school to law school.
I have spoken admiringly of Smitty and Mac. It was something else
they did for me that changed my life. They told me about two elite Quaker
colleges outside Philadelphia—Haverford and Swarthmore. I had never
22
heard of them. Without their guidance, I would probably have ended up

at Penn State or, if I decided to reach, at Ohio State.
Somewhere along the line I decided to reach, even if I would almost
certainly fail. After all, I was editor of the school paper and star of the
senior play and I missed by only a fraction of a point being in the top
10 percent of my graduating class. I applied to Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth
(simply because I had heard of it), Haverford and Swarthmore. In addi-
tion, I applied to Washington and Jefferson, a small liberal arts college
near Pittsburgh, where I had a better chance. This was the fall of 1948
and veterans were flocking back from the war and attending college on
the GI Bill of Rights.
I of course had to take the SAT college aptitude test. In those days,
however, students were not told how well or poorly they did. It was a deep,
dark secret, not to be divulged by the authorities to anyone. I have often
wondered how I did. There was certainly a basis to think I did very poorly
and that may perhaps account for my rejections. On the other hand, there
was reason to think that my natural intellectual vigor would shine through
on an aptitude test.
I was rejected at Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Haverford and Swarthmore.
Fortunately, I was accepted at Washington and Jefferson College in
Washington, Pennsylvania, where I matriculated in the fall of 1948.
23
chapter iii
My College Years
from the outset i took to the intellectual life of the college experi-
ence. I enjoyed studying and I was excited by learning.
Almost all of my professors at Washington and Jefferson loved their
subject and communicated this to the students. This was especially true
of my English professor, Joe Doyle. That we referred to him as Joe Doyle,
not Joseph Doyle or Professor Doyle, says something about his relation-
ship to the students.
I met Ted Friedman in Doyle’s class. Ted was from a highly intel-
lectual, New York Zionist family (his full name was Theodore Herzl
Friedman) and was far more sophisticated and less wide-eyed than I. At
one point in the semester, Ted and I decided on a reading program for
ourselves that involved reading a book a day. This lasted for less than
a week.
There was another side of college life at W & J (as the school is
popularly known), which from my current vantage point I can describe as
collegiate silliness. But at the time I wanted very much to fit in. The col-
lege year began with six weeks of orientation that required all freshmen
to wear silly-looking beanies. This period also involved limited freshman
hazing, designed to put freshman in their place. Disobedience to the rules
involved punishments such as having to wear long johns all day or singing
a phone book to the tune of a popular song. Ted and I seemed to have
personalities that more often invoked these penalties.
Social life on campus was dominated by Greek life, the fraterni-
ties with their fraternity houses and parties. After the six-week period of
freshman indoctrination came the period of “rushing,” when the fraterni-
ties would invite prospective members to be considered for membership.
25
My College Years
There was a strictly limited period for “rushing” and an unstated hierarchy
of fraternities, depending on their social status.
Deep into the freshman indoctrination period, I was invited to one
of the toniest fraternity houses for a private chat with a fraternity leader,
a blatant infraction of the “rushing” rules. There he confided to me that
some of my behavior—too frequent infraction of the freshman indoctri-
nation rules—could adversely impact on the invitations I might otherwise
receive during the “rushing” period. I expressed my gratitude for this advice
and added that I would also tell this to my friend Ted Friedman who was
behaving just as badly as I was. “Oh, he doesn’t have to worry,” he said.
“He’s Jewish.” And so I learned that there were Christian fraternities and
Jewish fraternities.
Joe Ellovich, my boyhood friend from Sharon who was a year ahead
of me at W & J, had decided not to join a fraternity. I saw this—then and
now—as an exhibit of strength of character. I was not so strong. I accepted
an invitation to “pledge”—that was the tryout period—to Pi Lamda Phi, an
exclusively Jewish fraternity. I quit, however, when I refused to be paddled
as part of the initiation process.
Once the freshman indoctrination period was over, I (of course)
signed up for the school newspaper and was soon writing a regular
column called “Up and Atom.” I wrote, naturally, on such controversial
subjects as whether beer should be allowed on campus. This brought me
in contact with the president, Herbert Case, and the dean, Edward Davison,
a Scotsman who had published a number of highly regarded books of
poetry. One of them, Collected Poems 1917–1939,3 was the first book I ever
owned signed by the author. It was inscribed to me “in the brotherhood
of W & J.” Neither Case nor Davison were critical of my columns in the
paper, apparently recognizing my right to write about whatever I wanted.
After my first-semester grades came in, I decided the advantages of
a Haverford education would be so far superior to what I had to look for-
ward to at W & J that I would try for admission to Haverford as a transfer
student. I reasoned that my previous rejection at Haverford must have had
something to do with my poor performance on the college aptitude test.
It was clear that I was near the top of my class at W & J as reflected in
26
my first-semester grades. So Haverford’s decision might be different this

time. When Haverford asked for a transcript of my first-semester grades,
President Case learned of my application. He invited me to his office and
sought to dissuade me. Help him, he told me, to make W & J the kind of
place we both wanted it to be. I was of course flattered, but I replied that
Haverford would give me the tools to do the job even more effectively. This
was the time of my life, I told him, when I felt I should be perfecting my
skills in order more powerfully to give to society later.
I heard nothing from Haverford. No “yes,”“no” or “maybe.” I returned
to Sharon—to spend the summer selling shoes in my father’s store.
Then, by way of the grapevine, I learned the news: Both President
Case and Dean Davison had been kicked out! They were too “liberal.”
I immediately decided to drive down to W & J to talk to whomever
I could. I did not see Case or Davison. Although I did not know it when
I left W & J to drive home, the result of my efforts was that the ousted
president of W & J (President Case who later became president of Bard
College) sent a letter of recommendation on my behalf to Haverford’s
president, Gilbert Fowler White. I soon received a letter admitting me to
Haverford as a transfer student, as a member of the sophomore class.
Like so many turning points in my life, that too seemed to be the
result of chance—if the president and dean of W & J had not been kicked
out at the end of my freshman year. . .
But it was also a lesson for me: Keep pushing. Keep trying.
My first days at Haverford were not auspicious. I was assigned a room
with three other fellows who had formed a friendship the year before.
And they clearly did not want a fourth—an unknown quantity who took
up intimate space. I watched as one of my new roommates took out of
his suitcase a picture of his family’s coat of arms and hung it on the wall.
This was clearly not a place for me. I asked the administration for a room
change. I was reassigned to a single room in the freshman dorm, Barclay
Hall. The result was that all my friends at Haverford were a year behind
me. I was never integrated into my class, the class of 1952.
I promptly tried out for the school newspaper, but the editor
informed me (as he was instructed by the administration) that I could
27
My College Years
write stories, but not editorials. Apparently my reputation as a trouble

maker had preceded me. So I resigned from the paper. I never partici-
pated in any of Haverford’s extracurricular activities thereafter for fear
that I was a marked man.
But all that never bothered me—except deep down. I formed fast
friendships with some of the freshmen in my dorm and four of us moved
the next year into an apartment dorm—with a living room, a hall and two
small bedrooms with bunk beds. Best of all, it had a working fireplace. It
was like living in a mansion.
Most importantly, I loved the intellectual life at Haverford. Of course
I took a course in Shakespeare as well as the Romantic poets such as
Keats and Shelley and Lord Byron. I studied Greek plays—Sophocles,
Euripides, Aristophanes and Aeschylus (pathei mathos: by suffering, we
learn). I learned a bit of French and tried to read Baudelaire, Camus and
Sartre in the original. The latter’s modish existentialism intersected with
my interest in philosophy in general.
I remember one spring vacation during the middle of a philosophy
course when I was selling shoes in my father’s store. In a lull, I chatted
with the long-time manager, Frank Pearce. Pointing to a table full of sale
shoes, I asked him: “Frank, how do you know that table of shoes actually
exists.” He looked at me quizzically. Was I off my rocker? “How do you
know that it’s not just an idea in your head?” I was simplistically spout-
ing Bishop Berkeley’s idealism. Fortunately, a couple of customers walked
in at that point.
Haverford students could also take courses at nearby Bryn Mawr
College, so I took Paul Schrecker’s course on Immanuel Kant. We spent
the entire semester on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. I loved it.
And then there was Ira de Augustine Reid—an African-American
professor of sociology. Tall (six-foot, four-inches), handsome and statuesque,
he had a broad laugh and laughed often. He dressed immaculately. He
was a mesmerizing lecturer and a warm, inspiring teacher. He was the
only black man on the faculty. (I cannot remember any African-American
students, although there must have been a few.) Ira Reid had attended a
historically black undergraduate college (Morehouse College in Atlanta).
28
I’m sure I did not understand his inner workings—what tensions must
have drawn his life, what bitterness he harbored, what humiliations he had
suffered. But I never saw it. We never discussed it. He was a senior faculty
member. His large home on the best part of faculty drive was always open,
and my visits there were always happy ones.
Many years later, I wrote an article in the University of Pennsylvania
Law Review about a case involving Girard College, which was established
by a will creating a fine school for poor, orphan boys. The problem was
that Girard’s will limited admission to “white” boys. The Pennsylvania
Supreme Court had upheld the limitation. I criticized the Pennsylvania
court’s decision and traced the source of the discrimination to the state
(state discrimination), rather than to Mr. Girard’s will (private discrimina-
tion) which created the school. The United States Supreme Court later
reversed the decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, although it is
unlikely that they were influenced by my law review article.4 I like to think
that what I wrote, however, was influenced by Ira Reid.
In light of my future career as editor of a biblical archaeology maga-
zine, it seems there is an odd omission in my college curriculum. I never
took a course in the Bible or in religion, despite the fact that it was all
available at this Quaker college with its required attendance at Fifth-Day
meeting. This was not a conscious decision on my part. Those subjects were
simply not on my radar screen. I wish I could give a better explanation
for this, but I can’t. Many years later, after Biblical Archaeology Review had
become a well-established magazine, I would explain that I had the perfect
preparation for the editorship: I never had a course in Bible, I never had a
course in archaeology and I knew nothing about publishing.
As I think back on it, perhaps I was a little uncomfortable at Haverford
about displaying my Judaism. Today, in 21st-century Washington, D.C.,
being Jewish is a little like being a member of some elite society. More than
a half-century earlier at elite Haverford College, it was by no means so clear.
In my senior year at Haverford, I was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, the
honorary fraternity based on intellectual achievement. I also graduated
with honors—something I did not achieve at Sharon High School. Nearly
half a century later, I was invited back, to give the address at the 100th
29
My College Years
anniversary of the Haverford Phi Beta Kappa chapter. I began my talk by

saying that I was the only person in the room who had been rejected for
admission to Haverford. Then I explained how I managed to transfer from
W & J after being rejected. I was accepted at Haverford as a result of “pull,”
rather than my qualifications.
Phi Beta Kappa was my vindication, I told my audience. It was proof
that I was up to Haverford’s standards. If I can be a bit grandioso here,
“The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” (Psalm
118:22, quoted in all three Synoptic Gospels).
But still, how is it that someone who makes Phi Beta Kappa is rejected?
Doesn’t this reflect some egregious error in the admission process? I would
sometimes look at my classmates, especially the less accomplished ones,
and ask myself how it could be that they were admitted and I was rejected.
Of course it occurred to me: Haverford had a quota—a limit on the
number of Jewish students who would be admitted. Haverford has not
denied this. Was this the reason I was rejected? I will never know.
My mother, father and sister came to my graduation and to take my
things back to Sharon. As we drove away from Haverford, I recall my eyes
welled up with tears. For all my ambivalence, these were wonderful, excit-
ing and broadening years—and I knew it.
30
chapter iv
Columbia, Harvard and

the Department
of Justice
“fill ’er up, sam,” i said, driving the family’s old Pontiac into Sam
Magnato’s gas station. It was late summer; the summer “vacation” was end-
ing; and I would be a senior when I returned to Haverford.
As he washed the windshield, he asked me, “What are you studying
in college, Hershel?”
“English,” I replied.
“What are you going to be?”
“An Englishman.” We both laughed.
But the time came when I had to make some move: During the next
nine months, I would be deciding what to do after Haverford.
I was indeed an English major, but I was increasingly more inspired
by Ira Reid’s courses in sociology. I loved studying literature, but I did
not want to spend my life teaching it. Perhaps it would be better to be
a sociologist.
Law was another possibility—the perennial choice when you didn’t
know what you wanted to do. So, postponing a decision, I applied for
admission to both. I sent applications to Harvard and Yale law schools
and to Harvard and Columbia universities in sociology.
Harvard sociology turned me down—as it did when I sought to
enter as a freshman. I still remember my interview with Louis Toepfer,
however, the admissions officer at Harvard Law School. I had hoped to
31
Columbia, Harvard and the Department of Justice
solve my dilemma—law or sociology—if I could just get him to say that

law was really applied sociology. I worked around to it slowly. Finally he
said, “Look, we do one thing at Harvard Law School. We train lawyers. If
you don’t want to be a lawyer, don’t come to Harvard Law School.”
So I decided to go to Columbia University to study sociology. But
something intervened. Yale Law School gave me a full scholarship—$600!
Yale Law School was more sociologically oriented anyway. (The same bank-
ruptcy course called “Creditors Rights” at Harvard was called “Debtors
Estates” at Yale.) So I told my roommates that I would be going to Yale
Law School on a scholarship. Leo Dvorken, who was like a brother to me,
was disdainful: “If $600 means that much to you, you are not the man I
thought you were.” That did it.
I was off to the big city and Columbia University: A year (actually
nine months) on the tenth floor of Furnald Hall (the elevator went up to
the ninth floor) and some of the most exciting intellectual activity I have
ever known. It was the place of giants: mathematical sociologist Paul F.
Lazarsfeld, philosopher of science Ernest Nagel, sociologist (and later presi-
dent of the American Sociological Association) Seymour M. Lipset (Marty,
as he was known, and I later became friends), and the theoretical genius
Robert King Merton (he invented concepts like the “self-fulfilling proph-
ecy”). I had them all. I took six courses. If I wasn’t enrolled in a course, I
audited. After nine months, having written my master’s thesis, I got my
M.A.—Master of Arts. Although I loved the intellectual excitement, I knew,
however, I did not want to spend my life doing what sociologists do. So
it was back to law.
I again went to see Lou Toepfer at Harvard. I reminded him of our
earlier conversation. “Now I want to be a lawyer,” I told him.
In the fall of 1953, I enrolled as a first-year student at the Harvard
Law School. Everyone there had been smart as an undergraduate; this was
a new level of competition. In those days, there was a standard first-year cur-
riculum—property, agency, trusts, legal procedure. The teaching method,
known as the Socratic method, was more like structured humiliation. The
professor would assign several appellate court opinions and he would then
interrogate the class about them. He had a seating chart, so there was no
32
escaping the question even by sitting in the back. He would simply call
your name. “State the case, Mr. Shanks.” The most humiliating answer was
“Unprepared.” The truth is I enjoyed it. I never said “Unprepared.”
There was one scary part, however: No examinations until the end of
the year. The results of these first-year examinations would determine your
whole life—or at least so it was thought. The top 25 people were awarded
a spot on the Harvard Law Review (only in law are the most prestigious
journals edited by students). The next eight were assigned to the Board of
Student Advisers, which administered the moot court competitions. The
next 20 or so became members of Legal Aid. After that, nothing—in a
class of over 500.
Classes ended a week before the exams to allow for exam prepara-
tion. It was not a question of memorizing answers, however. Your legal
conclusion didn’t matter. There was no right or wrong answer. It was a
question of how you got to the answer, how sophisticated your legal rea-
soning was. And most important: Did you see the legal issues?
On Saturday night a couple of my roommates (four of us lived in
a rented house) decided to “flick out,” as it was called in those days, and I
joined them. The movie turned out to be a double feature. I really wanted
to get back to study. But I waited with my buddies until the end of the
second feature. We rushed back to the house after it was over. There, wait-
ing for me, was a girl I had dated sometime back for the wrong reasons.
“I have to take you home,” I said. “I’m really sick. I think I have an
upset stomach,” I lied. She lived in the suburbs and it took me another
half hour to drive her home.
The next morning I awoke, suffering from exactly the symptoms I
had feigned having the night before. By the end of the day I decided to go
to the infirmary, where they examined me and then admitted me.
The general rule was that if you were conscious, you took the exams.
I had my own proctor in the infirmary to ensure that I did not cheat. The
only concession to my condition was that I was allowed to have a glass of
milk during each of the four-hour exams.
After two days of exams in the infirmary, I was released and took the
remainder of the exams with everyone else.
33
I had no idea how I had done. There was certainly no reason to

believe that I had done well. I had not been a star in class. And everyone
in Harvard Law School was smart.
When the grades came out later in the summer, I learned that I was
32nd in my class, which placed me on the Board of Student Advisers, the
honorary organization that administered the moot court in which stu-
dents wrote briefs and argued appellate cases before a court composed of
actual judges and law professors. The competition was stiff and, in the final
round, one of the judges was always a United States Supreme Court justice.
Technically, those who sat on the Board of Student Advisers were
members of the faculty, entitled, among other things, to join the Faculty
Club. But, so far as I know, none of us did. However, I think from that
point on, I took a slightly snobbish pride in being a Harvard student.
Until then, I was mostly scared. At this point, I had a feeling I had arrived.
I remember a New Yorker cartoon in which a double-deck tour bus is driv-
ing through Cambridge past two students. One of the students pokes the
other in the ribs, and says, “Quick, Shapiro, look like a Harvard student.”
That was me.
In the semifinals of the moot courts, the panel of three judges would
include at least one judge from a United States Court of Appeals. When
Judge Harry Kalodner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third
Circuit, which includes Pennsylvania, agreed to preside at one of these
cases, I was assigned to accompany him on his visit to the school. He
was friendly and, not surprisingly, interested in my post-law school plans.
I told him that I planned to come back to Pennsylvania to practice—
in Philadelphia. A couple of prominent first-rate firms had expressed an
interest in me and one—Drinker, Biddle and Reath, founded in 1849—
was going to fly me down for an interview. Henry Drinker was perhaps
the country’s leading authority on legal ethics. He wrote the book on the
subject and was chairman of the American Bar Association’s Standing
Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility.
When I told Judge Kalodner about my impending interview with
Drinker, Biddle and Reath, he stopped as we were walking along and
looked at me quizzically. “Aren’t you Jewish?” he queried.
34
And so I learned: There were Jewish firms and there were Christian
firms. No mixing allowed.
I went ahead with the interview anyway. It was in very posh sur-
roundings, but finally the subject came up. I explained that I was Jewish.
Soon thereafter the interview was very politely and cordially terminated,
almost naturally, and I was led to the door and thanked. I never heard from
Drinker, Biddle and Reath.
There was another hurdle in gaining admission to the Philadelphia
bar. At that time, there was no state-wide admission. You had to be admit-
ted to a county bar, although there was a state-wide bar exam. Each
county had its own bar. I wanted to join the Philadelphia bar, but I was
from Mercer County, a poor county in the extreme western part of the
state. I don’t remember the name of the lawyer from Philadelphia who
interviewed (or rather interrogated) me concerning my application for
admission to the Philadelphia bar, but his name began with Mc. “Did you
ever consider going back to Sharon to practice?” he barked at me. “No,
not seriously,” I replied.
He whipped around in his swivel chair and fairly shouted in his best
cross-examiner’s voice: “I didn’t ask you whether you considered it seriously.
I asked you whether you considered it.”
Despite my inexact answer, I was nevertheless admitted to the
Philadelphia bar, contingent on my passing the bar examination and, a
final qualification at that time, clerking in the office of a Philadelphia law-
yer for six months. Neither appeared to be a problem for me.
I passed the Pennsylvania bar exam, but I never did my clerkship, as
explained below, so I never became a member of the Pennsylvania bar. My
preceptor, the technical name of my legal sponsor, was Robert Wolf, son
of the founder of the city’s most distinguished Jewish firm: Wolf, Block,
Schorr and Solis-Cohen. Bobby was a Haverford graduate, which was how
I got to him, and I had worked at his firm the previous summer. I was
beginning to learn the importance of “connections.”
I remember my first interview with him. He was looking for some-
thing good to say about me to the firm’s hiring committee. I told him that
I had been Phi Beta Kappa at Haverford. He looked up and smiled. Here
35
was an angle, something noteworthy. “Junior year?” he queried. “No”, I had

to admit; not until my senior year. He looked down dejectedly. Apparently
a Phi-Bet not admitted until his senior year was not impressive. But in the
end I was given a summer job. I could have had a permanent job after
graduation from Harvard, but I decided instead to go to Washington. In
those days, it was said that the shortest route to Washington was to go to
Harvard Law School and turn left.
I applied for a position in the Honors Program of the Department
of Justice. I chose to serve in the Office of Alien Property. This was the divi-
sion that served as legal counsel to the Alien Property Custodian. A statute
vested in him title to all property owned by citizens of alien enemies dur-
ing the war. As a result, he had all the problems that anyone would have
who owned an enormous amount of different kinds of property. I looked
forward to a varied experience.
On a trip to Washington, I looked up a Harvard Law School gradu-
ate whom I did not know but who worked for the Justice Department.
When I told him of my application to the Honors Program and my choice
of serving in the office of the Alien Property Custodian, he was quick to
tell me this was a terrible choice. The place to be—where he was—was
the appellate section of the Civil Division. That section handled appeals
of civil cases to United States Court of Appeals, as well as considerable
litigation in the Supreme Court. So I changed my application and was
accepted. (I was never admitted to the Pennsylvania bar because service
with the United States Department of Justice would not qualify for the
six-month clerkship.)
I have to say that for a kid just out of law school, working for the
appellate section of the Civil Division was heady stuff. I was briefing and
arguing cases in federal courts of appeals all over the country and writing
briefs in the Supreme Court.
We closely followed decisions of the Supreme Court and I frequently
attended oral arguments there. In those days, the court was even more
formal than today. We sat in front of the bar—the section reserved for
members of the Supreme Court bar—and a marshal would admonish us
if our coat jacket was unbuttoned. Quill pens and ink were still placed
36
on counsel’s table, although they were rarely used. Government lawyers

wore formal morning coats and striped trousers when appearing before
the court. The government allowance for transportation was not enough
to take a cab, so the Justice Department lawyers would take a street car in
their formal attire.
When we had to fly, however, we were entitled to fly first class. On
one trip to California, I traded my first-class ticket for an economy-class
return via Mexico City, my first trip to our southern neighbor. Our daily
allowance in 1956 was twelve dollars—six dollars for the hotel and six
dollars for food.
This was more than adequate. In Washington, I lived on two dollars
a day for food: 35 cents for breakfast, 65 cents for lunch and a dollar for
dinner. I lived in a furnished room above a laundry for ten dollars a week.
I did not have a private bath. But it was a handsomer room than the one
rented by my Harvard classmate David Rose (the only person I knew when
I came to Washington), which cost only eight dollars a week. (However,
he had the advantage of having a girlfriend, Annie, living in England for
the year from whom he received a letter every day. He later married her.)
My first government paycheck did not come for a month. To tide
me over, my mother lent me fifty dollars and I borrowed fifty dollars on
a life insurance policy my father had bought for me. My government sal-
ary was initially $3,500 a year. Even though I was a graduate lawyer and
had passed the District of Columbia bar exam, I was not formally sworn
in for several months, so initially my position was a law clerk. When I was
finally sworn in, my salary increased to $4,500 a year, which was competi-
tive with what the best law firms in the city were paying.
The atmosphere in the department was collegial, and my fellow law-
yers were extremely knowledgeable and sophisticated in the law. My cases
were challenging and often involved important principles of law. Even
when they didn’t, they were interesting.
For decades (before pornography was readily available) you could
tell where one of my cases was reported in the official volumes contain-
ing opinions and decisions of the Courts of Appeals: Even when closed,
the volume would have a dark line on the edge of the pages of my case,
37
it had been consulted so often, especially in law schools. The case is Boyd
v. Folsom, 257 F.2d 778 (1958).
It involved a widow’s entitlement to Social Security benefits based
on her husband’s earnings. Both had been previously married. She brought
two children to the marriage; he, nine. His children did not get along with
hers, so he moved down the street with his kids and regularly “visited”
with his wife. As a result of these visits they had two children of their own.
Then, on one of these visits, at age 59, he had a heart attack while having
sex and died. A neighbor woman had to lift him off. (How the neighbor
learned of the need for this is unclear in the record.) I call it the case of
the virile man.
Under the Social Security statute, a widow is entitled to benefits
based on her husband’s earnings only if she was “living with” him at the
time of his death. My position on the appeal was that she was not living
with him at the time of his death even though he had died while having
sexual intercourse with her.
Snickers aside, I did have a case. A widow’s Social Security benefits
were designed to replace the support provided by the deceased husband.
The statute had nothing to do with the fact that death occurred in this case
while the couple, who were living apart, were having sexual intercourse.
I lost the case. (How many lawyers tell you about cases they lost?)
But the court divided: I got a dissent.
After three years at the Department of Justice, some of the glamour
wore off. When I finished one brief, I would just reach up on the shelf, so
to speak, for a file to write another brief. I decided it was time to move
on. But I left with the greatest respect for career government lawyers and
especially my colleagues in the Department of Justice. They were as fine a
group of lawyers as I have ever worked with.
38
chapter v
Practicing Law
i joined weaver and glassie, an eight-man law firm, mid-sized
in those days, as an associate. The firm was actively involved in major
real estate transactions in the Washington area and also represented such
large companies as Philco. The partners were mostly white-shoe Virginians,
some even FFV (First Families of Virginia). This time, however, being
Jewish helped me.
Among our clients were large insurance companies whose loans
financed a host of multimillion-dollar construction projects. Many of the
real estate people Henry Glassie was involved with were Jewish. One of
the developers, Herb Blum of Swesnick and Blum, asked Henry why they
had no Jews in the firm. “I don’t know,” Henry replied. “It just happened.”
“Well, why don’t you make it happen to have one,” Herb replied. So, I
learned much later, I was hired.
Henry Glassie, I hasten to add, was a beautiful soul, thoroughly with-
out bias or prejudice. He lived with his then-wife in an area that had once
been full of fine houses, but had deteriorated badly. (He was, ultimately,
married five times—to different women. As was said of Justice William
Douglas, Henry thought he had to marry every woman he slept with.)
Henry was the only white man in the neighborhood. On Sunday morning
he would take his wooden Coke case to sit on at the neighborhood gas
station where the guys would gather to chat. I worked with Henry happily
for more than 25 years—until I left the law.
Hank Weaver, the other name-partner, was another story. But that
can wait.
Given my experience, I was naturally assigned to work on the firm’s
litigation, if only as a subsidiary to the principal attorney on the case.
39
Practicing Law
Some friends who still earn their living as litigation lawyers have
admonished me not to yield to the temptation to include here a litany
of my own litigation triumphs. There is nothing so boring as a lawyer’s
recitation of one great victory after another. I will not follow my friends’
advice, however, although most of these cases involve some loss as well as
some victory. Those who wish to skip this chapter can do so.
I suppose I could explain my rejection of the sage advice I received
by saying that these cases are part of my life and this book is about my life.
But I think there is another justification for including them. They will take
the non-lawyer inside the world of litigation, of lawyering. That is a world
I love. It is a world of intensity, complexity, imagination and intellectual
challenge. Ultimately, it is a search for justice. And lawyers are an essential
element in that search. In addition, these cases will help explain the atti-
tudes I brought with me when I founded a biblical archaeology magazine.
It has become fashionable today to idolize the lawyer who fights
for a just cause against all odds. That is not my model. I prefer to think
of litigation lawyers as hired guns. They fight for the cause that hires
them. And they are (or should be) available to represent either side. Yes,
there is a natural tendency to come to believe in the side that hires you,
although that is not always the case—and certainly not necessarily the
case. But hired guns—and good ones—are essential to that beautiful goal,
the pursuit of justice. “Justice, justice shalt thou pursue,” saith the Lord
(Deuteronomy 16:20). One of the requirements of our marvelous system
of justice, which I revere, is that even the worst of us must be well repre-
sented. The way our justice system works is that one person (a competent
lawyer) is charged with saying all the good things about his or her cli-
ent and all the bad things about the other fellow’s. And the other fellow
also has someone like this, to say all the good things about him and all
the bad things about the first guy. Both representatives are essential. It is
only in that way that the person who is supposed to dispense justice—
the judge—can in fact do so. The only way the judge can decide justly is
when someone from each side tells the judge all the reasons why he or
she should decide for one side or the other. That is the only way that we
can assure that the field of justice is a level playing field. And that means
40
that the worst imaginable defendant must have a competent lawyer to

represent him. Indeed, it is especially important that the worst defendants
are competently represented—it is the worst who are most likely to be
railroaded in a pretense of justice.
To make the system work, we must respect the lawyer who defends
the most heinous defendant. It is that lawyer who should be most honored.
In practice, it is the rare case in which nothing good can be said
about a defendant’s case. Notice, I said about “the defendant’s case,” not
about the defendant. There is almost always some legally arguable defense.
This brings to mind a defendant who wanted to retain me, but told me
beforehand that he was guilty.
“Whoa,” I shouted. “Who’s the lawyer here? You or me?” I went on:
“You’re not a lawyer. I’m the lawyer. I decide whether you’re guilty or not.
‘Guilt’ is a legal concept.” There are many reasons why a defendant may
not be legally guilty even though he committed the act.
I get a visceral thrill whenever I walk into a courtroom—even when I
have a case I know I may lose (which is almost every case)—as I watch the
process of justice. It is a glorious, a precious thing. That is a bit of a gran-
diose way to characterize some of the cases I will describe, but that kernel
of “participation in justice” is always there and borne in mind.
Most of the cases I will tell you about involved elements of both
winning and losing—a little like life. In one case, we won but the man
we got off was murdered. In another case, we lost, but we sprung the man
from jail. The lesson, as with life: Keep fighting. Use your imagination and
intellect to find new ways. And winning is often part of losing—and los-
ing part of winning. Perhaps that, in a nutshell, is a theme of this book.
Indeed, that might well be a description of one of the first cases I
was involved with in my new firm. Based on his signed confession, John
Hodges was convicted of robbery and sentenced to seven years in prison.
He failed to appeal his conviction but later alleged that his confession
had been coerced from him by the police and that his conviction must
therefore be thrown out. The Supreme Court long ago had decided that
if a confession has been coerced it cannot be the basis for a conviction.
Our firm had been appointed by the court to serve as Hodges’s attorney
41
Practicing Law
in pressing his claim. We did this by applying to the court for what is
known as the Great Writ, the hoary and honored writ of habeas corpus (in
this case incorporated into a Congressional statute) by which anyone can
come into court and contest his (or her) illegal detention.
By the time I got into the case, the federal District Court had denied
Hodges’s claim to the writ and that decision denying his claim had been
affirmed by the Court of Appeals. The question for us as legal counsel was
whether we should ask the Supreme Court to hear the case. The Supreme
Court’s jurisdiction is almost wholly discretionary, and it agrees to take
only the most significant cases. Should we ask the high court to hear
Hodges’s case? As the attorney in our firm with the most Supreme Court
experience, I was brought into the case.
When I studied the case, I found what I thought might be another
ground on which to claim Hodges’s confession had been coerced. This is
not unusual when taking a case through the various levels of appeals and
rehearings. One of the fascinations of the law is that each time you re-
study a case you find something new. I suspect the professional historian
might say the same thing. The same is probably true in any intellectual
endeavor—re-study brings new insights.
In the law, however, a litigant is barred from raising an argument
on appeal that he did not raise before the court below. But I also found
what I thought was a good excuse for failing to raise my new issue in the
court below.
Appeals to United States Courts of Appeals are usually heard by
three-judge panels, which had been true in the Hodges case. My strategy
was to ask for a rehearing at which we could reargue the merits of our case
and the new issue I had developed, but to seek to present the case not just
to the old three-judge panel that had already ruled against us, but to pres-
ent it to all nine of the judges of the Court of Appeals. This would give us
some fresh minds on the case and would also give us a trial run at arguing
the case in the Supreme Court if we lost on the rehearing. Rehearings of
the full court—rehearings en banc, they are called—are extremely rare and
discretionary with the court. We nevertheless decided to take the chance.
So we applied for a rehearing en banc. And it was granted!
42
That was the good news. The bad news was that when we presented
the case to the court en banc, we lost. But the good news was that we got
the votes of three of the nine judges. On this basis, we decided that we had
a good shot at the Supreme Court. We formally asked the Supreme Court
to hear our case (that document is called a Petition for Writ of Certiorari).
And the Supreme Court of the United States agreed to hear our
case. Another victory.
At this point I had another far-out idea. Why not try to get Hodges
out of jail on bail? I don’t know whether this had ever been done before—
or since—in the circumstances of this case: Hodges had been in jail for
years pursuant to a final, unappealed conviction and was attacking the con-
viction only collaterally by way of a writ of habeas corpus. Moreover, the en
banc court of appeals had heard Hodges’s case and rejected it.
On the other hand, the case was iffy enough for the Supreme Court
to accept it for review. And if Hodges won in the Supreme Court, the addi-
tional time he would have served while the case was being considered by
the Supreme Court could not be returned to him.
True, a bail application was a long shot, but it was worth trying; there
was no downside to it, except the loss of our time.
I had to start at the bottom of the court system with the bail appli-
cation, which meant going back to the judge before whom Hodges’s
application for a writ of habeas corpus had been denied. The judge promptly
denied the application for bail.
So I took the application to the Court of Appeals. Ditto. Denied.
Undaunted, I made an application for bail to the Chief Justice of the
United States. I also pressed my case informally to people in the solicitor
general’s office of the Justice Department—and they agreed not to oppose
my application for bail, which was then an unopposed application. The
Chief Justice granted my application for bail!
John Hodges was out of jail. There was now no need to rush the
case through the Supreme Court.
It took more than a year for the case to wend its way through the
Supreme Court. When the court finally handed down its decision, its nine
justices split just as the nine judges of the Court of Appeals had done: six
43
Practicing Law
to three. We lost! There was nowhere else we could appeal. The Supreme
Court of the United States was the end of the line. Bail would be auto-
matically revoked. Hodges would go back to jail to finish his sentence.
In the year that Hodges was out of jail, however, he had lived an
exemplary life. He had a girlfriend, a job and was well adjusted to life on
the outside. For me, it was back to the books. I found a statute allowing the
sentencing judge to reduce Hodges’s sentence to time-served in unusual
circumstances. I would argue that it would be a worse crime to return
Hodges to jail than the crime he originally committed. I talked to the
lawyers at the Justice Department and they agreed to the reduction of the
sentence. On this basis, the trial judge reduced the sentence to time-served.
John Hodges was a free man. We lost the case, but we sprung the
defendant.
If the Hodges case was one that we lost but won, another case we
won but lost—the case of Eddie Dulac.
Eddie had been incarcerated in a jail run by the State of Virginia.
One day, when the prisoners were playing horseshoes, a fellow prisoner got
angry at Eddie and took the iron pole at which the horseshoes were aimed,
raised it over his head and brought it down on Eddie’s head, knocking off
nearly a quarter of Eddie’s skull. Miraculously, Eddie survived. The missing
piece of skull had been replaced with a steel plate and Eddie seemed no
worse for wear. Our case against the State alleged that Eddie’s injury had
resulted from the State’s negligence and that it must compensate Eddie
for his pain and suffering.
To prepare for trial, parties to a lawsuit are permitted to take the oral
testimony of potential witnesses to learn all the facts of the case before-
hand. These interrogations are called depositions. I took the deposition of
Eddie’s assailant, who was brought to Richmond in chains. I also took the
deposition of one of the guards. From him I elicited testimony that the
State had been lax in allowing drugs inside the penitentiary. It was this
that induced the State to enter into settlement negotiations.
We finally got the State up to an offer of $100,000. This was an enor-
mous amount at the time. The case was assigned to Judge Robert Merhige,
one of Virginia’s most distinguished—and courageous—federal judges; he
44
had ordered the desegregation of Virginia’s public schools. I vividly remem-

ber sitting in Judge Merhige’s chambers with its huge oak fireplace in the
Richmond federal courthouse, agonizing over whether to accept the State’s
$100,000 offer. It had many attractive features—most importantly, it was
money now. And it was money for sure. Who knows what a jury would
award to a convicted felon? The amount was more than enough to give
Eddie a fresh start in life. Eddie had a girlfriend who had stuck by him all
the time he had been in prison. She had a child whom Eddie loved and
regarded as his own. And naturally the settlement included Eddie’s release
from prison. It was mid-December when I sat in Judge Merhige’s cham-
bers. Christmas was in the air. If we accepted the offer, Eddie would be out
by Christmas. Eddie had already said he would do whatever we wanted.
I pondered out loud, “What would one of the greats do?” Judge Merhige
flattered and encouraged me to take it: “You are one of the greats,” he said.
I accepted the State’s offer of $100,000.
We had an excellent relationship with Eddie. We got him out of jail
a few days before Christmas. His girlfriend came down to welcome him.
My colleague Steve Standiford and I took the happy couple out to lunch at
a restaurant of their choice—a steakhouse where the meat was tough, but
they loved it. We gave Eddie some cash before departing for Washington.
Eddie agreed to allow us to put his recovery into a trust that we con-
trolled. He decided he wanted to make a living doing minor house repairs,
and for this he needed a truck. So we bought him a truck. He now had
everything—a girlfriend, a child, a truck and a big bank account that was
squander-proof. But that is not the end.
It was not long before Eddie got into a Saturday night brawl and
was murdered.
We won the case of Eddie Dulac v. The Commonwealth of Virginia, but
in the end we lost.
In those days, I also screened cases for the ACLU (American Civil
Liberties Union) to decide whether the ACLU should take the case. One
of the cases I reviewed involved the conviction of a man named Russell
Nesbitt who was going to jail for violating a statute prohibiting the use of
a child under 14 years as an acrobat. It seemed like a silly statute. No harm
45
Practicing Law
had been done. No money was involved. I recommended that the ACLU
take the case. My recommendation was rejected: The case did not involve
a civil liberties issue of sufficient significance, I was told.
So I started the HCLU—Hershel’s Civil Liberties Union. Not really.
I just decided to take on the case myself.
Russell, a wiry, gregarious, affable man, taught acrobatics to street kids
as a hobby. Occasionally they would perform as an act titled “The Flying
Nesbits.” A policewoman observed a tumbling act of “The Flying Nesbits” at
11:30 p.m. on New Year’s Eve at Jimmy McPhail’s Golden Room. Among
the performers were a girl of 13 and a girl of eight. The act lasted 15 minutes
and consisted of body-supporting exhibits and human pyramids. No props.
The prosecutor apparently brought the case because he suspected
Russell of playing around with the girls. There was no evidence of this
and no complaint, however. Russell was black and the girls were white. I
didn’t like the smell of the case.
As far as I could tell, Russell had been bum’s-rushed through the trial
by Judge Scalley, one of the worst judges on the local court, with a reputa-
tion as lazy, uninformed and injudicious. It was widely known that almost
all his work was in fact done by his long-time clerk, Charlie Driscoll.
In those days, the testimony at trials in the lowest District of Columbia
courts was not recorded or transcribed. This presented a problem in those
rare cases when the judgment was appealed. On an appeal, the appellate
judges had to decide whether errors had been committed by the trial court.
How could they decide if there was no record of what happened?
The rules provided that the attorneys for the two sides were to get
together and create a joint narrative of the testimony and proceedings. But
what if they could not agree? Then they were to meet with the trial judge
and he would decide.
That is what happened in this case. Based on what Russell told me, I
could not agree with the prosecutor on the testimony, so we had a confer-
ence with Judge Scalley in his chambers. Like the usual judges’ chambers,
the walls were lined with bookshelves containing series of volumes with
legal opinions from a variety of courts. Judge Scalley was, with all his faults,
a jovial man and he had a large collection of funny hats. These he tacked
46
on the wooden shelves holding the volumes of legal opinions. The result
was that the books could not be removed unless the hat was removed first!
I was under somewhat of a disability. I had not been at the trial.
When the prosecutor and I had a disagreement as to what the testimony
had been, Judge Scalley would yell at me, “How do you know; you weren’t
there.” I could only reply, “That is what my client told me.” But I persisted.
Then Judge Scalley turned to the prosecutor and yelled, “Ah, give it to
him. Maybe he’ll shut up!” That, of course, was my signal to keep it up.
And the judge kept saying, “Ah, give it to him. Maybe he’ll shut up!” That
is how we settled the record.
On my way out of his chambers, he growled at me, “Where did you
go to law school?” Harvard, I told him. “That’s what I thought,” he mut-
tered contemptuously.
The record showed that Russell had been teaching acrobatics as a
hobby for more than 20 years at places like the YMCA, the Metropolitan
Police Boys Club and the Southeast Neighborhood House. His lessons
were free and his students had included people of all ages. Children must
have their parents’ permission. He used no props, just body supporting acts,
such as pyramids and what is called risley. In 20 years of teaching, none of
his students had suffered injuries.
The statute under which the jury convicted Russell was very explicit.
It makes it a crime for “any person ... having in his custody or control a
child under the age of fourteen years, who shall in any way dispose of it
with a view to its being employed as an acrobat, or a gymnast, or a con-
tortionist, or a circus rider, or a rope-walker, or in any exhibition of like
dangerous character.”
The statute had been enacted by Congress in 1885, when it was dis-
covered that the District of Columbia had a law outlawing cruelty to dogs
and other animals, but not to children. The quoted provision was part of
a larger section making cruelty to children a crime. The same paragraph
containing the language quoted above also made it a crime to “torture,
cruelly beat, abuse, or otherwise mistreat” any child under 18 years.
On appeal I argued that the provision outlawing the use of children
as acrobats applied only to “dangerous” acrobatics, as implied by the use
47
Practicing Law
of this word later in the statute. The Court of Appeals went even further,
however. In a somewhat path-breaking opinion, the court ruled that the
statute did not mean the same thing today that it meant in 1885 when it
was enacted by Congress. Citing a California ruling, the court found that
“new and changed conditions may invalidate or require a reinterpreta-
tion of a statute.” The court then described the changed conditions: “We
note that direct efforts are being made to improve the physical fitness of
American youth. Were we to adopt the government’s view we would con-
demn the use of the trampoline on the city playground, the stunts and
activities which form a part of track meets, and much of the program spe-
cifically prescribed in the physical education curriculum of the District of
Columbia public schools. Such a construction would be highly unrealistic
and unwarranted.” The court even cited the “Presidential Message to the
Schools on the Physical Fitness of Youth.”
Russell Nesbitt was vindicated. His victory was widely heralded and
his acrobatic courses became more popular than ever. For years thereaf-
ter, I would get an elaborate Christmas card from Russell full of praise
and gratitude.
I enjoyed working with the other associates and with the partners
in the firm—all except one. Hank Weaver, the senior name-partner, was a
pompous martinet. Too often he interfered in my litigation. Yet I would
be responsible if things went awry. I once got the courage to tell him: “I
know how to be a subordinate and I know how to be the boss. Just tell
me which I am.”
My assessment of Hank Weaver was shared by the other associates.
In a rare explosion of vulgarity, I told them at lunch: “We all have to eat
Hank Weaver’s shit. But the difference between you guys and me is that
you’ve developed a taste for it.”
Despite the fact that I could reasonably expect to become a partner
within a year, I decided to leave the practice and become a law professor.
I already had the credentials: I had graduated with honors from Harvard
Law School, I was an experienced litigation lawyer both in private practice
and at the Department of Justice, I had already published several articles in
leading law journals and I had written a book entitled The Art and Craft of
48
Judging: The Opinions of Judge Learned Hand that was chosen as a selection
of the Lawyers’ Literary Club. Judge Hand sat on the court just below the
Supreme Court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit,
which included New York, so it naturally heard some of the most impor-
tant cases to come before the courts. Hand’s opinions were so frequently
quoted by the Supreme Court that the media regularly referred to him
as the tenth member of the Supreme Court. His brother Augustus sat on
the same Court of Appeals as Learned did. The saying among the bar was,
“Cite Gus, but quote Learned.”
Once having made the decision to go into teaching law, I contacted
Ken Pye, then dean of Georgetown Law School (he later became president
of Duke University). I went through the application process and all went
well. I was accepted. Even my salary was agreed upon: $14,000 a year. All
that remained was a formal faculty vote.
At nine o’clock on the Monday that the vote was to occur, Ken called
me at my office. “Hershel,” he said, “I’m going to ask you for permission
to withdraw your name from consideration.” To say I was shocked is to
put it mildly. Ken explained that one faculty member, Stanley Metzger,
was going to blackball me, and that he had enough influence with other
faculty members that I was very likely to be rejected.
I did not immediately recognize the name Metzger, but Ken
explained that my name appeared as counsel on a complaint (which is
how a lawsuit is begun) in a suit against Metzger that he considered uneth-
ical. Then I remembered:
One of the firm’s major clients was the Equitable Life Assurance
Society, otherwise known as big Equitable, which financed multimillion-
dollar real estate developments. The Washington office was headed by Stan
Garber. Stan lived in a posh Georgetown neighborhood next to another
Stan—Professor Stanley Metzger. And their wives did not get along. Stanley
Metzger decided to cut down a large tree in his yard and hired a company
in nearby Maryland to do it. It was done negligently and a limb fell on
Stan Garber’s house, doing substantial damage. Henry Glassie, who was the
senior partner on the Equitable account, asked me to research the matter.
Garber wanted to sue Metzger.
49
Practicing Law
My advice was that the better course would be to sue the tree sur-
geon in Maryland. True, Garber had a reasonable case against Metzger on
the theory of a nondelegable duty (Metzger could not shunt responsibil-
ity to his agent), but if he lost on this issue, it might be too late to sue the
tree surgeon in Maryland (the statute of limitations having run). Therefore
I suggested that the better course would be to sue the Maryland tree sur-
geon at the outset.
The only thing wrong with this was that in Maryland, Garber would
have to pay a lawyer. In the District of Columbia, we would represent him
as a courtesy. Garber decided he wanted to sue in Washington. Henry
Glassie instructed me to prepare a complaint based on a nondelegable
duty. I did so and it was then filed in the local trial court. At the end of
the complaint, Henry’s and my name appeared as counsel for the plaintiff.
This was the basis of Stanley Metzger’s threatened blackball. I rushed
down to see him. This was not an apartment or even a job that he was
denying me, I told him; it was my whole career! He was himself a law-
yer; he understood the difference between a lawyer and his client: I was
just an associate following the instructions of a senior partner. Moreover,
Metzger was insured so that the suit was really against the insurance com-
pany; Metzger had no financial exposure.
Metzger would not be moved. The faculty vote was postponed
and a close friend of mine, Dan Rezneck, a brilliant lawyer who had
clerked for Justice William Brennan on the Supreme Court and who
was teaching a course at Georgetown, went to see Metzger. Before join-
ing the Georgetown faculty, Metzger had been Assistant Legal Adviser
to the State Department. He explained to Dan, “When I was in the State
Department after the war and I was told to return property to the Nazis,
I refused. Shanks was no mere amanuensis. He should have refused to
prepare the complaint.”
With this comparison, I knew that there was no chance of changing
Metzger’s mind. I withdrew my application from consideration.
Stanley Metzger’s career at Georgetown ended badly. It was dis-
covered that he plagiarized passages in a book he had written for the
Brookings Institution. Brookings described the discovery as a “distressing
50
and unprecedented incident.” All copies of the book were recalled and
destroyed. Metzger resigned in disgrace.
For me, as I look back on it, I was fortunate that Metzger blackballed
me. I would never have started Biblical Archaeology Review if it hadn’t been
for Stanley Metzger’s blackball. I would simply have led a life as a law
school professor.
In the immediate aftermath, I continued to practice law. Not long
thereafter, I was made a partner. The firm was eventually called Glassie,
Pewett, Beebe and Shanks. Yes, Hank Weaver, my nemesis, lost his major
clients as a result of mergers, and he left the firm to take a corporate job
as inside counsel.
I continued to have exciting and stimulating cases of all kinds. We
represented the State of Arkansas in a price-fixing case against the oil com-
panies. (My local counsel was “Bix” Shaver, who had represented Governor
Orval Faubus when he tried to prevent the integration of Little Rock’s
Central High School in defiance of a United States Supreme Court order,
but Bix—like Faubus—had completely altered his views by this time, and
we got along famously.) We also represented the owners of a 7,000-acre
farm that was cut in half by the Dulles Airport Access Highway. We rep-
resented the makers of “Virginia Gentleman” bourbon against the makers
of “Kentucky Gentleman” bourbon. And on and on.
In a way, litigation channeled my rebelliousness and provided an
outlet for it. It allowed me to be one kind of person in court, so to speak,
and another in my private life. Litigation also challenged me intellectually.
The kind of litigation I was involved in at the Department of Justice and
in private practice demanded research in new areas, intellectual challenges,
creativity, imagination and serious thought. And it was not just a game; it
was an attempt to pursue justice. Only just arguments would prevail—at
least that is the theory. Of course it doesn’t always work that way, but it
does most of the time. And when a lawyer’s ideas are adopted by a court
and become embedded in a judicial opinion, they become a part of the
law. In such cases you have literally made law.
After the nation’s first state-wide teachers’ strike failed, I was sent to
Florida by the National Education Association to determine whether there
51
Practicing Law
had been any violations of law during the strike. Several important civil
rights cases grew out of this, and made law in the way I have just described.
One of them ultimately went to the Supreme Court.
Arguing before the Supreme Court is an extraordinary experience—
both terrifying and exhilarating. The preparation is intense. I actually
moved out of my home a few days before the argument and stayed at a
motel so I would have no family distractions. I devoted myself solely to
preparation for the oral argument.
The Supreme Court building itself has an imposing majesty about it
with its tall white marble columns supporting a Greek pediment. Before
it was built, the court met in a room in the Senate Office Building.
When the present courthouse was built, Justice Cardozo is said to have
remarked that he felt he should be riding to work on an elephant. The
courtroom inside is high-ceilinged and crystal-lit. A bar separates the spec-
tators from the forward area reserved for lawyers (members of the bar).
Capacious mahogany tables are reserved for counsel in the case being
argued. Between the tables is the podium for the lawyer arguing the case.
He or she is literally “before the court”: Intimately close in front of the
lawyer is the raised “bench” at which the nine black-robed justices sit. And
behind the bench are the huge drapes of plush maroon that open when
the justices enter and leave.
Court sessions begin with the court clerk crying in a loud shrill
voice for all who have business before this honorable court to draw near
and they will be heard.
I rose and began my argument in Askew v. Hargrave. Within sec-
onds I was pummeled with questions from the justices. And so it went
for my allotted half-hour. The lectern has a little light on it that flashes
red when your time is up. You are permitted only to finish your sentence
and then you must sit down. In my case, however, the court kept asking
me questions after the red light flashed and I was permitted to go on for
another ten minutes. The justices were obviously intrigued with the issue
and uncertain as to how they should decide. I should have been flattered
that I had interested them sufficiently so that they gave me additional time
to argue, but I had no time for such thoughts.
52
Nor had I time to think about the little boy from Sharon arguing
before the Supreme Court of the United States. My parents and family had
come down for the event and sat in the special section of the courtroom
reserved for them. But I had no time for pride either.
Well, how a lawyer does is not necessarily reflected in the outcome.
You can make a beautiful argument and lose the case. And vice versa. I now
jocularly maintain that this case made a substantial contribution to healing
the well-known rift in the high court between the conservative justices and
the liberal justices. I managed to bring them all together: I lost 9–0. The case
raised the question of whether the state violated the Constitution because
different county school systems within the state spent different amounts per
student depending on how wealthy the county’s residents were. A wealthy
county, even with a low tax rate, would spend more per pupil than a poor
county with a high tax rate. It was a difficult issue even for the Supreme
Court. In the end, the court avoided the difficult issue by sending the case
back to the trial court to develop the record more completely. That was
effectively the end of the case. A few years later, in another case in which I
was not involved, the court faced the issue and decided for my side.
Unlike most of the other cases I’ve discussed, some of my cases
involved a lot of money. Here is one. It returns ultimately to my lesson
in life—of winning and losing, or losing and winning, at the same time.
Jerry Maiatico immigrated to this country from Italy during the
Depression of the 1930s. He never really learned English fluently and what
English he knew he spoke with a heavy Italian accent. However, he was a
good building contractor and his business grew and grew.
George Lemm graduated from law school in the Depression and
had a hard time finding paying clients, although he was a good lawyer.
He finally fell into representing small contractors in the Italian-American
community. Gradually, he confined himself to one—Jerry Maiatico.
As Jerry’s business grew, he decided to put up his own buildings,
not just build them for others. And when a legal matter too complex for
George came up, he would bring the matter to us. One such case involved
the Matomic Building, which Jerry built soon after World War II when
the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still fresh in everyone’s mind.
53
Practicing Law
The Matomic Building was Jerry’s pride and joy—a huge 11-story
office building, a block from the White House. It was built with an enor-
mous amount, really an excessive amount, of steel girders. It was intended
to withstand an atomic attack. That is why it was called the Matomic
Building—M for Maiatico, plus atomic. Jerry wanted to leave it to his
daughters as their legacy, the assurance from their immigrant father that
they would never want for money.
Jerry leased the building to the federal government, which filled
it with government agencies. One of them was the then-secret Atomic
Energy Commission, especially appropriate for the Matomic Building. At
the conclusion of the lease term, the government said it wanted to renew
the lease. When Jerry gave the government the new lease terms, the gov-
ernment balked. Too much, it said. OK, said Jerry, if you don’t want to pay
the new rent, you can move out.
The government leasing agents didn’t like the way they were
treated. They didn’t like being pushed around this way. They weren’t
used to it. The government decided it would take title to the building;
it would buy the building, even against Jerry’s wishes. They would do
this by condemning the property for a public purpose under the laws
of eminent domain.
The government filed the condemnation papers with the federal
court and deposited what it deemed to be the fair market value of the
building—$10 million, an enormous amount in those days, but not close
to what the property was worth.
Jerry ran to George, and George ran to us.
The party whose property is taken by eminent domain is consti-
tutionally assured of the right to contest the government’s estimate of
fair market value of the property. The government must pay whatever
the court and jury fix as the fair market value, or “just compensation” in
constitutional terms. Rarely, however, may the property owner contest the
government’s right to take the property. In the thousands of cases in which
the federal government has taken title to property by eminent domain,
there are not a half dozen in which the owner has successfully contested
the government’s right to take title to the property.
54
But in a case involving this amount of money, it was worth try-

ing. I hit the books and soon found an argument that a taking in this
area of Washington was not permitted without the permission of two
Congressional committees. And the government had not obtained the
requisite permissions.
The case was assigned to Judge John Sirica of Watergate fame and
an excellent judge. I thought this was fortunate since it would take a good
judge to understand my argument. But Judge Sirica simply listened to my
argument and denied my motion.
I felt he was wrong. I wanted to appeal his ruling, but there was
a problem. A party can appeal only when the case is over—from a final
judgment, as the lawyers say—not at an earlier stage involving interlocu-
tory rulings. If this rule were to be applied, I would have to wait until
after a major trial to determine the fair market value of the building.
That could take years.
There is an exception to this rule against interlocutory appeals, how-
ever. If the issue is central to the case and the judge certifies that “there
is substantial ground for difference of opinion,” an interlocutory appeal
is permitted. So I went back to Judge Sirica and asked him to certify the
case under this provision of the law (28 U.S.C. 1292(b)). “Mr. Shanks,” he
told me in open court, “I think your case is frivolous.”
I still felt I was right. There was only one thing to do: Sue the judge.
It’s called mandamus. I brought my case in the United States Court
of Appeals, asking that court to issue a writ of mandamus, ordering Judge
Sirica to certify the case for an interlocutory appeal. As you can imagine,
courts are generally reluctant to invoke such a drastic remedy, especially
against so distinguished a bench brother. Indeed, the Court of Appeals
denied my petition for mandamus. But the Court of Appeals opinion made
it clear that I seemed to have a pretty good case for an interlocutory appeal,
even if this wasn’t a case for mandamus.
With this opinion in hand, I went back to Judge Sirica and, in effect,
said: “See! It’s not frivolous.” He called the attorneys into his chambers and
we had a wonderful discussion, even touching on Watergate. Judge Sirica
ended by agreeing to certify my case for an interlocutory appeal.
55
Practicing Law
The case had a bittersweet ending, however. George wanted to do

some lobbying at the Department of Justice, which we felt was improper
since the case was in court. After my brief on appeal was written and filed,
we learned that George was doing just what we had instructed him not
to do. We withdrew from the case. George himself argued the case in the
Court of Appeals—on my brief. And of course he won.
The government authorities did not give up so easily, however.
Acting like the bully in the schoolyard, they inserted a provision in a
Congressional bill that would override the court decision and allow the
government to condemn the property. In the Senate committee hear-
ing, Senator John Pastore told the government authorities that they were
“sneaking in the back door to write language into the bill to try to defeat
the Court of Appeals decision.” This, the senator said, was “un-American.”
The Washington Post report the next day began this way:
“In a cross-my-heart, hope-to-die statement, General Services
Administrator Barnard L. Boutin promised yesterday that he will not try
to take over the Matomic Building by any backdoor methods.”
On Jerry’s death, the property passed to his daughters, just as Jerry
always intended.
So we won. But, as usual, there was a loss, too. By the time we won
we were no longer in the case, although it was won on my brief.
I guess I’m litigation-prone, not only professionally but personally. In
one case, I personally sued TWA when it lost my luggage on a flight from
New York to Tel Aviv. I put in a claim for $1,600, my estimate of the value
of my clothes. I was politely told to read my ticket carefully and I would
see that the limit of liability on claims on international flights was $750.
I looked at my ticket. They were right; that indeed was what it said. That
limit on liability, however, was based on an international treaty known as
the Warsaw Convention. That treaty did set limits on liability of claims on
international flights of air carriers. But the limits were expressed not in dol-
lars but in Poincare francs, a French currency named for the prime minister
of France in office in 1934 when the treaty was agreed upon. The nice thing
about the Poincare franc was that it had a fixed amount of gold—65.5 mil-
ligrams. That established the limit of the airlines’ liability. But the Warsaw
56
Convention did not say how the gold was to be valued. TWA had estab-
lished the value of gold at the last official value when the United States went
off the gold standard—$44 an ounce—even though the value of gold on
the open market, no longer controlled by an official price, was at the time
of my claim in the hundreds of dollars. I argued that the value of the gold
that limited the airline’s liability (expressed in Poincare francs) should be
fixed by the price of gold on the open market. At that point, the airline
offered me $4,500 (which included my other incidental damages) to settle
the case. I accepted. With the money I informally established the Hershel
Shanks Clothing Trust, which would finance my purchase of clothes for the
next decade. In a subsequent case brought by other plaintiffs, the Supreme
Court later ruled that my argument was correct. This led to a new interna-
tional convention and the limits on liability of air carriers on international
flights is now established by what is known as the Montreal Convention.
Sometimes a lawsuit is even better and more convenient than a tele-
phone call—if you consider litigation easy and fun. It’s civilized, rational,
no yelling and screaming, no calling names, just reasoning with published
rules that are supposed to determine the outcome. On a recent flight from
London to Washington, British Airways (BA) damaged my luggage. A
pleasant BA agent at Dulles airport called my attention to it, gave me a
claim slip with a number on it and told me that BA would contact me
shortly to pick up the suitcase, which it would send to somewhere in Texas
for repair. When I never heard from them, I dropped them a note, but
this produced no answer. So I decided to call them. But nowhere could I
find a telephone number for BA that would give me a human being to
whom I could explain my problem, and none of the recorded messages
seemed to fit my case. The easiest thing to do was to file a suit in Small
Claims Court. I asked for $350, my estimate of the replacement value of
the suitcase. In short order, I received a very pleasant call from a lawyer in
their legal office, saying they would send me a check for $350, which they
did. The lawyer and I started chatting and it turned out he had an inter-
est in biblical archaeology, so I sent him a complimentary subscription to
BAR—a wholly pleasant experience. This was so much easier than trying
to find someone to talk to on the phone.
57
chapter vi
Our Year in Israel

at lunch with my lawyer friends, we were discussing Newton
Frohlich. A prominent divorce lawyer (he had written Making the Best of
It: A Common-Sense Guide to Negotiating a Divorce), Newton had decided to
take some time off from the practice and go to southern France to write
a novel. (He ultimately made the trip—and wrote a novel about the life
of Christopher Columbus.) I jokingly (and not very tastefully) lamented
to my luncheon companions, “My wife would never allow me to do that,
after the level of comfort I’ve accustomed her to.”
At dinner that night, I related the story. Judith responded, “Try me!”
That was it. I would take a year’s sabbatical from the law. I had always
wanted to live for a year in some exciting foreign country. In college, it
was the Left Bank of the Seine. Later, it was Florence. During the previous
March, Judith and I had taken a trip to Israel and I was becoming increas-
ingly interested in the Bible, so that was now the place.
I was just finishing a major antitrust case (with a very satisfactory
settlement from our client’s viewpoint). My partners would not get any
healthier, I reasoned, only sicker. Our two little girls—Julia three and
Elizabeth five—were not yet in school; later it would be difficult taking
them out of school for a year. So if we were ever going to do it, now
was the time.
But what would be the reaction of my law partners? Would they
simply kick me out of the firm? None of them was Jewish and none had
ever elicited any special interest in or concern for Israel. I decided that the
best thing to do was to announce that I was taking a sabbatical, rather than
asking if they would agree to it. That is what I did—one by one I told my
partners that I was taking a year off to live in Israel. I was surprised and
59
Our Year in Israel
relieved that even those whom I expected would be most critical could
not help responding, “How exciting. Isn’t that wonderful?” My partners
made it very easy for me. They treated me not only fairly, but generously.
I knew I wanted nothing to do with the law during that year, but
what did I want to do? Gradually, I developed a list of ten projects, in
descending order. At the top of the list was a novel about the complex,
tragic figure of Saul, the first king of Israel. I had recently read Thomas
Mann’s magisterial tetralogy, Joseph and His Brothers, the first volume of
which was The Tales of Jacob. I would begin with the tales of the prophet-
priest Samuel.
The next item on my list of projects was less grandiose. On our
previous trip to Jerusalem, we had walked through a long, knee-deep
water tunnel, known as Hezekiah’s Tunnel, underneath the oldest part of
Jerusalem. We were able to see our way with the help of a candle given to
us (for a couple shekels) by an Arab sitting at the entrance to the winding,
third-of-a-mile-long tunnel. While the venture was indeed exciting, there
was nothing there to tell a visitor about the tunnel. My idea was that I
would write a little pamphlet about Hezekiah’s Tunnel and sell it (or have
it sold) for 10 or 15 cents at the entrance to the tunnel.
I cannot even recall the rest of the projects on my list. They quickly
became irrelevant.
We considered two places to live—Arad in the desert (Ah, the iso-
lation of it all! Besides, that’s where the much admired Israeli novelist
Amos Oz lived) or Jerusalem. We finally decided on Jerusalem and pro-
ceeded to try to locate an apartment, which turned out to be no small
problem. We suddenly realized that we did not know a single soul in
Israel. We finally learned that an Israeli woman who was teaching in the
local Jewish day school had a sister in Jerusalem who was a lawyer and
that in Israel apartment rentals were usually handled by lawyers. The
place she found us was a walk-up on the third floor, which we rejected
on that basis. She then found us another apartment one flight up. We
took it. When we arrived, we found that it was indeed one fight up. But
to get to the entrance, you had to go 67 steps down from the parking
lot of the building! It was a lovely apartment, however, near Hebrew
60
University overlooking the valley. And we quickly got used to the steps;
they kept us healthy. Soon, we didn’t even notice.
I spent my days mostly at the Hebrew University library learning
more about Samuel and Saul and writing my novel. An early letter home
to friends describes my routine and my mood:
I had thought to wait a bit before writing again, until the initial eupho-
ria had died down, but it hasn’t very much. So I will write anyway. In
short, having all my time to read and write just what I please has made
me manic. I have been reading voraciously—day and night except for
the time I write. And I have been wildly happy doing it. I get up about
six in the morning and write for a few hours. Then I take a walk in the
mid-morning sun up a hill and through a pine wood to the [Hebrew]
University library. I have a little lunch about 1:30 in the afternoon, then
back to the library for an hour or so. Then I walk back home for an
afternoon nap. When I get up, I read until dinnertime, eat and then read
again until bedtime. I have literally been in another world—the world of
my books. I am unconscious of time passing. By now, I’ve gotten hold
of myself a bit, but I’m still enjoying it immensely.
Of course, the regimen isn’t unchanging. Sometimes I stop writ-
ing after a few hours. Sometimes I can go on all morning. Sometimes
I have my books in the apartment so I don’t need to go to the library.
I also wash the dishes and give the kids their bath. And we even take
off occasionally.
What am I reading? To me, it seems like an enormous variety.
But from another viewpoint, I realize it is probably pretty narrow. Of
course, there are lots of books on the books of Samuel—studies, com-
mentaries, criticism, etc. Then there are archaeological reports on sites
I’m interested in. And I read lots of arcane articles in magazines with
magical names, like Vetus Testamentum. Other subjects include books
on Old Testament theology, the Philistines, biblical warfare, studies in
ancient technology and on and on. I also look at more general books
like Yehezkel Kaufmann’s The Religion of Israel, G. Earnest Wright’s
Biblical Archaeology, Kathleen Kenyon’s Royal Cities of the Old Testament
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Our Year in Israel
and Yohanan Aharoni’s Land of the Bible. I’ve relaxed with more popular
things like Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre’s O Jerusalem! which
talks about things all around us, so it’s exciting to relate to.
After writing nearly 300 pages of my novel, however, I began to have

doubts about the project. Writing a novel I knew was not easy. In addi-
tion to a lot of zitsfleish, it takes a certain imaginative talent that I began
to doubt that I had. Writing a legal brief or even a scholarly article I knew
how to do, but a novel was something else. I continued to plug away,
however, day by day.
Then a chance meeting of my wife’s while shopping at Chaim the
Butcher’s on Aza Street changed my life. This, however, requires some
background.
As the reader may have noticed, I have not spoken of my biblical
training—because I had none. I had learned to read Hebrew (but not to
translate it) at after-school cheder. I was bar-mitzvahed. I went to Sunday
school. We were kosher at home, but not out. My parents were active in
the Jewish community and avid Zionists. But that’s it.
When I came to Washington, I heard about a Saturday morning
television course in the New Testament taught by a Bible scholar named
Edward Bauman who was also the pastor of one of Washington’s largest
and best-known churches. The New Testament was even further from my
ken than the Hebrew Bible. I had never had any contact with the New
Testament. There was something treyf (unkosher) about it. We certainly had
no copy of it in my parental home. Indeed, I had never actually held a copy.
But I took Bauman’s course and found it fascinating (alas, this excel-
lent teacher later fell from grace; over an eight-year period, he had had
numerous sexual relationships with women in his congregation and was
forced to resign). Indeed, I found the subject so fascinating that I decided
to learn something about the Hebrew Bible as well. Paradoxically, I came
to the Hebrew Bible through the New Testament.
At the time, I was a member of an informal play-reading group
that met every other Thursday night—a bunch of young lawyers (all
men) and girls (as they were then called) who mostly worked for the
62
government. We referred to ourselves jokingly as the Thursday Evening

Legal Discussion and Play-Reading Group. When I finished Bauman’s
course in the New Testament, I suggested that our play-reading group
form an additional group that soon became known as the Bible Discussion
Group. It continued for many years, even after most of us were married
and had children. Gradually, different members of the group began to
specialize, bringing different perspectives to the discussion. One person
knew Hebrew. Another brought the Talmud. Another brought a Marxist
perspective. It was then that I became interested in archaeology. I brought
the archaeological perspective.
In my background reading, I discovered an interesting, though per-
haps minor, difference of views between Solomon Zeitlin, the sage of
Dropsie College in Philadelphia (which gave only Ph.D. degrees), and the
world’s most prominent biblical archaeologist, William Foxwell Albright
of The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. The dispute concerned the
word “rabbi,” a title applied to Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew and John.
Was this title used at the time of Jesus? Or was it used anachronistically in
the Gospels, applied to Jesus by a later writer? The title appears nowhere
else other than the New Testament as early as the time of Jesus. Zeitlin
was of the view that it was anachronistic in the New Testament. Albright
took the opposite view. It was the old puzzle: Is the absence of evidence
evidence of absence? Albright could cite at least some reason to believe
the title was probably used at the time of Jesus even though we have no
examples other than the New Testament.
I saw an opportunity in this difference of scholarly views for my
lawyerly skills. I could not do research either in Greek or Hebrew but, as
a lawyer, I could assess the reasonableness of the arguments. And I agreed
with Albright: The term was used in Jesus’ time. I wrote an article on the
subject in the scholarly journal of Dropsie College (The Jewish Quarterly
Review) entitled “Is the Title ‘Rabbi’ Anachronistic in the Gospels?” to
which Professor Zeitlin replied in the same issue, to which I responded
in a subsequent issue, to which he likewise responded. The outcome was
indecisive. But in the course of this dispute, I consulted Albright and
became friendly with him. Perhaps he treated me so warmly because one
63
Our Year in Israel
of his sons was attending law school and this became a kind of bond
between the father and me.
When my acquaintance with Albright came up at a meeting of our
Bible Discussion Group, several people asked if I could arrange a session
of our group with the great man. We would, of course, go to Baltimore:
He was not only distinguished, but in his late 70s. (Yikes! That’s my age
now.) I contacted Albright and he was most gracious. Yes, he would gladly
meet with us. It was an inspiring evening.
My friendship with Albright had reverberations. In 1971 he passed
away. And in March 1972, before Judith and I had even thought of going
to Israel for a year, we took a trip there, as I mentioned earlier. In Jerusalem
we stayed in the National Palace Hotel in the Arab section of the city,
opposite the building that housed the so-called “American School,” more
formally the Jerusalem branch of the American Schools of Oriental
Research. Albright had been its early director and guiding light and now
its patron saint. The school had been recently renamed The William F.
Albright School of Archaeological Research. One afternoon, Judith and I
crossed the street from our hotel and knocked on the door of the stately
mansion that housed the school. This turned out to be the door to the
director’s residential quarters in the most luxurious wing of the build-
ing. We knew no one at the school or even the current director’s name.
A man answered our knock and I explained that I had been a friend of
Professor Albright’s. The man who had answered the door was the then-
director, William G. Dever, one of the two or three most prominent and
distinguished American archaeologists in the field. No doubt because of
my relationship to Professor Albright, Professor Dever invited us into his
living room to have a cup of coffee. I don’t remember what we talked
about, but I do recall being suitably impressed.
And that brings me back to Chaim the Butcher. A month or so after
we arrived in Jerusalem for the year, my wife went to Chaim’s to pick
up something for dinner. There she bumped into someone she thought
she knew and who thought he recognized her. It turned out to be Bill
Dever. He invited her (and me) to an afternoon gathering at the school
a few days hence.
64
The entire archaeological community turned out for the lecture and
reception at the American School. By that time I was thinking about writ-
ing my pamphlet on Hezekiah’s Tunnel, either in addition to or instead
of the novel about Saul. So I asked one of the scholars at the party, “Who
knows more about Jerusalem archaeology than anyone?” “Oh, Dani Bahat,”
he replied. “He’s standing right over there.” And thus began my 35-year
friendship with Dan Bahat (who indeed knows more than anybody about
Jerusalem archaeology). That chance meeting at Chaim the Butcher’s—
which came about only because I knew Albright, whom I knew because I
needed help in writing an article about whether the title “rabbi” was anach-
ronistic in the Gospels—may have changed my life. It was a grand party—a
wonderful introduction to Israel’s foremost archaeological community.
Soon after the party at the American School, we joined a small,
informal “pottery group,” which met together to study, identify and date
ancient pottery. It was led by Gus Van Beek, who directed the archae-
ological excavations at Tel Jemmeh near Gaza and who was the chief
Near Eastern archaeologist at the Smithsonian Institution. We would
later see him and his Israeli wife Ora in Washington. The pottery group
also included Val and Horatio Vester, proprietors of the famed American
Colony Hotel, housed in a pasha’s palace. Horatio was a direct descendant
of Bertha Spafford Vester, whose family established the American Colony
in Jerusalem in the 19th century. Val and Horatio were elegant, gracious
and more English than American. Another member of the group was
Father Jerome Murphy-O’Connor of the École biblique et archéologique
Française in East Jerusalem. The École biblique had been home to Père
Roland de Vaux, excavator of Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls had
been found. Its faculty was generally thought to be more sympathetic to
the Arab viewpoint than to the Zionists, but that was changing. Jerry made
his first trip to Jewish Jerusalem, which had become accessible only since
1967, to attend one of the pottery sessions at our apartment. He has since
become an authority on both the New Testament and the archaeology of
the land, as well as a good friend.
As I became more interested in archaeology, I became less interested
in pursuing my novel. Several hundred pages into it, I realized that I was
65
Our Year in Israel
GETTING MY FEET WET. During my 1972 sabbatical in Israel, I began to

explore my burgeoning fascination with biblical archaeology. This photo
shows me (yes, that’s me with a beard) wading through the thigh-high
water of Hezekiah’s Tunnel under the City of David.
66
not a novelist. I didn’t need anybody else to tell me that. And nobody did.
In fact, the draft has never been read by anyone, including me. I knew it
was no good. Since I wanted to be a thorough researcher in writing this
autobiography, I decided to look at the draft again after 35 years, confi-
dent that my earlier judgment would be confirmed. I thought I knew just
where it lay, unread. But it was no longer there. I think I threw it out, not
wanting my descendants to form a judgment of me based on it, especially
my description of how the priest Eli’s sons were screwing around with the
women who served at the Tent of Meeting (1 Samuel 2:22).
In the meantime, I was learning more about, and becoming more
fascinated with, archaeology, especially as Dani Bahat and I would explore
the area around Hezekiah’s Tunnel together. (He made some amazing
archaeological suggestions that decades later were proved accurate in
the course of Yigal Shiloh’s excavations.) And every Shabbat, Judith, the
kids and I would take a family tiyul (excursion), usually to explore some
archaeological site.
As Judith had made a critical contact at Chaim the Butcher’s, so
my daughter Elizabeth (then Elisheva, as Julia was Yael) made a critical
discovery at the biblical site of Hazor. The site had been excavated by the
most famous and most glamorous archaeologist in Israel, Yigael Yadin. He
was the closest thing Israel had to a movie star. He had led the Haganah,
Israel’s pre-state army, in Israel’s War of Independence. He was not only a
war hero, he was the excavator of Masada. Atop this mesa in the Judean
Desert was King Herod’s palace, where according to the ancient Jewish
historian Josephus, the rebels in the Great Jewish Revolt against Rome had
made their last stand before committing mass suicide.
I had attended two of Yadin’s lectures and had been introduced to
him by his chief assistant, Amnon Ben-Tor, who lived in the same apartment
building as we did. Ben-Tor would eventually succeed Yadin as director of the
Hazor excavations and hold the Yigal Yadin Chair of Archaeology at Hebrew
University. But that was long in the future. Naturally, lots of amateurs like me
sought Yadin’s audience. His devoted wife Carmella ran a very effective guard
around him. As I became more interested in exploring Hezekiah’s Tunnel
and the area around it, I knew that a talk with Yadin would be helpful.
67
Our Year in Israel
I had already learned that the ridge through which Hezekiah’s

Tunnel ran was the very earliest inhabited part of Jerusalem—the Jerusalem
of David and Solomon—even though it was outside and south of the
walled Old City. Known as the City of David (or ‘ir David, in Hebrew), this
ridge has been extensively excavated in the past 35 years, but in 1972 there
was not a single sign even to identify it. It was dusty and ignored. And
although today there is an enormous literature about the City of David,
both popular and scholarly, in 1972 there was very little reliable material
about it. The few archaeological excavations that had taken place there
had occurred mostly in the early part of the century. The famous British
archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon had dug there in the 1960s, but she stopped
when control of the area fell to Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. And in 1972
she had not published the final report on her excavation (that was not to
come until long after her death in 1978).
In short, to talk to Yadin about the archaeology of the City of David
would give me a perspective that would be hard to get otherwise.
When we decided to drive to Hazor (Yadin’s site) with the kids one
Shabbat morning, I had no thought that this might lead to a relationship
with its famous excavator. Fortified with our usual cardboard carton full
of Jericho oranges, we headed north up the Jordan Valley, arriving at the
site early enough to visit the small museum of Hazor finds located at the
nearby kibbutz. Elisheva, six, and Yael, three, were already old hands at
collecting the sherds (pieces of broken pottery) that are strewn all over
archaeological sites. We no longer wanted body sherds, which had little to
tell us. We were interested only in so-called diagnostic sherds, fragments of
a rim, base or handle from an ancient pot. The museum displayed a case
of these diagnostic sherds, including handles that had been impressed with
inscribed seals. I pointed to the inscribed handles, telling the kids, “See!
That’s the kind of things we want,” in my usual kidding manner.
Then we went out on the tell, the mound that comprised strata of
one city atop the other in reverse chronological order, the most recent
being the highest layer of the mound. It was not long before Elisheva came
running to us with a small piece of a clay handle less than an inch-and-a-
half long with something incised (or, as we then thought, impressed) into
68
A LUCKY FIND. On a weekend trip to the mound of Hazor, my six-year-

old daughter Elizabeth happened upon this small, inch-and-a-half-long
pottery handle, incised with a figure wearing a pointed hat and upturned
shoes. The site’s excavator, legendary archaeologist Yigael Yadin,
identified the image as a Syro-Hittite deity from the Late Bronze Age
(13th century B.C.E.).
it. Only the sharp eyes of a child close to the ground would have noticed
it. At first, I was not sure there was anything deliberately etched into it.
After all, lying around for thousands of years, it would not be unusual for
a sherd to be scratched and damaged. As I looked and looked at the frag-
mentary handle, the figure of a man emerged, however, with a pointed hat
and upturned shoes. He seemed to hold a long staff in one hand. In the
other hand was something that looked like a mace he was about to hurl.
Suppressing my excitement, I congratulated Elisheva and said, “You
better let me hold it.”
“No,” she screamed. “I found it.”
69
Our Year in Israel
FAIR TRADE. Elizabeth listens intently as Yigael Yadin shows her a

picture of a juglet from the excavations at Hazor that he would give
her in return for her donation of the incised potsherd to the Hazor
Archaeological Expedition.
“OK,” I said, “but be careful. It could be valuable.”

We proceeded with our exploration of the tell until we came to its
water tunnel, which descends by steps carved in the rock nearly three
thousand years ago. To provide a modicum of safety for visitors, wooden
slats were built over the ancient rock steps. As we descended, little light
penetrated. All of a sudden Elisheva blurted out, “I dropped it.”
“Don’t move,” I said. I dropped to the ground in the dark, moving
my hands lightly and cautiously on the wooden slats around her, fear-
ful that if the little sherd fell between the slats it would be lost forever.
Fortunately, I was able to retrieve it.
“Now will you let me hold it,” I said sternly. This was not a question.
Elisheva, pouting for a moment, accepted my judgment.
When we returned to Jerusalem, I showed the sherd to Amnon Ben-
Tor. “I would like to show it to Yadin,” I said. After all, it was found on “his”
70
site. Ben-Tor talked to Carmella and, in no time, it was arranged for me to

give it to Yadin at his home.
There was no question that we would give the sherd to the Hazor
excavation. All I wanted, I told him, was a replica of the sherd, a letter from
him to Elisheva thanking her for the gift and a picture of her presenting
the gift to Yadin. He readily agreed. I was bowled over, however, when he
suggested that I publish an article on the handle for the Israel Exploration
Journal. “I really don’t know if I can,” I said. He offered to help me. I said I
would be delighted to have him as the senior author. No, he encouraged
me; I could do it, he said. I did do it, but with considerable help from Yadin.
The article appeared shortly after we returned to Washington.5
The figure on the handle depicted a Syro-Hittite deity from the Late
Bronze Age (13th century B.C.E.) in a pose known as the “smiting god.” It
demonstrated how far south Syro-Hittite influence had penetrated—into
Canaan. In a footnote, I duly acknowledged Yadin’s assistance in writ-
ing the article and noted that the sherd had been found by six-year-old
Elizabeth Shanks, who had donated it to the Hazor Expedition.
At my meeting with Yadin, we also got into a discussion of my City
of David project. I had previously sent him a copy of my manuscript,
which he had read. He proceeded to give me a nearly two-hour private
lecture on the archaeology of Jerusalem. I sat mesmerized. This was one
of the highlights of my year in Jerusalem. In a letter home after that visit,
I wrote, “I wish I could convey the feeling of being in the presence of this
man. He really radiates greatness, and all his ideas seem large and grand.
I have talked to a lot of archaeologists since I have been here and there is
simply no other one like him. He is a real genius—vast knowledge and
great enthusiasm. I came home [from my meeting with him] walking on
air.” When Judith asked me about him, I pulled from the shelf Larry Collins
and Dominique Lapierre’s O Jerusalem! and opened it to the account of
Jerusalem in Israel’s War of Independence. Here is how I described it in
one of my letters to friends at home, ending by quoting from the book:
The Jews in Jerusalem were under siege. There was no food or water.
The Jewish convoys could not get through from the coast. Ben-Gurion
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Our Year in Israel
knew that if the Jews could take Latrun, they could break the blockade
and save Jerusalem.
At this point, I will let Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre
take over:
David Ben-Gurion pondered with distress the pile of cables littering
his desk ... The situation in Jerusalem was so alarming that a disaster was
inevitable if some way was not found to get help to the city. ‘I knew,’ he
would later recall, ‘that if ever the people of the country saw Jerusalem
fall, they would lose their faith in us and in our hopes of winning.’
He had never before directly intervened in a tactical problem of the
Haganah. Tonight he was going to. Despite the lateness of the hour, he
summoned to his office Yigael Yadin and his senior officers. He then
told his Chief of Operations, ‘I want you to occupy Latrun and open
the road to Jerusalem.’
Yadin stiffened. For the young archaeologist who had overall
direction of the Haganah, other fronts that night had priority over
Jerusalem. The Egyptians were menacing Tel Aviv ... The Syrians were
threatening Galilee ...
Ben-Gurion insisted. Yadin’s timetable was not his and their clash
was violent and acrimonious. ‘By the time we take Latrun under your
plan, there won’t be any Jerusalem left to save,’ said Ben-Gurion.
At these words, Ben-Gurion saw his young subordinate’s face pale.
Yadin crashed his fist down on the desk, shattering the glass cover.
The young man wiped a few flecks of blood from his fist and stared
at his leader.
‘Listen,’ Yadin said, his voice low with fury and barely controlled
passion. ‘I was born in Jerusalem. My wife is in Jerusalem. My father
and mother are in Jerusalem. Everybody I love is there. Everything that
binds you to Jerusalem binds me even more. I should agree with you
to send everything we have to Jerusalem. But I don’t because I’m con-
vinced they can hold on with what we’ve given them and we need our
forces for situations even more desperate.’
Shaken by Yadin’s unexpected outburst, Ben-Gurion drew his
head down into his shoulders like a wrestler, the certain sign of his
72
ISRAEL’S EQUIVALENT OF A MOVIE STAR. Unlike many scholars

who considered me an “outsider,” Israeli archaeologist and celebrated
war hero Yigael Yadin (shown here surveying the excavations at Hazor),
helped me in my early efforts to make biblical archaeology accessible and
interesting to a general audience.
73
Our Year in Israel
unshaken determination. He quietly studied Yadin, then he gave him a

straightforward, unequivocal order. ‘Take Latrun.’
Yadin was proved right. They tried to take Latrun—three times

they tried, with great loss of life. But they could not take Latrun. And
Jerusalem’s Old City remained in Jordanian hands for 19 years, until the
1967 Six-Day War.
This was the man from whom I had just learned about the archae-
ology of the oldest part of Jerusalem, the City of David.
The City of David—A Guide to Biblical Jerusalem came out while we
were still in Jerusalem. The first tribute in the acknowledgments was of
course to Yadin, “whose vast scholarship and perspicacious comments on
the entire text have been immeasurably helpful.”
It was not only that the book was published while we were still there,
it was even reviewed in the Jerusalem Post. The reviewer described it as “one
of the most fascinating books I have ever read ... fresh, vivid and quite new
in its approach.” This Week in Israel said it “will leave you spellbound by
history.” Ha’aretz called it “fascinating in an armchair; indispensable on the
site.” Yediot Achronot said it “deserves to be in the library of all to whom
Jerusalem is close at heart.”
During that year, I found that scholars were divided into two camps
in their attitude toward me, the outsider. One group was like Yadin, warmly
welcoming me and helping me. Then there were others, like the highly
regarded archaeologist Ruth Amiram, who was at best dismissive and per-
haps even discourteous. Ruth worked at the Israel Museum, and I decided
to “do the nice thing” and present her with a copy of my book. I stopped
by her office and gave her an inscribed copy. “You’ve been in Israel five
days,” she snapped, “and you’ve written a book!” After many years, I came
to appreciate this aspect of Ruth’s personality. In a way, it was typically
Israeli—rough, blunt, too honest. I took her comment to me as saying
I had no right to write a book after only “five days,” but maybe she was
admiring my achievement after such a brief time in the country. Ruth was
of the founding generation. After many years, I believe she came to accept
me—the outsider. She ultimately wrote something for BAR about her dig
74
at Arad, and I later attended many Shabbat afternoon soirees with Ruth
at the apartment of the elder statesman of Israeli archaeology, Benjamin
Mazar. Perhaps to make up for the way she initially treated me, she bent
over backward to be pleasant.
In its way, my little book led to the next major excavation of the City
of David, led by Hebrew University professor Yigal Shiloh.
Mendel Kaplan was (and is) a wealthy South African businessman, a
major Jewish community leader and a devoted Zionist. He read my book
and used it to guide prospective United Jewish Appeal donors around the
site. He quickly realized the potential for excavation, especially as I had
decried in a footnote the dilapidated and ignored condition of the site.
With several wealthy friends whom he assembled, Mendel decided to
support a major excavation of the site and took the idea to the legendary
Jerusalem mayor, Teddy Kollek. Kollek in turn assembled all the interested
archaeological parties at a meeting with Mendel. Instead of grasping the
opportunity, the archaeologists, as is their wont, raised all kinds of ques-
tions and potential objections. In a recently published festschrift in Kollek’s
honor (he unfortunately passed away before its publication), Mendel
describes this meeting:
There followed a heated discussion about the feasibility of such a proj-

ect and whether it might not be best to focus attention on a particular
area. Teddy lost his patience [as he often did], pounded the table and
in Hebrew, thinking that I did not understand, said: ‘Listen—you have
a South African willing to spend a large amount of money and all you
are doing is putting him off.’ To me he turned in English and said: ‘It is
February and before Pesach, in April, you will receive a positive response.’
He was true to his word.6
And thus the ten-year excavation of the site directed by Yigal Shiloh
was born. It ended only with Shiloh’s tragic and untimely death in 1987.
The Kollek festschrift came out only in 2007. Mendel’s appreciation
of Teddy, which was written in English, included a generous reference to
me and my book on the City of David. As he “walked across the hillside
75
Our Year in Israel
with” my book, he wrote, he was “shocked” at what had been allowed

“to become a cesspool and rubbish heap.” That was the beginning of the
idea of what became Yigal Shiloh’s excavation of the site. Mendel’s piece
was translated into Hebrew and was also printed in the Hebrew section
of the festschrift. There, however, all references to me and my book were
simply deleted. Otherwise, Mendel’s piece is translated word for word. I
was still the outsider.
Once I turned in my City of David manuscript to the publisher,
I needed a new project. It grew naturally out of our Shabbat tiyulim.
Among the sites we explored were some ancient synagogues mostly from
the first six centuries of the common era—some excavated, some in ruins,
some reconstructed, some evidenced only by a small surviving mosaic or
inscribed stone or architectural fragment. Even then, more than a hundred
such synagogues were known in the scholarly literature. But there was no
popular account.
I decided to write one. Some ancient synagogues I could learn of only
from scholarly reports, for example, the extraordinary mid-third-century
synagogue at Dura-Europos in Syria, with its remarkable biblical paintings
that covered the walls. Others, however, were easily accessible, such as the
synagogue in Hammath-Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, with its handsome
mosaic floor featuring depictions of the holy ark flanked by large menorot
and, surprisingly, a seemingly pagan zodiac with the Greek god Helios in
the center riding his chariot. This strange combination of Jewish and the
apparently pagan was repeated in a number of ancient synagogues. By
contrast, in a synagogue in Jericho, the mosaic carpet includes an almost
artistically modern, stylized ark and a realistic menorah below it with a
quotation from Psalm 125: shalom al yisrael (“peace unto Israel”). One
Shabbat, we devoted the entire day to searching for a fragment from an
ancient synagogue. The fragment was inscribed with a menorah and had
been reused as a lintel in a church in a small Palestinian village. Learning
about ancient synagogues was fun—for the whole family. I decided to write
a book on ancient synagogues.
Two small matters presaged my involvement in later disputes. One
involved a mosaic found in the ancient synagogue at the hot springs of
76
THE CLAWS COME OUT. I was initially denied permission to publish

this picture of an anatomically-correct lion from the Hammath-
Gader synagogue mosaic because the excavation report had never
been published, although the excavation itself had ended in the 1930s.
Ultimately, I won the right to use the photo, but it wouldn’t be the last
time I had to stand my ground on this issue.
Gader, east of the Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee). The Hammath-Gader

mosaic includes two wonderfully alive lions on either side of a wreath
enclosing an inscription to a donor of the synagogue. The lions have heavy
manes, hanging tongues and raised tails exposing their very explicit geni-
tals. Going through the slide archives at Hebrew University, I discovered
a picture of one of these lions, which I thought to include in my book.
However, permission to use the picture was initially denied on the ground
that it had not yet been published—even though the picture was from a 1930s
excavation. I protested audibly and the decision was ultimately reversed. A
picture of the lion appears on page 111 of my book, which I was able to
finish only after we returned to the States. It was published in 1979 under
77
Our Year in Israel
the title Judaism in Stone—The Archaeology of Ancient Synagogues. Yigael

Yadin wrote the preface to it. In it, he recounted memories of his father
Eleazer Lipa Sukenik who, traveling by horseback, explored the ruins of
ancient synagogues in Palestine in the 1920s. In the 1930s, Sukenik was
invited to give the Schweich Lectures at the British Academy in London.
The lectures were later published as Ancient Synagogues in Palestine and
Greece. “Except for collections of articles, that book,” Yadin wrote in his
preface to my book, “was the last to be published which canvasses the sub-
ject as a whole—until now ... Judaism in Stone by Hershel Shanks brings
the subject up to date. It is a fascinating description and interpretation of
these ancient synagogue remains.”
I devoted one chapter of the book to what it was like to excavate
an ancient synagogue. For this purpose I chose the synagogue at Ein Gedi
on the shore of the Dead Sea. Among the unusual objects excavated there
was not simply a mosaic of a menorah, which was common enough, but
an actual bronze menorah found lying on the floor of the synagogue. The
excavators also uncovered a charred wooden disc, one of the roller ends
from a Torah scroll. A long mosaic inscription in the entrance aisle of the
synagogue includes biblical quotations, a literary zodiac and curses on
those who would divide the community.
A gorgeous mosaic with peacocks, fruit and geometric designs in the
main hall of the synagogue is not surprising. When it was lifted, however, it
revealed an earlier plain white mosaic floor decorated only with a large black
swastika! The significance of the swastika 1,500 years ago remains a mystery.
The chapter on the Ein Gedi synagogue was particularly difficult to
write because excavator Dan Barag had never written a scientific report on
the excavation. The old bugaboo raised its head: Could a popular account
be published before that scholarly account? But that’s not the worst of
it. Today, nearly 30 years later, the excavation report has still not been
written. Several years ago, thinking that the problem may have been the
lack of funds to support the study of the excavation records, I talked to
someone about funding the publication of the excavation. The answer
was that money would be readily available. I then contacted Barag, but he
was less than enthusiastic. When he finally contacted Hebrew University,
78
as he reported to me, all the excavation records had been lost. There is
nothing there with which to write an excavation report. The failure of
archaeologists to publish the results of their excavations is, unfortunately,
not uncommon. The Biblical Archaeology Society, publisher of Biblical
Archaeology Review, would later become heavily involved in this issue.
One thing that made it easier—and more fun—to write Judaism in
Stone was that during our year in Israel, from September 1972 through
August 1973, the country was entirely peaceful and we could explore the
West Bank and the Sinai without security concerns. We spent a week in
the Sinai with the SPNI (Society for the Preservation of Nature in Israel).
We climbed up to the Egyptian temple at Serabit al-Khadem dedicated to
the goddess of turquoise, which Semitic slaves mined in the caves nearby
in about 1500 B.C.E. The miners left on the walls of the mine some of
the earliest known alphabetic writing. (My photographs of the inscrip-
tions in situ are still some of the best.) We clambered up Jebel ed-Deir,
opposite Mt. Sinai, so we could look down on the monastery of Saint
Catherine from a height. We walked through sculptured rock gorges of
Sinai in the moonlight. And, on our own, we regularly drove down the
Sinai coast south from Eilat to the then little-known beaches at Zahav
and Nuweiba.
We often rode to Jericho for dinner, eating at the town’s beautiful
outdoor restaurants. If we didn’t go to Jericho, it would be the square in
Ramallah. Or to East Jerusalem with its numerous Arab restaurants. Or
to the Dolphin, a fish restaurant in East Jerusalem famously owned by a
Jew and an Arab.
One weekend we went to Gaza with our little girls. We stayed in a
small guest house where I saw my first Pleyel piano, the French equivalent
of a Steinway. We lolled on the beach and shopped. We bought rugs and
some cloth from which Judith would make a dress. And of course we vis-
ited the Great Mosque of Gaza. It had been built as a Crusader church that
had incorporated pillars in its lofty construction taken from an ancient syn-
agogue. One of the pillars was decorated with a menorah, flanked on one
side by the familiar lulav (palm frond) and etrog (citron) associated with
the festival of Sukkot and on the other side with a shofar—not unusual
79
Our Year in Israel
for an ancient synagogue, but, still, a little odd in a Crusader church, now
converted into a mosque. (It has now been gouged out.)
One time, after exploring Mt. Ebal and Mt. Gerizim, we stopped for
a lunch in the town square at Nablus (ancient Shechem). While we were
eating, an argument developed between the restaurant’s Arab owner and
an Israeli soldier with a gun strapped on his shoulder. It got quite vocifer-
ous on both sides. It turned out to be an argument over a bill. But that’s
all it was—an argument over a bill. It had nothing to do with the fact that
the argument was between an Arab and an Israeli soldier.
When I think about how peaceful it was that year, I wonder how
we got from there to here.
80
chapter vii
Starting BAR
my chief concern—actually, fear—at returning to the States
was how I would be received at the law firm. I had visions of their saying
something like this: “Chuck Trainum (or whoever) has been using your
office and he is in the middle of a big, important case. Would you mind
sitting in the library in the meantime?”
Of course that did not happen, and I was warmly welcomed back. I
easily fell into my old ways and into my old legal practice. And I looked
forward to returning regularly to Israel for short visits. But as I imagined
these visits, I bumped into a hard reality: What would I do there? Yes, we
did have some friends there now. But they would be working during the
day. So I could have dinner with them. But I would soon run out of din-
ner dates. And what would I do during the day? When we lived there, I
had become part of the scene. I liked that feeling. I didn’t like the idea
of being an outsider looking for something to do. I needed a business, a
purpose for visiting Israel.
Then it occurred to me: I would write a column on biblical archaeol-
ogy. So far as I knew, no one was doing this. I contacted my friend Charlie
Fenyvesi, who edited B’nai B’rith Magazine, and proposed the idea to him.
“I’ve already got too many columns,” he said over lunch. “Why don’t you
start your own magazine?”
“How do you do that?” I asked.
It sounded easy: You just write up a proposal and send it to a variety
of people—scholars, academic leaders, businessmen, philanthropists, com-
munity leaders, writers, etc. And then you’ll have all the elements.
So that’s what I did.
I received only one reply, however—from Rabbi Samuel Sandmel
81
Starting BAR
who taught at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati and had served

as president of the major American organization of Bible scholars, the
Society of Biblical Literature. He wrote that I had an interesting idea. I’ve
always wondered whether he might have replied because he had dated
my mother-in-law when he was serving as a student rabbi in Montgomery,
Alabama, before she married my father-in-law.
I then sent all the people who had received my proposal a second
communication. I thanked them for their warm response and reported
that we now had enough interest and money to go ahead.
My initial idea was to make the publication a simple newsletter.
Greece was a land of gold. So was Egypt. Israel, however, was a land of
stone. My newsletter would be a publication of ideas, not beautiful pic-
tures. It would come out four times a year.
I would call it Biblical Archaeology Newsletter. In Israel, we had become
friendly with two American archaeologists from Duke University, Eric and
Carol Meyers, with whom we spent a week in the Sinai and who, like us, had
two little daughters. On a family visit to Durham, North Carolina, we dis-
cussed the project in the Meyers’ living room. Carol observed that the initials
of the publication would be BAN, not a very attractive name for a biblical
archaeology newsletter. She thought Biblical Archaeology Review would be
much better. I agreed. Besides, the resulting acronym would be BAR, quite
appropriate for a lawyer. And suddenly the publication became a magazine
instead of a newsletter. But, still, it would feature ideas rather than pictures.
One of my plans for the magazine was to have an American edi-
tor and a Jerusalem editor. I asked Eric Meyers to be the American editor.
He tentatively agreed, but when he advised the leaders of the American
Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) of his intention, he was told that
if he wanted to advance within the ranks of ASOR, the major American
organization of Near Eastern archaeologists, he had better decline my offer.
And he did. This was a harbinger of things to come. Eric later became presi-
dent of ASOR and editor of its magazine, Biblical Archaeologist. I decided
to drop the idea of an American editor.
The wife of one of my lawyer friends was a graphic designer, and I
enlisted her to “make me a magazine.” My idea, which she executed, was a
82
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS. The cover of the first issue of “The” BAR,

published in March 1975.
cover consisting of two rough vertical blocks (like the two Tablets of the
Law) within each of which an article would begin. These two tablets would,
in turn, support a horizontal block more or less in the shape of the stone
on which the famous Siloam Inscription is written. The inscription was
discovered in 1880 carved into the wall of Hezekiah’s Tunnel; it was subse-
quently chipped out of the wall and sent to Constantinople, the Ottoman
capital. It is now on display in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum.
Frankly, the little 7-by-10-inch cover on the first BAR is pretty
ugly. It somehow reminds me of the comic strip character Alley Oop,
a prehistoric cave man. The issue, dated March 1975, was printed on
cream-colored paper with brown ink. It consists of 16 pages and a single
black-and-white picture—or rather a brown-and-cream picture. Its pages
feature ideas, not pictures. How wrong I was to think that this was to be
the nature of the magazine.
83
Starting BAR
That first issue cost $600 to print. Since I was a lawyer, the printer
agreed to trust me so that I did not have to come up with any cash in
advance. A couple of small ads for subscriptions subsequently produced
enough to pay him.
I wrote all the stories in the issue. In addition to six stories and an
item headed “Introducing the BAR,” the first issue announced the death
of Harvard’s G. Ernest Wright (one of the founder’s of American biblical
archaeology), the publication of two new journals (Tel Aviv and the Journal
of Field Archaeology, both still publishing), the availability of a free 260-page
book on the archaeology of Israel from the Embassy of Israel, and oppor-
tunities to volunteer on an archaeological excavation in Israel.
I also announced a policy of paying authors, which scholarly jour-
nals do not. “We have to pay the man who prints the magazine, the
secretary who types the manuscript, the mailing outfit that labels and
mails the magazine and that gets it to you. Why should we then fail to
pay for the most important and indispensable contribution to the maga-
zine—the authors of our articles?” In the early years we paid ten dollars
for short articles and fifteen dollars for longer articles. A year’s subscrip-
tion was five dollars.
The masthead listed no staff because we had none. The address was
my law office.
The masthead did, however, list a distinguished editorial advisory
board. The first name on the board was my mother-in-law’s old boyfriend,
Sam Sandmel.
In “Introducing the BAR,” I stated the magazine’s aim “to make
available in understandable language the current insights of professional
archaeology as they relate to the Bible. No other publication is presently
devoted to this task ... ” “We will focus,” I wrote, “on the new, the unusual
and the controversial.”
I still like this description. People want to know what’s new. What’s
new is doubly interesting because in order to describe what’s new, you
often have to explain what’s old and why the new is new. The same goes
for the unusual. To explain why something is unusual you have to explain
what the usual is.
84
Perhaps there’s a little subterfuge involved: We’re really teaching. For

this purpose, the background that we give in our stories is as important,
perhaps more important, than the new and unusual.
Another way to learn is to take a course in biblical archaeology. But
that’s not our way. That’s another way. Our way is more fun. And more
stimulating. Besides, you’re in the vanguard of the profession when you
read the articles in BAR.
Then, there’s the third item I mentioned in “Introducing the BAR”:
“controversial.” We’re often charged with creating controversy. I reject the
charge. But I do admit to believing that examining controversies is a good
way to learn. I guess this betrays my legal background. I have an almost reli-
gious belief that examining reasoned controversy is the best way to arrive
at the truth. That’s the way lawsuits are conducted: Each side makes its
best case, and out of this contest or controversy is our best chance at arriv-
ing at the correct answer. In the law, the judge or the jury decides who has
the better case. In the academic world, it is the reader, be he a professional
scholar or a layperson. And BAR strives to serve both kinds of readers.
In short, examining controversies is an excellent way to teach. Until
recently, that was almost the sole way of teaching in law school. In its capac-
ity to teach, “controversy” is like the “new” and the “unusual,” the other two
items that I said would characterize BAR.
But BAR does not create controversy. At most, it identifies it and
exposes it. I like to say that we do not create controversy, but we do not
shrink from it either.
Is archaeology more controversial than other fields? Is controversy
especially intense in biblical archaeology?
I suspect the answer may be “yes.” There is more room for contro-
versy in archaeology because the answers are so much less certain. In a
criminal case, the prosecution must prove its case beyond a reasonable
doubt. This can rarely be done in archaeology. Most of the time, the archae-
ologist is making an educated guess—an educated guess, mind you, but
still a guess. That is why “may be,” “possibly,” “probably,” “likely” and the
like appear so frequently in connection with archaeological conclusions.
And the more general the conclusion, the more often these words appear.
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Starting BAR
The archaeologist can say with reasonable certainty that this wall was built
before that one, but with less certainty when it was built and what it was
part of, and, with still less certainty, who lived or worked in the build-
ing. When it comes to the big historical questions, involving thousands of
observations from a myriad of fields, the problems are compounded. It is
hardly surprising, therefore, that the field is beset with controversy. And
it is the answer to the broadest historical questions, which are the most
controversial, that people are most interested in.
That our field involves the Bible makes it that much more controver-
sial, because we are dealing with core beliefs and strong convictions. This
is not just otiose history. This matters to us. We are exploring who we are
and where we came from.
In one respect, however, I think we are guilty of creating contro-
versy. There are some issues, some questions that the profession laggardly
does not face, does not deal with. This is true in all aspects of society.
Exposing these issues and questions is part of the office of the media gen-
erally. Archaeologists are not accustomed to this kind of spotlight on what
is happening in their field. They often resent it—although some few do
appreciate it. An outsider can sometimes say things that insiders cannot say
as easily. That is true of society generally and also of archaeology.
This aspect of controversy became a focus of BAR early on. We
would ask questions that others would not ask—at least not publicly. In
our third issue, I wrote an article entitled “Kathleen Kenyon’s Anti-Zionist
Politics—Does It Affect Her Work?”
BAR is an archaeological publication, not a political organ. I have
made it a policy to stay out of politics as such, especially Middle Eastern
politics. Archaeology is divisive enough, although I am sure my Zionist and
Israeli sympathies come through clearly. We do, however, concern ourselves
with politics as they affect archaeology. The article about Kathleen Kenyon
illustrates the distinction. Kathleen Kenyon’s politics per se are of no concern.
They are of concern, however, if they affect her archaeology. And that was
the question I was raising in my article. No one else would raise it publicly.
Kathleen Kenyon was one of the world’s most distinguished
archaeologists. She had led excavations at two of the most alluring, even
86
romantic, sites in biblical history—Jericho and Jerusalem. Her father and

Oxford don, Sir Frederic Kenyon, was author of Our Bible and the Ancient
Manuscripts, much of which was devoted to showing how archaeology cor-
roborated the Bible. But, like many people who work in Arab countries,
she developed a natural affinity for the Arab viewpoint of the modern
conflict, just as archaeologists working in Israel naturally see Israel in a
more favorable light. For me, the question was whether Kenyon’s sympa-
thy for the Arab viewpoint in the Middle East struggle was affecting her
archaeological conclusions.
Kenyon’s antipathy for Zionism was well known and much discussed
by archaeologists. In my article, I reported it and documented possible
indications that her views regarding Arabs and Zionists were affecting her
work. And I recounted her numerous professional differences with Israeli
scholars, often as a group. Rereading the article after 35 years, I find it
careful, qualified and balanced. I did not conclude that the answer to the
question raised by the perhaps incendiary title was an unqualified yes, but
that it was a question worth raising.
As soon as the issue came out, I sent a copy to Dr. Kenyon, with a
letter to her stating that “Our pages are open, and we shall be glad to pub-
lish any response you, or someone else on your behalf, may wish to make.”7
She initially sent me a reply marked “Not for publication.” We of course
respected her wishes, but I then suggested to her that there were some spe-
cific items to which she might respond. This elicited a reply that we were
allowed to print (and to which I replied). In this letter, she referred to my
“so-called reportage” as being “such an insult to my professional integrity
... that I completely refuse to discuss your 0 ... I told you in my last letter
that all real archaeologists would consider it quite unprofessional to enter
into an argument with a critic, except on details of fact.” She then discussed
at some length her professional differences with Israeli archaeologists.
Whether I went too far is still being discussed by archaeologists (more
often, by historians of archaeology). On the merits, I believe the answer is
clear. She was openly anti-Zionist. In a letter to The Times (London) less
than a fortnight after the Six-Day War, she wrote, “Israelis must not be able
to keep the fruits of their invasion. Israel should be made to return to her
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Starting BAR
pre-existing frontiers.” She referred to Israel’s creation as an “injustice” to

the Arabs. Her politics were a major subject of discussion among Israeli
archaeologists. Whether this anti-Zionism is reflected in her work is a moot
question. There is certainly some indication that it is. On the other hand,
I can be accused of implying a too clearly affirmative answer by the title
I gave to the initial article (although my reply to her letter in the March
1976 BAR still reads pretty convincingly).
One thing is absolutely clear, however. Anyone reading my article,
the letters to the editor that followed, Kenyon’s letter in response to my
article and my reply to her letter will come away with a very considerable
amount of archaeological knowledge, especially about the archaeology of
Jerusalem and the methods archaeologists employ in arriving at their con-
clusions. I think readers will also come away from this exchange with a
well-balanced view of the evidence. What they conclude is up to them. In
my mind, we had fulfilled our obligation to instruct.
By the end of our first year we had 3,000 subscribers. My ultimate
goal at that time was 10,000. Today, we have 150,000 and more than a
quarter of a million readers.
At an early point, I also enlisted several prominent biblical schol-
ars and archaeologists for the editorial advisory board, in addition to
Sam Sandmel. They included Père Pierre Benoit of the École biblique et
archéologique Française in Jerusalem, a highly admired biblical scholar
and shrewd commentator on archaeologically based conclusions, who later
headed the Dead Sea Scrolls publication team. Père Benoit remained on
the board until his death in 1987. Another early member of BAR’s edito-
rial advisory board was and is David Ussishkin, excavator of Lachish and
Jezreel and now codirector of the excavations at Megiddo. He is the only
academic who has been on the board since Volume 1, Number 1. (Sandmel
has died.) Norma Kershaw, an independent scholar, is the other person
who has been on the board since the beginning. For years, Norma would
report to me all the critical things that were being said about BAR and
chastise me for them. Another member of the initial board, Yigal Shiloh,
who headed the major excavation of the City of David in Jerusalem, served
until 1987, when he passed away from cancer at age 50.
88
With perhaps unjustified assurance, I advised readers in the first issue

to save their copies of BAR. Perhaps they would become valuable in the
future and make a fine gift to some school, church or synagogue, in turn
producing a handy tax deduction.
We also established a letters-to-the-editor section that we call “Queries
& Comments.” Naturally we published some glowing letters from our
readers, including from Tel Aviv University archaeologist Yohanan Aharoni;
the head of the Hebraic Section of the Library of Congress, Lawrence
Marwick; and a professor emeritus of history at Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute, Samuel Rezneck, as well as from ordinary readers.
In subsequent years we stopped printing letters telling us how good
we were. Instead, we began publishing letters from people who, for one
reason or another, were canceling or threatening to cancel their subscrip-
tions. As early as our second year, we published a letter from a professor
at Kenyon College, who advised us that “I am renewing my subscription,
though with considerable hesitancy, for I had hoped for better.” He criti-
cized our treatment of Kathleen Kenyon and found a spoof on the Dead
Sea Scrolls by Woody Allen (entitled “The Red Sea Scrolls”) “cheap and
vulgar.” Indeed, we have by now become famous for letters criticizing us,
especially on religious grounds. And “Q&C,” as we call it, remains one of the
most popular sections of the magazine. Even academics often tell us that it
is the first section they read. In 1995 we published a book of letters to the
editor covering a wide range of topics. We called it Cancel My Subscription.
By the end of BAR’s first year, I realized how wrong I had been
to think that BAR would be only a magazine of ideas without beauti-
ful pictures. By then, I knew that it had to be both. In the first issue of
Volume 2, we introduced a four-page section with stunning color pictures
on thick, glossy paper.
In the third year of publication, we added staff. I shouldn’t say
“added.” Until then, there was no staff. Both new staff members were called
Sue—which I have always thought appropriate for a lawyer. Both remain
devoted friends and colleagues to this day.
The first was Susan Laden. I clearly recall the weekend afternoon
when she and a friend came to my house. Two mothers with young
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Starting BAR
children, they had heard I needed part-time help to handle subscriptions

and checks. After I told them what the job was, they talked among them-
selves to determine who would take the job. The other woman said she
didn’t want the job, so Sue took it—reluctantly. BAR’s first business office
was in Sue’s basement. Today, Susan Laden is BAR’s publisher, president
of the Biblical Archaeology Society and is responsible for our survival in
a difficult market. Without her acumen and business ability, the organiza-
tion would not have survived. People see our beautiful magazine, full of
gorgeous color pictures (and ads) and think we are prosperous. On the
contrary, we are always on the financial edge. It takes careful and sometimes
imaginative financial balancing to keep us afloat. Sue Laden does that, as
well as directing the staff.
The other “Sue” is Suzanne Singer. Like Sue Laden, she had young
kids at home when she came to work for BAR more than 30 years ago.
She is married to Max Singer, a Harvard Law School classmate of mine,
and they had lived in Israel for four years in the 1970s. Initially, I enlisted
Sue as my “Jerusalem Editor.” When Sue and Max returned to the States,
she became the assistant editor. BAR’s first editorial office was in Sue’s
basement. It was not long before she became managing editor and my
indispensable right arm.
One by one, the Singers’ four sons, as they grew to manhood,
moved to Israel permanently. One, Alex, an officer in the elite Givati
Brigade, was killed in a clash with terrorists just inside Lebanon in 1987,
on his 25th birthday. After Max’s mother also moved to Israel, Max and
Sue acquired an apartment in Jerusalem and now spend most of their
time there. Sue remains a contributing editor, however, and serves as my
eyes and ears in Israel.
For years, the two Sues would periodically come to my law office
in downtown Washington, and we would have lunch. That was how we
managed BAR as it continued to grow and flourish. We look back on
those happy, happy days with a fondness that knows those times cannot
be recaptured.
For me, BAR continued to be an extra-curricular activity while I sup-
ported my family by practicing law. I enjoyed both.
90
In the last issue of our third year, I wrote an article that was to
be a harbinger of things to come. Professor Nahman Avigad of Hebrew
University was heading a major excavation in the Old City of Jerusalem
where he discovered the city’s ancient Cardo, the main north-south street.
Jerusalem and its colonnaded Cardo are prominently pictured in the
famous sixth-century C.E. mosaic map preserved in a church in Madaba,
Jordan. The press reported the Cardo’s discovery by Professor Avigad. We
subsequently learned that the part of the Cardo that Avigad had excavated
was, in his view, Byzantine, rather than Roman as was at first supposed. In
our report on recent discoveries in Jerusalem, we noted that in Avigad’s
opinion this portion of the Cardo was Byzantine, not Roman. I reported
at length on a debate about the date of the Cardo that, as I understood,
had followed a lecture Avigad had given at a conference. At the lecture,
Avigad had shown magnificent pictures of the recently discovered street.
Naturally, we wanted some of the pictures of Avigad’s Cardo for our story.
And Avigad, not unexpectedly, refused. So we published the story with a
big black square where Avigad’s Cardo picture would have gone had he
made it available to us. In the caption to the black square, we said:
This space is reserved for pictures of the Cardo ... after their release by
Professor Avigad. This will occur after he has first published them in
his own scientific report ... Although Professor Avigad announces these
finds in the press, he refuses to release pictures. Professor Avigad is by no
means alone in this practice. Probably the majority of archaeologists do
likewise, but Professor Avigad’s restrictive release of photographs is more
visible—and more objectionable—because of the spectacular nature of
the finds ... We urge the abandonment of this restrictive release of pho-
tographs, particularly with respect to finds that legitimately arouse such
widespread public interest.
Avigad was deeply hurt and angered. He was a soft-spoken man

not given to yelling, but he felt the attack personally and deeply. “Dear
Editor,” he wrote in a reply which I of course published, “I know that you
are happy with this kind of reporting archaeological news, you think it is
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Starting BAR
MAKING A POINT. When excavator

Nahman Avigad denied BAR a
photograph of Jerusalem’s ancient
Cardo, we decided to publish an
empty black box in place of the
picture. This upset Avigad greatly,
but BAR has continued to encourage
scholars to release photos of their
finds in a timely fashion.
good for BAR. But, please, let me alone! Your journal is not to my taste.”
He was one of Israel’s most highly respected archaeologists, an elder states-
man and a meticulous excavator. For some time after this, he would have
nothing to do with me. We would often hold parties for archaeologists
and biblical scholars whenever I came to Jerusalem, and of course Avigad
was always invited. On one occasion he came. I still remember the smile
that crossed his lips when he saw me. I put my arm around his shoulder
for the photographer. Jonas Greenfield, another senior scholar, said how
happy he was to see this. After that, Avigad and I became friends (although
I could never bring myself to call him “Nahman”).
We never mentioned the photo episode, however. When Avigad
wrote a popular (as opposed to scholarly) book about his excavations in
the Old City, he asked me if I would be his agent for the book’s publi-
cation. Of course I was honored to do so. Only then did I feel forgiven.
I arranged for the book to be published by Thomas Nelson Publishers
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under the title Discovering Jerusalem. Harvard’s Frank Cross called the book
“a masterpiece.” William Dever, whom I have already mentioned, said it
was “the most important and exciting book on the archaeology of ancient
Jerusalem.” Seymour Gitin, director of the Albright Institute, judged it “a
history that makes history ... describing the strategy of excavation and the
exciting moments of discovery.”
I said that Avigad forgave me, but I don’t think he ever agreed with
my view regarding the Cardo pictures. Withholding pictures of finds is not
a habit that has died easily in the profession. Frankly, it is hard to explain. It
is, so far as I can tell, a desire on the archaeologists’ part to have finds first
exposed in a scholarly way and in a context that they control.
More than a decade later, another senior Israeli archaeologist,
Avraham Biran of Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, made another
spectacular discovery, at the site of Dan in northern Israel, where 3,000
years ago Jeroboam had set up a golden bull after the country split apart
following King Solomon’s death (1 Kings 12:28–29). In the 1990s contro-
versy was already rife between the so-called “biblical minimalists,” who
doubted the very existence of King David and King Solomon, and those
who held to the more traditional view. One thing in the minimalists’ favor
(William Dever calls them “biblical nihilists”) was that the name “David”
had never been found in any ancient inscription outside the Bible. Based
on the archaeological record alone, there was no David.
Then in 1993 Gila Cook, the staff surveyor of Biran’s excavation at
Tel Dan, noticed some writing on a stone in an ancient wall as the after-
noon sunlight glanced off it. When the stone was removed from the wall,
it was found to contain an Aramaic inscription dating to the ninth century
B.C.E., only a little more than a century after David was supposed to have
lived. The stone had been reused as part of the wall. The inscription was
part of a black basalt stela that had been put up by an Aramean king (prob-
ably Hazael, king of Damascus) proclaiming his victory over the Israelites.
The broken-off inscription mentions a “king of Israel” whose name has not
survived and, most startlingly, the “House of David” (Bet David or “Dynasty
of David.”) The book of 2 Kings is replete with references to Hazael and
of his wars with Israel (see especially 2 Kings 10:32–33).
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Starting BAR
Based on this inscription, David had not only lived, he had estab-
lished a dynasty that had lasted for at least 150 years. And the kingdom
ruled by David’s dynasty was important enough for Hazael to proclaim a
military victory over it in an impressively inscribed stela.
I heard about the discovery at Tel Dan in a telephone call from a
friend in Israel. I immediately called Biran in Jerusalem. He agreed to
allow me to alert the New York Times to the discovery, and they ran the
story on the front page. But Biran would not give the Times a picture of
the inscription! So they asked someone to draw the letters of “House of
David” supposedly in the form of these letters of the period. It looked
obviously artificial and ugly, but Biran was thereby able to save the first
publication of a photograph of the inscription for his own report. This,
incidentally, was most unlike Biran—a jolly, opened-handed man who
was warm and welcoming. If even Avraham Biran would withhold a pic-
ture from the New York Times, al achat kama v’kama (how much moreso)
would other scholars do likewise.
In 2008 we published an article about the Hebrew term opalim,
which is uniformly translated “hemorrhoids” in English Bibles. The word
occurs in the story of the Israelite’s battle with the Philistines at Ebenezer
in which the Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant (1 Samuel 5–6).
This did the Philistines no good, however. The Lord afflicted the Philistines
with opalim, among other things. Wisely, the Philistines decided to send the
Ark back to the Israelites with an offering that included five golden opalim.
It’s hard to imagine what a golden hemorrhoid looked like. Moreover,
when this passage is read in the synagogue, opalim is not pronounced as
written, as if it were a vulgarity. Another word entirely is substituted.
Aren Maeir of Bar-Ilan University has been digging at the Philistine
city of Gath, where in 2004 he came upon a couple of objects that got
him to wondering whether opalim should really be translated as “hem-
orrhoids”—what Maeir found were two clay phalluses. Maeir concluded
that opalim really had something to do with penises. Perhaps the cap-
ture of the Israelite Ark afflicted the Philistines with E.D. (This would
not be the first time the Bible records this happening. When Pharaoh
took Abraham’s beautiful wife Sarah into his harem, thinking she was
94
Abraham’s sister, the Lord afflicted Pharaoh with something that saved
her from being violated—Genesis 12:17.)
Maeir wrote an article for BAR recounting his find and his theory
regarding opalim. As we were preparing the article for publication in 2007,
he discovered more phalluses on his dig that year, an account of which
he added to his article. But when I asked him for a picture of these new
finds, he initially refused. “This is not the way we operate,” I wrote him.
After a little more persuasion, he relented. We printed the pictures of the
just-found phalluses in the article. In the caption we noted that “these two
pictures of very recent finds are receiving their first publication here. BAR
is grateful to Professor Maeir for making them available to our readers.”
So the academic tradition of refusing to release pictures until the
scholarly publication appears is not dead, just dying.
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chapter viii
Maturing BAR
in our second year, we added a few pages of color.
In our fourth year, we changed format—from a 7-by-10-inch maga-
zine with cream paper and brown ink to a standard 8 ½-by-11-inch “book”
(as they call magazines in the trade) with white paper and black ink. We
also introduced our new color cover with a few more color pages sprinkled
throughout the magazine.
The year after that we changed from a quarterly to a bimonthly.
We still operated out of the basements of the two Sues with minimal
staff and managed the organization at lunches when the two Sues would
come downtown.
In 1982—Volume 8—we added color throughout the book. In 1983
we got a real office—on Connecticut Avenue—to house our now-growing
staff. It was across from the entrance to the zoo, and we joked that people
came to the BAR office looking for the animals in there.
One thing that didn’t change, however, was the animosity of the
prestigious professional organization of Near Eastern archaeologists, the
American Schools of Oriental Research, known as ASOR. Note that it is
plural—schools, not school. ASOR has schools in Jerusalem, Amman and
Cyprus and committees for Baghdad and Damascus. The mother organiza-
tion is in America. The schools are independent, however. They raise their
own money and determine their own program. Years ago, the mother orga-
nization would help the daughter schools with financing and assistance.
Today it is the other way around; the schools provide assistance to the
mother organization. The chief activities of the mother organization are
the holding of a scholarly conference each November with several hun-
dred lectures and the publication of several scholarly journals and books.
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Maturing BAR
I have already mentioned that ASOR leaders had advised Eric

Meyers not to sign on as my American editor if he had any aspirations
to ascend the leadership ranks of the organization. A variety of consider-
ations account for this persistent ASOR attitude toward BAR. First was our
name—Biblical Archaeology Review. In the view of some ASOR leaders, it
was too close to their magazine, Biblical Archaeologist. Even before our first
issue, ASOR considered suing me to prevent what they regarded as an ille-
gally infringing name. In the end, however, they dropped the idea. But the
thought persisted: I was encroaching on their territory.
ASOR’s Biblical Archaeologist had started out as a popular magazine.
It was intended to be a venue for outreach to a broader public. Over the
years, however, it had become more and more rarefied, and most of its
articles had little appeal for a popular, nonscholarly audience.
While the people in ASOR whose major interest was the Bible were
uncomfortable with us because of this overlapping interest, the scholars
whose interest lay in areas and time-periods that had little relevance for the
Bible scoffed at us for the opposite reason—because of our biblical interest.
Secular scholars sometimes look on colleagues who work with the Bible
as having a slight odor. Such biblical scholars are suspected of being “too
evangelical,” not scholarly or worse. As a leading biblical minimalist, Niels
Peter Lemche, has remarked, “to ordinary archaeologists biblical archae-
ologists are lowlife.”
On the other hand, there is a very legitimate reason for secular schol-
ars not wishing to be oriented toward the Bible: Their purview is broader.
They don’t want to be confined by always having to look at things from
a biblical viewpoint. In truth, there is no reason why someone working
in Jordan or Cyprus should have a special interest in the Bible. Before the
peace treaty between Israel and Jordan in 1994, Jordanian archaeological
publications hesitated to cite biblical materials or Israeli publications. So
in a sense ASOR is riven between those who are pursuing archaeology
because of their interest in the Bible and those whose archaeological inter-
est lies elsewhere in the Middle East.
Just how sensitive the situation was is reflected in an incident involv-
ing one Tom Crotser of Winfield, Kansas, who served as director of the
98
so-called Institute for Restoring History International. Without an excava-

tion permit from Jordanian authorities, Crotser went looking for the Ark
of the Covenant on Mt. Pisgah, from which Moses had been allowed to
see (but not enter) the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 3:27) and where he
had died (Deuteronomy 34:1–5). The mountain lies in Jordan opposite Mt.
Nebo. And, lo and behold, Crotser found the Ark of the Covenant! Or at
least so he claimed. The UPI picked up the story and the incident received
wide publicity. A major American excavation of impeccable credentials
was set to begin not far from Pisgah the next summer, but its excavation
permit was abruptly canceled following publication of the UPI story. No
reason was given for the cancellation. And the permit was canceled not by
the antiquities authority, but at the highest level of the Jordanian govern-
ment—by the prime minister’s office.8
If that story reflects the Jordanian government’s sensitivity about the
alleged biblical connections to Jordan, the following reflects the sensitivity
of Americans working in Jordan. When BAR published the story about
Tom Crotser’s ridiculous claim to have found the Ark of the Covenant,
we were in the midst of a biblical archaeology essay contest. More than
80 entrants had been submitted. The winner was to receive a $1,500 travel
fellowship to Jerusalem. Three prominent American scholars had been
chosen to serve as judges. One of them was R. Thomas Schaub, professor
of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Indiana University of Pennsylvania
in Indiana, Pennsylvania. Schaub excavated in Jordan. When Schaub read
BAR’s story about Tom Crotser’s foolish adventure, he resigned as a judge in
the essay contest. That article, he wrote, “certainly favors the cause of those
who argue for the elimination of the term Biblical Archaeology ... It is not
surprising that many serious students of the Bible or of archaeology cringe
when they hear or read the term Biblical Archaeology.” While Schaub did
not question my assertion that the Jordanian authorities had revoked the
American excavation permit because of the Crotser incident, he described
as “nonsense” that Jordanian authorities would “prevent or obscure serious
archaeological results that may legitimately shed light on ancient history”
(not exactly what I had said). I doubt that today Tom would resign over
such an article. Times have changed—somewhat—especially since the
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Maturing BAR
Jordan-Israel Peace Treaty of 1994. And Tom Schaub and I have had many
pleasant conversations since then. I recently attended a Jordanian embassy
reception to celebrate the 62nd anniversary of Jordan’s independence (in
1946) and one of the placards at the reception to foster tourism featured
what was prominently labeled “Biblical Jordan.” It seems that much of the
Jordanian sensitivity about “biblical” archaeology has evaporated.
This divide within ASOR between those who were especially inter-
ested in the Bible and its background, on the one hand, and those whose
focus lay elsewhere in Near Eastern archaeology became an issue in the
early 1980s when the leadership proposed changing the name of its
“popular” magazine from Biblical Archaeologist to The ASOR Archaeologist.
“Biblical” would no longer be in the name. A unanimous ad hoc com-
mittee recommended the change. The recommendation then went to
the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees. Only one member
voted against the change. The recommendation then went to the full
Board of Trustees. I attended the trustees meeting where the recommen-
dation came up. It was about to pass until Harvard’s Frank Cross, one
of the world’s most prominent biblical scholars and a former president
of ASOR, spoke up against it: It was as if they were kicking the Bible
out of the organization. The mood completely changed and the recom-
mendation failed. But James Sauer, the president of the organization
and former director of the ASOR school in Amman (ACOR—American
Center of Oriental Research), maintained his position to the end and
voted for the new name.
At one point, Leon Levy, a New York billionaire who was a major
financial supporter of ASOR, invited me and Jim Sauer as well as a few
ASOR leaders with whom I was friendly to a dinner. Sauer led ASOR’s
anti-BAR forces; he could hardly bring himself to speak to me. We met in
Leon’s extraordinary apartment on Sutton Place in Manhattan, which is
filled with museum-quality antiquities. The dinner was an effort to make
peace, a sulha in Arabic, between me and Jim Sauer. The evening was
polite and pleasant and the talk was fascinating. But Jim held his ground.
There was no room for BAR in his thinking. He did not mince words.
For me, the evening demonstrated for all to see Jim’s intransigence. I was
100
not angry, however. Indeed, I very rarely get angry at adversaries, and I was
never angry with Jim Sauer.
Jim taught at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and to
the surprise of almost everyone, he was denied tenure. It was said this was
because he had failed to publish, and he had failed to publish because he
had devoted himself so wholly to his ASOR presidency. He subsequently
developed a fatal nerve disorder (Huntington’s disease) and died at age 55
in 1999. But before he became incapacitated he softened toward me and
toward BAR. He even agreed to write an article for the magazine. In the
November/December 1996 issue he was the author of an article entitled,
“The River Runs Dry: Creation Story Preserves Historical Memory” which
argued that even the Bible’s earliest stories may contain a kernel of history.
Several years later the matter of the name of the ASOR magazine
came up again. This time the suggested new name was Near Eastern
Archaeology. It was strongly supported by the then-editor of the magazine,
David Hopkins. He decided to take a poll of the members on the ques-
tion. Over 80 percent voted against the name change. So the name was
changed to Near Eastern Archaeology, a name that it still bears! This surely
says something about the way things can work in a professional scholarly
organization. And it clearly reveals the yawning gap between the leader-
ship of ASOR and the bulk of its membership.
By the time BAR arrived on the scene, the Biblical Archaeologist was
already more a scholarly magazine than a popular magazine. It never had
more than 7,500 subscribers, and the number has steadily gone down. By
our third year, BAR’s circulation had surpassed BA’s, as it was known. And
this too would hardly endear us to ASOR. Today the circulation of Near
Eastern Archaeology is barely more than 2,000 and, as I write, it is behind
about a year in publication. As a result, the June 2007 issue did not come
out until May 2008. Some of its obituaries therefore list a date of death
after the date of the issue of the magazine.
Other reasons might also explain ASOR’s attitude toward BAR. For
example, I do not have a Ph.D. I don’t qualify as a member of the frater-
nity. In short, I am not really an archaeologist or even a scholar. I am the
essential outsider.
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Maturing BAR
To make matters worse, my job as a responsible archaeological jour-

nalist is to sit in judgment on the decisions and activities of my betters.
As early as the September/October 1983 issue, I wrote an article entitled
“Whither ASOR?” in which I described its “identity crisis.” “ASOR will
be a house divided if it disparages or excludes those whose chief interest
is the Bible,” I wrote. Incidentally, this article gave me an opportunity to
describe the history of American archaeology in Israel and ASOR’s enor-
mous contributions to that history. Always lying behind our coverage of
controversy is a desire to teach.
For years, I would write a review of ASOR’s annual meeting. Often,
I would have something critical to say, along with praise. Scholarly meet-
ings are not accustomed to this kind of review, especially by someone who
is not an academic.
I have many friends who are active in ASOR, and most ASOR schol-
ars are pleased to write for BAR. But there is still a residue of bad feeling
among some of those who are especially active in the Amman and Cyprus
schools. In 2008 this surfaced in a strange way. We have given what we call
dig scholarships to help students go to Israel and elsewhere in the Near East
to participate in excavations during the summer. Each of our scholarships is
for $1,000. In 2007 ASOR offered similar scholarships, but for $1,500 each.
Some few applicants, we later learned, had double-dipped: They got schol-
arships from both of us. I talked to ASOR’s very friendly executive secretary,
Andy Vaughn, about this. I suggested comparing applicant lists to prevent
double-dipping. He said he would check and get back to me; there were
some in ASOR who may not want to cooperate with our organization even
in this minor way, he said, which reflects the depth of the animosity. In the
end, they hesitated to give us their list (they had not yet selected their win-
ners), so we sent them our list of winners; they reported that there were
no “doubles,” and we went ahead and awarded the scholarships on our list.
****
It is amazing—at least to me—how many of our later campaigns had their

beginnings in these early years. In the July/August issue of 1983, I wrote an
102
article entitled “The Sad Case of Tel Gezer.” It had a double purpose. One
was to describe this enormously important and dramatic archaeological, as
well as biblical, site, and, second, to ensure that the site would be preserved,
both for scholars and the public.
Gezer was also part of my personal history. I should have mentioned
it in my account of our year in Israel. But I guess it was too embarrassing.
Besides, the story might ruin an otherwise euphoric year in the Holy Land.
We had arrived in Israel in September 1972, and by the following summer
I had published The City of David and knew many archaeologists, some
of them very well. I decided to enlist as a volunteer on an archaeological
excavation—to get some practical experience with archaeology. There was
little doubt what dig it would be. William Dever had been the guiding
light of the Gezer expedition. It was the leading American excavation, and
was also highly regarded for its educational field school. I volunteered for
two weeks. Even though I knew Dever would not be there that season, I
secretly anticipated that other excavation leaders would guide my under-
standing of some of the larger questions and decisions about the dig.
The experience turned out to be quite different. I was assigned to an
excavation square supervised by a young college student. I was too embar-
rassed to complain, but I was “worked” like a common laborer, digging all
day and exposing a wall but little else. Truth to tell, I was 43 years old and
the other volunteers were kids. At the end of the day, I could do little more
than flop on my cot in the tent. Besides, I had no contact with anyone
higher in command. I was learning nothing, and there were no activities
that week that explained anything about the site in general.
By the time Friday came, I was wondering whether I should come
back for the second week. My wife Judith had arranged for our family to
spend the weekend with Terry and Ann Smith and their little girl, also
an Elizabeth, with whom our girls had played in the States. Terry was
scheduled to pick me up Friday afternoon and drive me to Kayit v’Shayit,
a modest seaside resort with a group of huts on the beach, where the rest
of our families would be waiting. Terry was the New York Times correspon-
dent for Israel, so when he arrived at the site, he created quite a flutter.
That I drove away with him was my recognition of the week. Not long
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Maturing BAR
after driving away, however, I asked him to stop by the side of the road. I
got out and promptly threw up. That was it. I decided I would not return
for another week of this. Instead I would spend the time doing research
for my book on ancient synagogues, a project which I had already begun.
That week at Gezer has been my total archaeological experience—
hardly a harbinger of a career in archaeology. Many years later at a reception
for Gezer alumni, I was the butt of some good-natured kidding. I am appar-
ently the only person who flunked out of the Gezer field school.
But despite it all, I have a special devotion to the site, which was
expressed in my 1983 BAR article. The article did more than simply
describe the site; it called for its preservation. Gezer could well be a major
tourist attraction. As far as archaeological sites go, it has everything, begin-
ning with its convenient location halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv,
not far off the main highway. It is also important in the Bible. When
the Egyptian pharaoh gave his daughter in marriage to King Solomon,
Gezer was part of the dowry (1 Kings 9:15–17). Even before that, how-
ever, Pharaoh Merneptah boasts of conquering Gezer, supposedly taking it
from the Canaanites, in the late 13th century B.C.E. Gezer dominates the
famous Via Maris, the main coastal highway running between Egypt and
Syria. And the mound itself offers a magnificent view in every direction.
Archaeologically, it is one of the richest sites in Israel. Its Canaanite
high place, dating from about 1600 B.C.E., boasts a unique line of ten
huge monoliths that stand as markers of an uncertain ceremony, perhaps to
commemorate a treaty among different tribes. The Gezer stones are remi-
niscent of the 12 standing stones (matzebot; singular matzebah) that Moses
set up at the foot of Mt. Sinai to mark the covenant between God and
the tribes of Israel. The Israelites sacrificed bulls to the Lord and dashed
part of the blood against the stones; another part they placed in basins
(Exodus 24:4–7). There is even a large basin at the base of one of the stand-
ing stones at Gezer.
Elsewhere on the site is the largest tower foundation in all of
Palestine, a tower that was once part of the city’s Middle Bronze Age for-
tifications (c. 1650 B.C.E.). A beautiful six-chambered gate, first noticed
by Yigael Yadin, was long thought to have been built by King Solomon.
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SIGNS OF AN ANCIENT COVENANT. Erected by the biblical

Canaanites more than 3,500 years ago, these massive standing stones still
dominate the mound of ancient Gezer. BAR has repeatedly promoted the
restoration of this important archaeological site, but thus far no one has
come forward to fund and lead the project.
Today, that claim is hotly disputed by some archaeologists, but the exca-
vators of Gezer (and others) maintain that the gate’s Solomonic date and
attribution are sound.
By 1983 Gezer had gone to seed, however, and it was difficult even to
get to the site. The ancient walls were disintegrating. Graffiti were painted
on the monoliths of the Canaanite high place. Overgrowth made it dif-
ficult to see what the archaeologists had left. No fence protected it from
stone looters. To illustrate the degree of neglect, I printed some “before”
and “after” pictures of the site in my article.
To encourage action, I wrote that BAR had deposited $5,000 in a
special Gezer Preservation Fund and challenged others to step up to the
plate. “The money would remain in the account for three years,” I wrote,
and would be available to the group or institution that would undertake
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the restoration of Gezer. I mentioned several possibilities—from the

Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums and its National Parks
Authority to Hebrew Union College, the Harvard Semitic Museum, the
National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities and the United States
Government. “Those who love the Bible ... have a special interest in and
responsibility for Tell Gezer,” I said.
“The Gezer project,” I continued, “was initiated by two archaeological
giants—George Ernest Wright of Harvard University and Nelson Glueck
of Hebrew Union College. Both men, unfortunately, are now dead. But
they left thousands of friends, students and devotees who cherish their
memory. They would not have left this work unfinished. In honor of their
memory, we cannot either.”
Alas, there were no takers, not a single expression of interest. The
money languished in its special account until we transferred it to our
regular account three years later.
I failed but I was persistent. A decade later I returned to the subject.
Writing in the form of a public memo to the director of Israel’s National
Parks Authority, “You are really missing a good bet!” I began. “Gezer has
enough magnificent remains to attract even the most jaded tourist,” I con-
tinued, but it “is rarely visited even by aficionados because it is so difficult
to get to—unmarked and neglected ... Gezer must be restored.”9
It was like dropping a pebble into a lake that made no ripples. In
the early years of the new century, I tried a different attack. One feature at
Gezer that I have not talked about is its magnificent water system. It has
not been explored, however, for a century—since the excavations led by
the Irish archaeologist R.A.S. Macalister. The date of this magnificent water
system is still uncertain. What we know is that the ancients, in order to
reach the water table inside the city walls, dug a stepped shaft down nearly
25 feet that led to a long tunnel that sloped downward into the heart of
the hill and ended in a cave where the water could be drawn. All this has
now been filled with rubble. It has been impossible to explore this water
system for a hundred years.
I thought of arousing some interest in the water system—and
therefore the site. When Ronny Reich, a friend and archaeologist, said he
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thought he knew where the source of the water was outside the city walls,
we decided to test his speculation. I raised money to do a GPR (Ground
Penetrating Radar) study to see if there was an underground anomaly at
the point where Ronny thought the tunnel led. The result was positive.
A bright red spot appeared on the GPR chart just where Ronny said the
outlet to the tunnel should be. So we did a trial excavation. Unfortunately,
there was nothing there.
In 2007, a new excavation of the site was undertaken by Steven
Ortiz, then associate professor of archaeology at the New Orleans Baptist
Seminary. I have been trying to convince Steve to open the water tunnel.
But clearing the tunnel of its accumulated debris is a major project. Steve
is receptive, however, and I predict that we will eventually do it. This, plus
Steve’s excavation, may well lead to the preservation and consolidation of
the archaeological remains of Tell Gezer. I have not given up.
The campaign to restore Gezer didn’t raise any hackles. No individual
or body was being accused of not doing its job. If I wanted to encour-
age the restoration of sites, fine. That was the attitude of the profession.
Actually, in our own small way, we did manage to encourage and foster
site preservation. I even created the BAR position of “Preservation Liaison,”
a position that appeared on BAR’s masthead until 2008. We contributed
to the impressive restoration of David Ussishkin’s important excavation
of biblical Lachish, about 25 miles southwest of Jerusalem. We also con-
tributed to the restoration of the so-called “Winter Palaces” at Herodian
Jericho, excavated by Hebrew University’s Ehud Netzer. Painstaking effort
was required to preserve the frescoes that covered the decorative-looking
opus reticulatum walls of the Roman-period palaces.
We also undertook a project on our own: the restoration and consoli-
dation of a site of enormous biblical importance that had been completely
ignored. It may have been ignored because the name of the archaeological
site is little known and hard to remember. Who or what was Izbet Sartah?
Actually, Izbet Sartah is very probably the site of biblical Ebenezer, where
the Israelites mustered before their disastrous battle with the Philistines in
which the Ark was captured.
The site is located in the low hill country, an area that was inhabited
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by the early Israelites. Their enemies, the Philistines, lived on the adjacent
coastal plain. I’m no military expert, but I think it’s clear why the Israelites
got pasted. They went down into the Philistine plain where they were no
match for the Philistine chariots with their metal wheels. As the Bible
itself reports: “There was no smith to be found in all the land of Israel, for
the Philistines had said to themselves, ‘The Hebrews might make swords
or spears.’ So all Israel would go down to the Philistines to repair any of
their plowshares, mattocks, axes or sickles” (1 Samuel 13:19–20). Joshua
too referred to the fact that the Israelites could not drive out the dwellers
in the plains (this time the Canaanites) “because of their iron chariots”
(Joshua 17:18; see also Joshua 17:16). In the plain, the Israelites were fight-
ing mano-a-mano, while the Philistines were fighting from their chariots.
No wonder it was disastrous. The Israelites should have waited for the
Philistines to come up to the hill country where the Philistine chariots
would have been relatively useless.
I have to add that the Ark the Philistines captured did them no
good. As I reported in the last chapter, according to the prominent Israeli
archaeologist Aren Maeir, the captured Israelite paladin gave the Philistines
E.D., which is part of the reason they decided to return the Ark to the
Israelites, together with five golden phalluses similar to the ones made of
clay Maeir found in his excavation of Philistine Gath.10 In any event, the
Israelite defeat at Ebenezer and the encroaching Philistine threat dem-
onstrated the need for a government that was stronger than early Israel’s
group of tribes. Thus was born the Israelite monarchy.
The views from Ebenezer are spectacular. The ancient battle comes
alive as you look down on the lush green plain toward Aphek where the
Philistines mustered. Ebenezer was excavated many years ago by Moshe
Kochavi of Tel Aviv University and his student Israel Finkelstein. They dis-
covered the walls of a typical, though beautifully preserved, Israelite house,
known as a four-room house. A four-room house consists of three long
rooms (the middle one usually open to the sky) and an adjoining broad
room along the back wall of the house. Dozens of four-room houses have
been excavated, but the one at Ebenezer is perhaps the best preserved of
them all. In addition to other less-well preserved buildings, Ebenezer has
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LOST BUT NOT FORGOTTEN. In 1979, BAR restored the little known
archaeological site of Izbet Sartah, probably biblical Ebenezer, where
the Israelites mustered for battle with the Philistines. It includes
this well-preserved example of an early Israelite “four-room house”
(bottom). But local authorities have not followed up on plans to turn
the site into a park. Today the house is barely visible, overgrown and
covered with weeds (top).
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more than 20 silos for storage and a cistern for water collection. It is a
good place to see how early Israelites lived.
The excavators at the site also discovered an inscription that may be
the earliest Hebrew writing ever found. The inscription appears on a small
6-inch-wide pottery sherd. The letters are clearly ancient Semitic. Hebrew is
only one of several Semitic languages, however, a language family that also
includes Canaanite. The basis for identifying the letters as Hebrew is the
fact that the site where it was found was inhabited by Israelites. The letters
make no sense as words, however. The sherd was apparently a scribe’s tablet
used for practicing the Semitic alphabet. But this nevertheless says some-
thing important about a society that had people learning how to write and
become scribes 3,000 years ago. Replicas of the inscribed pottery fragment
could easily be made available to tourists visiting the reconstructed site.
Ebenezer has all the ingredients that call for site restoration and pres-
ervation. By 1978, when we first published our articles about Ebenezer
and its inscribed pottery sherd, I had appointed Georg Majewski as our
Preservation Liaison. Georg was a well-informed, can-do retired engineer
who was active in amateur archaeological activities in Israel. (Alas, he has
recently passed away at age 88.) In 1979, we announced that BAR would
preserve and restore Ebenezer and that the work would be coordinated by
BAR’s Preservation Liaison and directed by Professor Kochavi. We were as
good as our word. We even put up attractive signs explaining the site and
its significance. The work was paid for by contributions from BAR readers.
One of these readers visited the site after the work had been completed and
wrote that it was “an inspired choice.” Professor Kochavi wrote me a letter
of appreciation in which he described a meeting of the various public and
private groups that had a stake in the development of the site. The meet-
ing included representatives from Tel Aviv University, the Department of
Antiquities, the National Parks Authority, the municipality of Rosh Ha’Ayin
where the site is located, and a charity group known as The National Fund
for Israel. All agreed, in Professor Kochavi’s words, “that every effort should
be made to proclaim the site as a national park.” These institutions also
agreed “to take care of the site and protect it from man and nature.”
For several years this was done. But the site was never declared a
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national park. And then “man and nature” took over. The signs were used
for target practice. They were full of bullet holes when I visited the site
years later. When they no longer served that purpose, they were simply
knocked down. In the meantime, the site had become completely over-
grown. It was difficult to identify any of the archaeological features. And
the site was now adjacent to a garbage dump.
I haven’t given up on Ebenezer, however. As I write, I have been
in touch with the new mayor of Rosh Ha’Ayin ... We’re making progress.
Other projects and campaigns also engaged us as BAR matured.
Unlike our efforts at site preservation, which were applauded on all sides,
some other efforts created discomfort, to say the least. One was what I
called “archaeology’s dirty secret.” Archaeologists love to dig. But they don’t
always like to write reports. A failure to write a report on an excavation
is tantamount to looting. An archaeological excavation is, by any other
name, destruction. This destruction is justified only because what is learned
during this destruction is made available to others, both scholars and the
public. There is no other justification for this destruction. A particular area
of a site, once dug, cannot be re-dug. In archaeology; testing a hypothesis
cannot involve repeated experiments.
In many cases, however, no final excavation report is ever written.
There are many reasons for this. The major one is that it’s just very, very
hard to write one. And, for this too, there are many reasons. Writing a
major excavation report is not something you can do in a week or a month.
It takes years of concentration and devotion and analysis, often to the
exclusion of things that would be much more fun. And excavation direc-
tors are, alas, quite human. In addition, there are people, including good
archaeologists, who just can’t write very well.
There are also other psychological impediments, including the fear
of criticism or even failure. What if the report is harshly judged by one’s
colleagues?
Then there are the technical issues. The scientific tests and analyses
that can be performed on the mountains of materials that are retrieved from
a modern excavation are almost endless. Where to stop? What is enough?
And should the scholar make some more general judgments—insights on
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a larger social or historical canvass—to make the report more significant?

Or would such large conclusions be too “iffy”?
Finally, excavators often fail to provide adequate funds in their bud-
gets for post-excavation expenses related to research and publication. In
short, the cry goes up as justification, “I have no money.”
My initial thought was to hold a conference that would address
all the issues involved in the problem. In the mid-1980s, I started to raise
money to support an international conference to address archaeology’s
“dirty secret.” I often came close, but ultimately failed. In the 1990s, I
decided to try some venues where the expenses of such a conference would
be minimal. A major biblical archaeology conference was being held at
Lehigh University in Lehigh, Pennsylvania, in the spring of 1994. A bevy of
leading archaeologists would be assembling, and they were traveling there
at someone else’s expense! I decided to hold an additional private session
at the Lehigh conference in which I invited scholars who were already
presenting to give papers on the field’s publication problem. This turned
out to be quite feasible and produced a series of insightful papers in the
subject. We published them as a small volume under the title Archaeology’s
Publication Problem.
Before BAR raised the issue, it was generally recognized as a serious
problem sotto voce, but rarely publicly discussed even in scholarly venues.
All of the participants in our Lehigh symposium recognized the serious-
ness of the publication problem. Hebrew University’s Amihai Mazar called
it “a professional disease.” His colleague Ephraim Stern acknowledged that
the problem had been “almost completely ignored by the profession.”
However, as Phil King said in his opening address, “We don’t want to
embarrass anyone,” so it was agreed that no specific names would be men-
tioned. One archaeologist was quoted as saying, “We all carry around with
us, like millstones around our necks, this terrible burden of unfinished or
unwritten excavation reports.”
Moreover, the problem was getting worse. In the period from the
end of the Second World War to 1959, only (only!) half of the excavations
in Israel failed to produce a report. By the 1970s, it was 75 percent. By the
1980s, it was 87 percent. Even in the best years, the results were terrible!
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I followed up the Lehigh conference with a session at the 1996

annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. These papers were
subsequently published as Volume 2 of Archaeology’s Publication Problem.
One proposal that I put on the table to alleviate the problem some-
what was the creation of a new profession—an archaeological editor/
writer who would be trained to assist dig directors in writing their final
reports. I tried to interest several people in Israel in creating such a course.
I even had money to pay them. But, in the end, they weren’t interested.
Someday, I think this suggestion will be picked up again. When, however,
remains a question.
Of course, as I have stated, from the outset I wanted to hold a major
conference to address all aspects of the publication problem. Out of this
failed effort grew something even better. One of the people I spoke to
in the early 1990s was the New York philanthropist Leon Levy. At one
point I thought I had a letter from him agreeing to subsidize a “publica-
tions conference” with a grant of $250,000 (including the publication of
papers). Leon suggested we include two scholars in the planning: Harvard’s
Lawrence Stager, who headed the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon, the
most important American excavation in Israel; and Philip King, whom we
have already met in these pages and who originally involved Leon in the
Ashkelon dig. I was delighted to have the involvement of these two friends
who were also major figures in the archaeological world.
Leon graciously invited the three of us to lunch in his New York
office (with food prepared by his private chef) for a planning session. The
morning of the lunch, I flew to New York and arrived on time, only to
learn that a sudden snowstorm in Boston resulted in the cancellation of all
flights out of Logan Airport. So Leon and I had a fine lunch in his office
accompanied by good conversation, but carefully avoiding discussion of
the publication conference the four of us had been scheduled to discuss.
My expectation that we would reschedule the meeting, however,
never materialized. Instead, on his own initiative, Leon decided on some-
thing far grander. As I had said in my talk at the Lehigh conference: “Money
matters ... Money won’t solve the problem by itself ... but money would
help.” Leon decided to provide it. With his wife Shelby White, he created
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The Shelby White–Leon Levy Program for Archaeological Publications,

which provides grants for the writing and publication of old excavations
that have gone unpublished. From its inception in 1997, the program has
awarded nearly $10 million in grants to more than 150 scholars. Phil King
directs the program out of an office at the Harvard Semitic Museum.
But problems still remain. I still think my suggestion regarding the
creation of the profession of an archaeological editor/writer is a good one.
The archaeological editor would be an expert in organizing the research
needed for an excavation report and knowing how to get it written.
Obviously, when it comes to a specialized skill like writing an excavation
report, a professional who has spent many years practicing the skill is
going to be better at it than someone who is attempting to write a report
for the first time.
The archaeological editor would also help the dig director decide
what should be in the report and how it should be published. These are
major, largely unaddressed issues that archaeologists often overlook. Is print
publication of the entire excavation report outmoded? What should an
excavation report include? An archaeological editor would help the profes-
sional address these concerns.
Leon Levy passed away in 2003. He had been fast friends with Phil
King for decades. They indeed made an odd couple—a Catholic priest
from Boston and a Jewish professional investor and philanthropist from
New York. But they got along famously. Leon called Phil his “rabbi.” Phil
was also a dear friend of Shelby’s, and that relationship survived Leon’s
death. Shelby and Phil work closely together on the administration of the
grants program and on the support of the Leon Levy Foundation for Larry
Stager’s dig at Ashkelon.
Leon also gave me a small grant to support the publication of the
Biblical Archaeology Society’s two volumes on Archaeology’s Publication
Problem, and I remained friendly with Leon and Shelby. Contrary to com-
mon belief, however, Leon never made a major contribution to the Biblical
Archaeology Society.
As the years went by after Leon’s death, Phil’s health declined, so I
decided to make a suggestion. I called Shelby and told her, “Don’t wait
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until Phil dies to do something for him.” We discussed several options.

The one she chose was a chair in Phil’s name at Harvard. On November
9, 2006, the Philip J. King Professorship was announced at a gala dinner at
Harvard. Shelby looked smashing in her designer clothes. And for the first
time ever, I saw Phil wearing a priest’s collar. Shelby made a little speech
in which she graciously told the select audience that I had suggested the
chair in Phil’s honor. I was grateful.
****
In the meantime, the early years at BAR had been spent not only putting
out a first-class magazine, but also implementing ideas for increas-
ing BAR’s reach and making it more attractive. One of these was the
“Backwards Subscription,” which is still good for a laugh at our market-
ing meetings. Since our circulation was rapidly increasing, especially in
those early years, we decided to offer our newer subscribers packages
of back issues. These sold unusually well. So we announced something
unique in magazine history as far as I know: The Backwards Subscription.
Instead of a packet of back issues bundled to create a themed package,
why not sell people all of the back issues, the issues they missed before
they became subscribers? BAR comes out every other month. Why not
provide them with another issue—one that they missed—on the off
month? Instead of starting with the first issue, we would start with the
latest one that they had missed—the issue just before they had started
their subscription—then work backwards from there. It was a brilliant
idea that proved quite popular! But it was a fulfillment nightmare!
People who started subscribing at different times were supposed to get
a different back issue every two months. Just keeping track of who got
what was almost impossible. But this was only the first major problem.
Finding the issue each “Backwards Subscriber” was supposed to get and
then mailing it out was even more challenging, not to mention time
consuming. We soon discontinued the offer.
We also tried a newsletter, in addition to the magazine, but that too
soon petered out.
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Maturing BAR
In the magazine, we added a section called “BAR Jr.” that was

intended for children. Unfortunately, we were never able to develop mate-
rial attractive enough for kids, so we soon dropped that idea.
After two years of publication, we developed something that proved
to be more successful—a travel/study program. We started with archaeo-
logical tours (led by Lorna Zimmerman, who thereby got into the tour
business and subsequently started her own travel agency, which continues
to this day and makes the travel arrangements for many of our tours). We
soon added three-day and six-day BAR seminars, taught by prominent
scholars at various places in intimate settings. In addition to those held
in the United States, we added a two-week-long seminar at the University
of Oxford and a “Seminar at Sea” (held on a Caribbean cruise) every
February. Our latest addition to this program has been what we call the
“Bible and Archaeology Fest,” held each November in conjunction with
the annual meetings of ASOR (American Schools of Oriental Research)
and SBL (Society of Biblical Literature). These meetings are held in a dif-
ferent city each year. Hundreds of leading scholars gather to give often
technical papers to their scholarly colleagues. We take advantage of their
all being together in the same city at one time by asking them to lecture
to our group of interested laypeople. Those laypeople who sign up for
the three-day-long Fest, as it is known, can attend their choice of morn-
ing and afternoon lectures. In addition, a prominent senior scholar gives
a plenary lecture on Friday evening, and the Society hosts a banquet on
Saturday that is attended by scholars as well as lay participants who enjoy
the close interaction that this setting provides. Several hundred people
now attend the Fests.
For years we had a special after-dinner talk at the Fest banquet. One
year, however, the speaker was late. So, to kill time until he arrived, I asked
two scholars to sit with me on the podium and take questions from the
audience. This proved to be so popular that we adopted it as a continuing
format. Each year I ask two scholars to sit with me on the podium and
we answer questions.
In those early years (but in later years as well), we also had to worry
about ways to increase revenue. The magazine simply could not sustain
116
itself on circulation revenue alone. Other publications—newspapers as well

as magazines—used to live on advertising. But we didn’t have any products
that would have special appeal to readers of a biblical archaeology maga-
zine. What were we going to sell—picks and trowels?
In our third year, we created for our readers (and their children)
special Biblical Archaeology Society T-shirts that featured an ancient pot
inscribed “Dig It.” The T-shirts were available in both English and Hebrew.
We didn’t make much money, but it was fun. So we expanded the opera-
tion. Sue Laden and I traveled all over the world looking for appropriate
merchandise—cartouche pendants from Egypt; a replica of an ancient
Egyptian necklace; dolls from a kibbutz; an olive-wood crèche set and a
ram’s-horn shofar from Israel; glass goblets from Hebron; a brass umbrella
stand from Turkey; shawls from Morocco; watches with Hebrew letters;
and a kit to make papyrus. Gradually the merchandise program grew and
grew, but we never seemed to make any money from it. Finally, after the
program grew so that it produced revenue of three-quarters of a million
dollars and only cost us approximately $750,000, we decided to drop it.
We still sell things, but mostly books and DVDs.
In 1984, buoyed by BAR’s success, I decided to create another maga-
zine called Bible Review. It would publish straight biblical articles—without
an archaeological component. The first issue came out in February 1985.
It was a marvelous little magazine, full of engaging stories and festooned
with full-color pictures of the finest biblical art. By this time, I was eas-
ily able to assemble a host of prominent biblical scholars for the editorial
advisory board and, equally important, to enlist many leading scholars to
write for the magazine.
As I look at the early issues to illustrate what the magazine was all
about, I feel renewed excitement. I want to tell you about all the enticing
stories it featured. Don’t you want to read an article by David Noel Freedman
from our first issue entitled “What the Ox and the Ass Know—But the
Scholars Don’t”? That issue also included articles about different ways of
looking at the birth of Jesus, problems of translating words that occur only
once in the Bible, and how to understand the love poetry of the Song of
Songs. The second issue included an article by Harvard’s Frank Cross on
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Maturing BAR
how the Dead Sea Scrolls reveal the text behind the final text of the Bible.
Another article discusses images of God in Western art. I could go on and on.
In my enthusiasm, I felt that Bible Review had an even greater poten-
tial than BAR. After all, I reasoned, many more people are interested in
the Bible than are interested in archaeology. But BR, as we called it, never
approached BAR’s circulation. In the end, it could not sustain itself finan-
cially. BR lasted for more than 20 years, until we folded it into BAR in 2006.
In 1987, I acquired a Jewish magazine called Moment. By then I was
personally grappling with Jewish issues and ideas—not religious but secu-
lar. I wanted a Jewish voice. I knew it would be too difficult and expensive
to start from scratch. I looked for an existing magazine I could acquire.
There is a saying that if you are Jewish, you never have an empty mailbox.
Most Jewish magazines and newsletters are free or come with membership
in a Jewish organization. Membership in some of these organizations runs
into the hundreds of thousands. B’nai B’rith Magazine comes with member-
ship in that society’s fraternal organization. Hadassah Magazine comes with
membership in the women’s Zionist organization. There are many others.
Little independent magazines, like Commentary on the right and Tikkun
on the left, have always struggled and need to be supported. Besides, they
are gray, essentially pictureless magazines and that was not what I had in
mind. The closest to what I envisioned was a magazine called Present Tense.
But it had recently folded. The only other one was Moment.
Moment had been started 17 years earlier by Elie Wiesel and Leonard
(Leibel) Fein. Not long after, Elie dropped it and left it to Leibel. “I like
beginnings,” as Elie later told me. He likes to get in with new ideas and
then get out. After 17 years, Leibel was a little tired of the struggle—any
Jewish magazine is a struggle. We made a deal and I acquired Moment for
a little over $100,000.
By this time, I thought I knew a little about publishing small maga-
zines. I had successfully launched two of them. I would need a little help
the first year, but after that it would be able to sail on its own. From ten
friends and philanthropists who gave me $25,000 each, I raised $250,000
for acquisition and operational costs that would see me through the first
year. I published my first issue as editor in September 1987.
118
As would so often be the case, editorially all went well. But at the
end of the first year, I knew I would need a subsidy for another year. So I
went back to the well. By the end of the second year, however, I realized
that I had been wrong in thinking that I could produce Moment without
a continuing annual subvention. I could either drop the magazine or be
resigned to having to raise at least $100,000 a year—forever! I chose the
latter. It proved to be a continual and burdensome struggle. The people
and the issues I grappled with editorially, however, made it all worthwhile.
Early on, I called Wiesel, whom I had never met, and we agreed to
have lunch in New York. He was, as I expected, gracious and willing to
help. Indeed, he offered to become a member of my editorial advisory
board. I rejected his offer: “I want you, not your name,” I said. Elie and
I have had a wonderful relationship over the years, but as things have
turned out, his contributions to Bible Review and BAR have been more
significant than his help with Moment. He wrote a series of ten articles on
major and minor biblical characters for Bible Review, which I was natu-
rally very proud to publish.
On one occasion, Elie said he would like to meet Phyllis Trible, with
whom I had worked on several articles. Phyllis is probably the country’s
leading feminist biblical scholar. I of course said I would be glad to arrange
a meeting, and the three of us subsequently had lunch together. I decided
in advance that I would say little, leaving these two giants to get to know
one another. And that’s what I did. But the lunch, though cordial, was a
failure. The conversation was prosaic. “What are you working on ...?” kind
of talk. Maybe the auspices weren’t right. Maybe they needed a specific
topic to pursue. Maybe each was too reticent to be forward. To me, it also
showed that even great scholars were just like the rest of us.
Another meeting proved more successful: I separately asked Elie and
Frank Cross, perhaps the country’s leading Bible scholar, if they would
agree to a joint interview to be published in Biblical Archaeology Review.
Both said yes. Elie lives in New York but was teaching at Boston University,
so he was in Boston two days a week, and Frank was nearby at Harvard.
So we arranged a date at the Harvard Semitic Museum for the interview.
One of the few pictures I have hanging on my office wall is of the three
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Maturing BAR
of us joking together after the interview. Needless to say, it was a moving

experience to listen to these two larger-than-life figures talk about the Bible
from their slightly different but complementary perspectives. Naturally I
enjoyed probing the differences. For each, the Bible was central to his life.
Wiesel entered the biblical world almost from infancy. He has spent his
life exploring its layers of meaning. He recalled how at age four he came
home from synagogue and shouted to his grandmother that the hitherto
childless Sarah had finally become pregnant. Cross also relates to the Bible
in an emotional way, but he has spent his scholarly life exploring the his-
tory of its formation and the ancient world in which these events occurred.
For me, it was a gripping experience exploring these different perspectives
with the two of them.
Editing a magazine has always been a learning experience. I didn’t start
with an interest in selling my ideas to others but saw magazines as an oppor-
tunity to explore new worlds. Moment surely provided new opportunities
of this kind. Jewish culture is exceptionally rich—and it was all available to
me through the pages of Moment. For example, in the same issue in which
I published an interview with then-Israel Defense Minister Yitzchak Rabin,
I published an article by left-leaning Israeli novelist Amos Oz.
The interview with Rabin was especially memorable for me. It took
place in his office in Tel Aviv. He had recently complained that the press
was misquoting him, so he had his own burly man in the room with his
own tape recorder to make sure I did not misquote. Less than thirty sec-
onds before the end of the interview, I looked down at my tape recorder
and realized I had depressed the “play” button instead of the “record” but-
ton. There would be nothing from the interview on my tape. I gulped but
graciously thanked Rabin and walked out with the burly man who had
also taped the interview. In desperation, I explained to him what had hap-
pened. I asked if he would make a copy of his tape and send it to me in
Washington. Instead, he removed his tape and simply gave it to me. I threw
my arms around his broad shoulders and embraced him like a long-lost
brother. The interview promptly appeared in Moment.
Moment also gave me an opportunity for some exciting travel. Sue
Singer, then my executive editor, and I traveled to what was then known
120
A FULL LOAD. By 1998, I was editing three magazines in addition to

BAR. Bible Review dealt with topics that were more directly focused
on the Bible. Moment was a magazine of Jewish culture and society.
Archaeology Odyssey dealt with the archaeology of the Mediterranean and
Near Eastern worlds. We ultimately closed Bible Review and Archaeology
Odyssey and sold Moment to a foundation controlled by the then
managing editor.
121
Maturing BAR
as the FSU, the Former Soviet Union, to explore the condition of the previ-
ously suppressed Jewish communities, not only in Russia but also in such
far-flung places as Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan. We went to Berlin before
the wall came down and crossed over to East Berlin. We explored com-
munist Czechoslovakia and visited the Nazi death camps. These were all
exciting adventures.
From the lofty to the pedestrian, my acquisition of Moment affected
another change in my life: With three magazines, I decided it was no lon-
ger feasible to edit and manage them as a sideline. It was time to give up
the law. In fact, it was only a small step. My magazine time was encroach-
ing so heavily on my time in the law office that I was hardly practicing law
anymore. In one sense, it was a small step. In another sense, it was major.
I kind of lost my identity. When people would ask me at a party what I
did, I could no longer say, “I am a lawyer.” After 20 years as an editor, this
is no longer a problem—“I am the editor of an obscure little magazine,”
I say now. But at first it was, I admit, a loss of stature. Being a Harvard
lawyer gave me some of the confidence I had needed. But being a lawyer
was more than my identity. I loved the law—and still do. After all these
years away from the law, I still revere it. I still read legal publications, like
the American Bar Association Journal, that continue to come to me. In the
newspaper, I read articles about court cases with special interest. And most
of my friends in Washington are still lawyers. Outside of Washington, my
friends are mostly academics. So in a sense, I’m still leading a double life.
And I continue to have some brushes with the courtroom, as my struggle
with the Dead Sea Scrolls will illustrate.
Once I left the practice, however, I pursued my full-time edito-
rial duties with zest. Indeed, I had enough energy to launch one more
magazine. In early 1998, we published the premiere issue of Archaeology
Odyssey. Biblical Archaeology Review combined archaeology and the Bible;
Bible Review emphasized the first part of that title, biblical. What about
another magazine, I reasoned, that emphasized the second part of that title,
archaeological. It would cover the world around the Bible—the ancient civ-
ilizations of Mesopotamia, the worlds of Greece and Rome and everything
in between. The articles wouldn’t need to have any direct relationship to
122
the Bible, but anyone interested in the Bible should be interested in what
was going on around biblical civilization, both before and after the time
of the Bible. That is what Archaeology Odyssey would cover. The cover of
the premiere issue featured the famous golden mask found at Troy and
asked, “How Historic Is Homer?”
With the inauguration of Archaeology Odyssey, I was publishing and
editing four bi-monthly magazines—24 issues a year. We were spitting out
an issue every two weeks!
Within the industry, we are what is known as a niche publisher—a
publisher whose content appeals to a small group of especially com-
mitted readers. Most publishers start by looking for a niche that isn’t
occupied—or at least isn’t crowded. My view was different. I didn’t look
for the idea that I thought would interest the reader. Rather I proceeded
from what interested me! Then my job was to make the public inter-
ested in what I was interested in. My excitement and enthusiasm no
doubt helped me along. And in those early years, we were solvent—an
achievement in itself for these kinds of magazines. That would change,
however—although not for a while.
We published Archaeology Odyssey for eight years—until the first
issue of 2006—but finally had to close the magazine down at the same
time we discontinued Bible Review. It was small comfort that all maga-
zines (and newspapers), even the big ones, were going through difficult
times. At about the same time, we (technically, the non-profit organi-
zation that owned it) sold Moment magazine to my managing editor
(technically, to the non-profit organization that she controlled) for a pit-
tance. While it was a sad day, it was also a great day for me. I could spend
all my time on the magazine that was my first love and that I loved most.
I have never been happier.
123
chapter ix
Freeing the Scrolls

i was ashamed. i was embarrassed for the man. He was a caricature
of a fawning Jew debasing himself before nobility. Ben Zion Wacholder
was an Old World professor teaching rabbinic literature and law at Hebrew
Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was small and stooped and old and
white-haired. He spoke with an accent. And he was almost blind; he could
tell time only by holding his watch to within an inch of his eye. Since he
could not easily read, he hired students to read to him. Of course he had
a prodigious memory. And he had just published a book on the Dead Sea
Scrolls. He had a problem with the book, however. Most of the Dead Sea
Scrolls were unavailable to him. It was like trying to clear a forest with one
hand tied behind your back.
“Wonderful! Wonderful!” repeated Ben Zion Wacholder in his
accented English. He was responding to John Strugnell, Oxonian and
professor of Christian origins at Harvard University, who had just finished
delivering his paper at a 1985 conference of Dead Sea Scroll scholars at
New York University. Strugnell was the star of the conference. The excla-
mations of other scholars clearly agreed with Wacholder’s assessment of
Strugnell’s paper. Except for a young scholar who had studied with him,
Strugnell was the only one at the conference who gave a paper on a
new—that is unpublished—scroll. The rest of the scholars were left to
re-chew the old lettuce.
It was there at the conference table around which we all sat that I first
felt emotional about the issue—the failure to publish the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The issue was not new to me, however. Strugnell had played the
same trick before—teasing his colleagues with an unpublished Dead Sea
Scroll to which he alone had access. In April 1984, a three-day conference
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Freeing the Scrolls
of scholars had been held in Jerusalem. Although Strugnell did not attend,
a paper of which he was the senior author was read at the Jerusalem con-
ference by the junior author, Elisha Qimron, who would later sue me for
publishing the text that was the subject of their paper. The text, known
as MMT (from the phrase Miqsat Ma’aseh Ha-Torah, “Some precepts of the
Law” that appears in it) was recognized at the conference as extraordi-
narily important. Although Strugnell and Qimron’s paper was about the
text, the text itself was not disclosed. The two authors of the paper told
the assembled scholars that MMT had survived in six copies, reflecting the
text’s importance, although none of the copies was complete. Strugnell
and Qimron believed that MMT was a letter from the leader of the Dead
Sea Scroll sect, the Teacher of Righteousness. It was probably addressed
to the high priest of the Temple in Jerusalem. If their dating was correct,
it was the most ancient of the Qumran literary documents. In their own
words, this letter is “undoubtedly ... one of the most important docu-
ments from Qumran.” Only five or six of MMT’s 130 lines, however, were
revealed to the assembled scholars.
Like those at the New York University conference, most of the schol-
ars at the Jerusalem conference were nevertheless grateful and respectful.
On the other hand, there was also a clear rumbling of discontent. As I
reported in BAR:
“While a flush of excitement surged through the scholars listening
to the paper, there was also a deep concern—concern that the remain-
der of the letter is still unavailable to scholars more than 30 years after
its discovery.”
David Noel Freedman, an internationally known biblical scholar,
called the situation with regard to the unpublished scrolls “very distress-
ing.” He was not the first. As early as 1976, Professor Theodor Herzl Gaster
of Columbia University complained:
“Many of us who stand outside the charmed circle of the ‘Scrolls
team’ in Jerusalem deplore the fact that, after nearly twenty years, so rela-
tively little has been made generally available to us ... [T]he prevailing
policy will, by the hazards of mortality, prevent a whole generation of older
scholars from making their contribution.”
126
AFTER THEIR DISCOVERY in 1947, the bulk of the Dead Sea Scrolls
remained unpublished for nearly a half century. In 1991, the Biblical
Archaeology Society published two volumes of previously unpublished
scrolls, one for texts reconstructed with a computer and the other of
photographs of the unpublished scrolls. With our help, the scrolls were
freed and the scroll monopoly was broken. This scroll, known as MMT,
was to figure in a lawsuit against me. I lost!
Morton Smith, also of Columbia and a member of my edito-

rial board, bitterly commented that some scholars “have now withheld
Qumran material from the public for over 25 years.”
Perhaps the most famous complaint was that of Oxford’s Geza
Vermes in 1977:
“The world is entitled to ask the authorities responsible ... what they
intend to do about this lamentable state of affairs. For unless drastic mea-
sures are taken at once, the greatest and most valuable of all Hebrew and
Aramaic manuscript discoveries is likely to become the academic scandal
par excellence of the twentieth century.”
At first, I simply collected and reported these views. This, however,
triggered comment in the wider press. For example, Newsweek picked
up on my report in BAR on the Jerusalem conference. It also collected
other scholarly comment. For example, James Charlesworth of Princeton
Theological Seminary called the situation “the scandal of our time.”
And of course as time went on, the drumbeat of my own complaints
became more persistent. Thus, in my report on the New York University
conference in 1985, I wrote:
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Freeing the Scrolls
DR. JECKYL AND MR. HYDE. An original

member of the scrolls publication team,
John Strugnell of Harvard University
became chief scroll editor in 1984.
Strugnell was a strong-willed and brilliant
scholar, but he was dismissive and even
hostile to critics, who complained of his
secretive and possessive treatment of the
unpublished scrolls. When one of his anti-
Semitic tirades was published both in a
Hebrew newspaper and in BAR, Strugnell
was removed as chief editor in 1990.
“The leitmotif throughout the three-day New York conference, how-

ever, was the fact that after nearly 40 years, a substantial mass of Dead
Sea Scroll materials has not been published and remains inaccessible to
scholars generally.”
At this point, I tried to emphasize Strugnell’s brilliance, compe-
tence and conscientious effort to get the material out, while also being
critical of him. I referred to him as a “superb scholar ... Whatever he pro-
duces is universally acknowledged to be first-rate. It would surely be unfair
to single him out for criticism ... He serves as an example here simply
because he was there.” I gave him credit for assigning some of his texts to
his graduate students.
One of the other papers at the New York University conference—
by Michael Knibb of King’s College London—discussed an important
Hebrew text known as the Damascus Document found in Egypt at the
end of the 19th century. Additional fragments were later found among the
Dead Sea Scrolls but were unavailable to Knibb. Also relevant to Knibb’s
analysis was the polemic nature of MMT, the Dead Sea Scroll discussed by
Strugnell and Qimron in their Jerusalem conference paper in 1984. The
only way that Knibb knew that MMT was polemical, however, was that
Strugnell and Qimron had earlier said so in their Jerusalem conference
paper: Knibb referred to MMT’s “‘distinct polemic nature’—as the editors
have described it.”11 Knibb could not confirm this from his own knowl-
edge of the text. He only knew what the editors had told him. (By the
128
time Strugnell and Qimron got around to publishing the text with their
commentary in 1994, they had changed their minds. They decided that
“the tone of the polemic in MMT is [only] moderate ... [T]he addressee
is treated with respect.”)
What led to this deplorable situation?
****
The dramatic saga of the discovery and recovery of the scrolls is well known.
Some Bedouin shepherds near the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea were
looking for a lost goat or sheep, so the story goes, when one of them threw
a stone into a cave to scare the animal out. Instead of the sound of a bleating
sheep, however, they heard the sound of breaking pottery. When one of
them went in to explore, he discovered some clay jars, one of which had
broken. Inside the jars were rolled-up ancient documents wrapped in linen.
While the details are obscure and uncertain, seven scrolls eventually
were divided between two Bethlehem middlemen into two lots, one of
four and the other of three. The smaller lot was offered for sale through
still more middlemen to Professor E.L. Sukenik, father of Yigael Yadin. At
that time, Yadin was chief of operations of Israel’s underground army, the
Haganah. This was in 1947, during the final days of the British Mandate
over Palestine. Arab and Jewish Jerusalem were already divided by a barbed
wire fence. The initial negotiations for the three scrolls were conducted
between Sukenik and his Arab interlocutor through the barbed wire. In
the end, Sukenik had to take a bus to Arab Bethlehem to finalize the
deal and pick up the scrolls. It was a dangerous trip. Both his son and his
wife thought it too dangerous and urged him not to go. Tensions were
especially high because half a world away at Lake Success, New York, the
United Nations was nearing a vote on a resolution to partition Palestine
into a Jewish state and an Arab state.
Sukenik disregarded his family’s advice and took an Arab bus to
Bethlehem to pick up the scrolls. He recalled that his hand trembled
when he first held one of the scrolls, the book of the prophet Isaiah. He
returned to Jerusalem with the scrolls. Within hours of his return, on
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Freeing the Scrolls
November 29, 1947, the United Nations passed a resolution by the neces-
sary two-thirds, effectively creating a Jewish state for the first time since
the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple nearly two thousand
years before. Joyous celebrations broke out as Jews took to the streets. For
Sukenik, the conjunction of events was almost messianic—the recovery
of a 2,000-year-old scroll of Isaiah and the re-creation of a Jewish state in
Zion. As anticipated, the next day seven Arab armies declared war on the
new Jewish nation, which would officially declare itself a state nearly six
months later, on May 15, 1948.
The other four scrolls were purchased by the Metropolitan of the
Syrian Orthodox Church, Mar Athanasius Yeshue Samuel. When he was
unable to sell the scrolls from Jerusalem, he brought them to the United
States where he placed his famous ad in the classified section of the Wall
Street Journal: “Four Dead Sea Scrolls for Sale. Biblical manuscripts dating
back to at least 200 BC ... Ideal gift to an educational or religious institu-
tion ... Box F 206.”
On June 1, 1954, when this ad appeared, as luck would have it, Yigael
Yadin was in the United States on a lecture tour. He was now a famous
archaeologist. Someone called his attention to the classified ad and Yadin
made secret arrangements to purchase the scrolls—which he ultimately
did for $250,000, a paltry price even then.
All seven of the intact scrolls were now in Israel’s hands. A special
building, called the Shrine of the Book, was built for them on the grounds
of the Israel Museum and within a reasonable time they were published by
Israeli and American scholars—all except one of the scrolls, which could
not be unrolled at that time.
Almost from the moment the scrolls came into scholarly hands, the
question naturally arose as to where they had been discovered. The answer
came in 1949 when an officer in the Arab Legion noticed freshly turned
dirt in front of a cave near the Dead Sea. Inside were scroll fragments
that had been part of some of the scrolls the Bedouin had recovered.
This was it—Cave 1!
In 1951, G. Lankester Harding, the British director of the Jordanian
Department of Antiquities, and Father Roland de Vaux of the École
130
biblique in Jerusalem, began to excavate the major archaeological site in

the area, about a half mile from Cave 1. The site was known as Qumran
and also as Khirbet Yahud—“the ruin of the Jews.” They hoped their excava-
tion would uncover more scrolls or at least fragments of scrolls and other
context for their creation and deposit in the cave. The discovery of scrolls
hidden in the cave was considered a one-time event. As Harvard’s Frank
Cross put it, “It was generally assumed that by a stroke of fortune an iso-
lated cache had been found. Apparently it occurred to few scholars that
Cave 1 was other than a chance hiding place, or storage place, chosen by
some odd but happy quirk of an ancient mind.”
The Bedouin made no such assumption. They continued looking for
other scroll caves. In early 1952 they found Cave 2, not far from Cave 1. It
contained only a few fragments, but this was enough to alert the scholarly
community to the possibility of other manuscripts in other caves.
The race was on: the scholars versus the Bedouin. Members of the
Ta‘amireh tribe to which the original Bedouin discoverers belonged also
hired themselves out as workers on Harding and de Vaux’s excavation
at Qumran. They were learning how to be archaeologists—or at least
how to dig.
Qumran sits on a marl terrace of crumbly sandstone overlooking
the Dead Sea. Behind it for miles on the Dead Sea littoral are steep, high,
rocky limestone cliffs. It was in these cliffs that the Bedouin found both
Cave 1 and Cave 2. When the scholars organized a team to search for
more caves, they sensibly centered their search in the limestone cliffs. And
indeed they did hit pay dirt—once. Among the 270 caves they explored,
they found Cave 3, containing the famous Copper Scroll, perhaps the
most mysterious of the Dead Sea Scrolls, with descriptions of 64 loca-
tions where vast treasure had been buried.12 So far none of the treasure
has been found.
The Bedouin were not so clever. They wasted their time searching
and digging in the caves in the marl terrace as well as in the limestone
cliffs. Among them were the Bedouin workers who were doing the digging
at Qumran. When they were not excavating at the site, they were digging
elsewhere in whatever cave they could find.
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Freeing the Scrolls
Among these caves was what has become known as Cave 4, located
right under the noses of the archaeologists supervising the excavation of
Qumran. For all practical purposes, Cave 4 is a part of the site. There the
Bedouin removed fragments of nearly 600 Dead Sea Scrolls (not even one,
however, was intact)! Finally, the archaeologists got wind of the Bedouin
excavation, but by that time, 80 percent of the scrolls had been removed,
and the anonymous Bedouin were represented by Kando, the infamous
and wily antiquities dealer who played such a major role in the Dead Sea
Scroll drama. In Cave 4 itself, the professionals were simply left with a
mop-up operation.
The small percent of Cave 4 scrolls professionally excavated never-
theless provided valuable confirmation that the other 80 percent had in
fact come from Cave 4. But for this, the scholars would have to rely on
Kando’s word. There was still another danger—that Kando would sell the
fragments as he got them from the Bedouin to buyers all over the world
(it is estimated there were 15,000 fragments). If that happened, the frag-
ments would never be able to be pieced together. Some kind of deal had
to be made with Kando to prevent this from happening.
Ultimately Harding and de Vaux made an arrangement with
Kando that they would pay one Jordanian dinar (pegged to the British
pound, about $2.80 at the time) for each square centimeter of script. This
arrangement saved the Cave 4 fragments for the scholarly community. The
Jordanian government set aside 15,000 dinars ($42,000) for the purchase
of the Cave 4 material, but these and other funds were soon exhausted.
Kando continued to bring more and more fragments in a steadily flow-
ing stream to the Palestine Archaeological Museum in east Jerusalem. At
this point, institutions from the United States, England, Germany, Canada
and the Vatican made financial contributions, with the understanding that
after the fragments were published, contributors would receive a propor-
tionate share of the fragments. (The Jordanian government later expunged
this understanding without, however, returning the contributors’ money.)
It was not until 1958 that Kando brought in the last of the fragments.
They were all there together in the Palestine Archaeological Museum—a
major and critical achievement.
132
Long before this, however, it was clear that arrangements also had to
be made for the study and publication of the thousands of fragments that
had come in to the museum. Word went out from de Vaux to international
scholars and from them to others that appropriate younger scholars who
were needed in Jerusalem to work on the fragments. In this way, a team
of eight scholars was assembled, headed by de Vaux himself.
The idea of a team may imply a formal organization, but that was
not the case. The team was a fluid group of individuals who sometimes
worked together on a project. It included two Americans (Frank Cross,
who was later to distinguish himself at Harvard as the most prominent
and influential Dead Sea Scroll scholar in the United States; and Father
Patrick Skehan of Catholic University in Washington), a Frenchman (Abbé
Jean Starcky), a Polish priest from Paris (Father J.T. Milik, who was generally
regarded as the most talented of the group in fitting the fragments together
and reading the faint script), a German (Claus-Hunno Hunzinger, who
soon resigned and was replaced by a French priest, Father Maurice Baillet,
whose membership was also short-lived) and two Englishmen (John Marco
Allegro, the atheist of the group; and John Strugnell, fresh out of Oxford).
Roland de Vaux, the head of the team, served mainly in an administrative
capacity (in addition to leading the excavation of Qumran).
Working in Jerusalem, the team’s initial task was to prepare the
fragments physically so they could be studied. Cross has described the
fragments as they came in:
Many fragments are so brittle or friable that they can scarcely be touched
with a camel’s-hair brush. Most are warped, crinkled or shrunken,
crusted with soil chemicals, blackened by moisture and age ... Often a
fragment will exhibit an area of acute decay and shrinkage ... The bad
spot may draw the entire fragment into a crinkled or scalloped ball, so
that the fragment is almost impossible to flatten.13
After the cleaning process, the fragments were placed under glass
on long tables in a room that became known as the scrollery. Then the
process began of trying to assemble fragments of the same document. This
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Freeing the Scrolls
was based on the identification of joins, the identity of handwriting, the

sense of the text and even the condition and coloration of the parchment.
The next step was to assign the various manuscripts thus assembled
(mostly with 90 percent of the document missing) to individual schol-
ars on the team for publication. This was done informally. The various
members of the team tended to have different specialties, which quite natu-
rally became the basis for assignments. Starcky was an Aramaicist, so the
Aramaic documents went largely to him. To Cross and Skehan went the
biblical texts (fragments of more than 200 different biblical manuscripts
were found in Cave 4). It was all a very friendly affair.
In those early years, there were some remarkable achievements.
Working in Jerusalem, the team transcribed thousands and thousands
of scroll fragments. With a transcription, a scholar can easily read the
letters (if letters are uncertain, this is noted) without breaking his eye-
balls looking through a magnifying glass at an ancient parchment that
is about to crumble.
A separate project later proved to be key to the release of the scrolls.
Three other scholars (Father Joseph Fitzmyer of Catholic University,
Father Raymond Brown of Union Theological Seminary in New York
and Willard Oxtoby of the University of Toronto) prepared a concordance
of the Cave 4 fragments. (A separate concordance of the non-Cave 4 frag-
ments was prepared by Javier Teixidor.) A concordance lists each word in
a document together with a few words before and after the concorded
word. The concorded words are then arranged in alphabetical order. With
a concordance, the team of scholars could quickly identify any particular
word in the Cave 4 fragments and compare it with its use in every other
document from Cave 4. This was immensely helpful to individual scholars
studying individual documents. It was the tool by which they could tease
out the meaning of words, comparing their use in a variety of contexts.
Initially, all this work on the Cave 4 fragments proceeded with
remarkable efficiency and speed—until 1960. On May 11, 1960, John
D. Rockefeller, Jr., died. And with his death, the financial support of the
project also died. No longer supported in Jerusalem, the team dispersed,
coming together sporadically in the summer or at scholarly conferences.
134
Individual team members continued to work on their assignments at

home, using photographs and occasional visits to Jerusalem.
Other infirmities in the system also became evident. The team had
no formal organization, no structure, no plan, no rules, no way to assign
duties, no way to choose members or expel them, and no way to choose
a chief editor should a new one become necessary. When Père de Vaux
died in 1971, the team chose as chief editor Père Pierre Benoit who, like de
Vaux, was affiliated with the École biblique. Benoit was a beautiful man;
I don’t mean his looks, although he was indeed handsome, especially in
his cassock. He was kind and pure and mild. But he was not a strong edi-
tor. In later years, we were friends, and I spoke to him about the delays
in the publication of the Cave 4 materials. “What can I do?” he told me,
“I urge them to publish.”
The root of the publication problem lay in another scholarly tradi-
tion. When a scholar is assigned responsibility for the publication of an
archaeological artifact, including an inscription, he or she has complete
control of it.
There is nowhere you can go to find a formal statement of this rule.
Perhaps worse, there is nowhere you can go to find out the limits of this
tradition. The principle was expanded beyond reason in the case of assign-
ments to publish Dead Sea Scrolls.
For example, the rule usually pertains to an archaeological arti-
fact that has been uncovered in a professional excavation. The right of
publication belongs to the excavator. In the case of the Dead Sea Scrolls,
however, the team members were not the excavators. They were chosen
arbitrarily from among bright young people with little more experience
or standing than that. The claims they thereafter made equivalent to
ownership were astounding.
Publication of artifacts in the scholarly world is a term of art that
can mean many things, from just publishing a photograph of the artifact,
to including a drawing, to including a short discussion with some tech-
nical notes (a so-called “diplomatic” edition), to engaging in a full study
with extensive commentary. In this regard, the team members individually
decided that they would publish their hoard only in the context of a full
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Freeing the Scrolls
and detailed scholarly analysis with commentary. One especially egregious

example involves Milik’s fragments of the pseudepigraphic book of Enoch.
Thirty years after the original assignment, Milik finally published a 439-
page text-cum-commentary. In the meantime, Enoch scholars all over the
world had to wait, often postponing their own publications because they
could not do their work without taking into account the Cave 4 Enoch
fragments that Milik was hoarding.
To make matters worse, it gradually became clear that some of the
assignments to individual scholars were so massive that the assigned scholars
could not possibly publish all their texts-cum-commentary in their lifetimes.
Instead of making reassignments to senior scholars, however, the
team members adopted another stratagem: assigning a text to one of
their graduate students. The enmity this produced in excluded scholars
was palpable. This device meant that a graduate student could work on
an unpublished Dead Sea Scroll at Harvard, for example, but not at Yale.
It gave team members a lock on some of the brightest students.
That was not the end of it. When, by the vagaries of mortality, a
member of the team died, he reserved the right to bequeath his scroll
assignment to a colleague, who then assumed the same privileges as his
testator. That is, there was no time limit on publication; the assignee could
and did keep the text itself secret until the full monte of his scholarly com-
mentary was completed.
And all the time, no non-team scholar was permitted to see a text
even if it might be critical to his or her own research.
In June 1967, during the Six-Day War, the Palestine Archaeological
Museum, where the Cave 4 texts were stored in east Jerusalem, fell to
Israeli forces. The Dead Sea Scrolls were now controlled by Israel, rather
than Jordan. It seemed to me that the continued responsibility for the
delay and the unavailability of the texts to other scholars lay with Israel.
As I wrote in BAR, “If Israel has control, it also has responsibility. It should
exercise both.”
I would have expected that at the very least Israel would have
demanded that some Jewish scholars be added to the Judenrein scroll team
that had been appointed under Jordanian auspices. After all, these were
136
Jewish documents. But it did not. Instead, Israel confirmed the team of
scholars that had been established when Jordan controlled the scrolls.
Essentially, Israel did not act because it did not want to appear
boorish, unrefined and grabby (Jewish?). Years later, I talked to the two
major Israeli players, Yigael Yadin and Avraham Biran who was head of
the Israel Department of Antiquities in 1967. When an emissary of the
queen of Holland came to Biran asking permission to continue work-
ing on some inscriptions, Biran replied to the emissary, “What do you
think we are? Are we here just to grab things?” Biran went on to tell me,
“And that was the attitude we had toward the Dead Sea Scrolls ... We
did not want to appear as barbarians who prevent other scholars from
doing their work.”
In later years, Biran realized he had made a mistake. “It’s only, as I say,
years later, and partly because you started the whole battle for the publica-
tion ... Look, you’re right,” he told me. “I didn’t anticipate ... ”
Yadin too had concurred in the decision to leave the original team
in control, although he maintained that one condition of this permission
was that publication “proceed quickly.”14
Nearly 20 years after Israel captured the Palestine Archaeological
Museum (now renamed the Rockefeller Museum), little more had been
published. In 1985 I editorialized about Israel’s responsibility:
The rules of the game must be changed. And the appropriate Israeli
authorities must change them ... It is clear what should be done:
Photographs, including infrared photographs of all unpublished Dead
Sea Scroll materials, should be published immediately ... At the very
least, Israel, through a committee of its own, could negotiate with the
scholars who have unpublished scroll materials to work out an agreeable
time schedule for publication and to negotiate reassignments of materi-
als that cannot be published within, say, the next two or three years.15
If I would have expected support from some Israeli scholars, I would

have been disappointed. We printed a letter of support from a Presbyterian
minister, but none from Israeli scholars—because we received none.
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Freeing the Scrolls
In the early 1980s, Père Benoit was diagnosed with what was to
be terminal cancer (he died in 1987). In 1984 he resigned as chief edi-
tor. During Benoit’s 13-year tenure only two volumes were published in
the official series of scroll publications, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert.16
Benoit was replaced by John Strugnell. How Strugnell was chosen is by
no means clear, but the Israel Department of Antiquities concurred in
the appointment.17
A weak and indecisive director of the Department of Antiquities, Avi
Eitan, did ask Strugnell for a timetable as to when the various categories
of scrolls would be published. He never got it.
Soon after Strugnell replaced Benoit as chief editor, a similar change
occurred in the Department of Antiquities. Eitan was replaced with Amir
Drori, a former general. Drori too pressed Stugnell for a timetable. The
Israelis also created a secret three-person oversight committee that informed
Strugnell he no longer had the sole right to reassign publication rights. In an
interview on National Public Radio, Strugnell was asked, “Does the Israeli
oversight committee have the power to take control of the documents?”
Strugnell replied, “I meet with them and they make suggestions and
we discuss them and the ones that are reasonable I accept, and the ones
that are not reasonable, I don’t.”
Interviewer: “So you control the documents, not the Israeli
government?”
Strugnell: “We try not to put it so bluntly.”
Finally, Strugnell did submit what he regarded as a timetable (which
of course was kept secret). And he did begin reassigning publication rights.
And some of the people to whom he gave assignments were Jewish.
Progress was being made. But Strugnell and Drori were both strong-willed.
Relations between the two of them soon grew hostile.
When I finally obtained a copy of a timetable, which I promptly pub-
lished in BAR, it was a one-page “Suggested Timetable” issued in the name
of the Israel Antiquities Department and unsigned. There was no indica-
tion that Strugnell had agreed to it. And nobody had any expectation that
it would be met. When I wrote the Antiquities Department asking who
“suggested” the timetable, whether anyone agreed to it and what would
138
happen if the deadlines were not met, I was thanked for my “sincere con-
cern” and told that the Suggested Timetable was “what we wish to bring
to the attention of the public.”
Even if the timetable had been agreed upon, there was no assurance
that the scholars would meet the deadlines. When I asked Drori what
would happen if someone failed to meet the deadline in the Suggested
Timetable, he replied, “I don’t know . . . I don’t have the right to take it
away.” According to Strugnell, the government of Israel had no right to
reassign the scrolls for publication. “I am the chief editor,” said Strugnell.
In the July/August 1989 BAR, we published the now-famous (or
infamous) cover of a beautiful picture of the inner courtyard and pool of
the Rockefeller Museum boldly labeled in a bright red strip: “The Dead
Sea Scroll Prison.”
“Israel’s Department of Antiquities and the Committee of Israeli
scholars appointed to oversee Dead Sea Scroll publication has now joined
the conspiracy of silence and obstruction,” I charged.
This coverage generated more stories in the mainstream press. The
New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press and hundreds of
other newspapers and magazines carried articles based on BAR’s reporting.
The New York Times story was featured in the short index on the front page.
The cause was getting legs. The theme was the same in all the articles: A
small group of scholars who control the scrolls, with the sanction of the
Israeli government, decides who gets to see what and who gets to study
what. The public and other scholars are excluded.
The Israeli press had ignored BAR’s coverage, but with the interna-
tional press writing about it, even the Jerusalem Post observed that “BAR
has waged a four-year campaign to make the scrolls accessible to anyone
who wants to study them.”
Why, after four years of our campaign to free the scrolls, was the
story finally grabbing international attention? Several readers raised this
question. The reason, I suggested, was that I had raised the “decibel level.”
For four years, I wrote, “We had been gently prodding. We appreciated the
difficulties facing the scholars assigned publication rights; we respected
them as great scholars; we liked them as human beings. We hoped gentle
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Freeing the Scrolls
prodding would be enough ... Unfortunately, you sometimes have to yell

to get attention.”18 I later applied this lesson on how to get public atten-
tion by “yelling”—and got into trouble.
Magen Broshi, the curator of the Shrine of the Book, where the origi-
nal intact scrolls were housed, told me that BAR has “done a wonderful
job, performed a great service and is really responsible for all the move-
ment toward publication.” But, he added. “Don’t be a bully.”
I didn’t listen. I kept pounding away. “At Least Publish the Dead Sea
Scrolls Deadline!” I screamed in a headline.19
By this time, two of the original team of eight scholars had died
(Starcky and Skehan) with major incomplete assignments. Their unpub-
lished texts were simply reassigned on the basis of what I called the
“buddy-boy” system. The assignee would now decide who, if anyone, was
permitted to see the text. “Release the Dead Sea Scrolls to Other Scholars”
read a headline for an article in BAR in which I urged the new team mem-
bers to allow other scholars to see the unpublished texts even while team
members continued to work on their publication.
Not surprisingly, rumors were swirling around that the unpublished
scrolls contained material that would somehow upset Jewish or Christian
beliefs. Other rumors laid the blame for the delay at the door of a Vatican
fearful that the scrolls would undermine Catholic doctrine. The scroll
team, after all, was dominated by Catholic priests. (Strugnell, too, had con-
verted to Catholicism.) Our view of these rumors was unequivocal:
We firmly believe that there is no—repeat, no—doctrinal reason for the

delay in the publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls. We are close enough to
the scholars—of all faiths—involved to give you our assurance that they
would have absolutely no part in any suppression for doctrinal reasons
or even any delay in publication for such reasons. They may be slow, but
they are people of great rectitude and scientific objectivity.20
The New York Times ran an editorial suggesting that the real rea-
sons for the delay included “greed for glory, pride, or just plain old sloth”
and characterized the team members as “dawdling scholars.” The editorial
140
concluded, “Archaeology is particularly vulnerable to scholars who gain

control of materials and then refuse to publish them.”
Robert Eisenman, a scholar from California State University at Long
Beach, who would later become a major player in the ultimate release of
the scrolls (and who has not received the credit he deserves) is a maver-
ick, outside the mainstream of scholarship. He can be irritating, and he
is not always easy to get along with. When he applied to Strugnell and
the Israel Department of Antiquities to see certain scrolls (sending copies
of his request to other scholars), that raised the issue of accessibility very
specifically. Of course, he was not given access. When the Associated Press
asked Strugnell about this, he replied, “My problem is to get the scrolls
published, not satisfy the vanities of particular scholars.”
Strugnell also replied directly to Eisenman. I quote Strugnell’s reply
because it reflects better than anything I know Strugnell’s dismissive hau-
teur and condescension:
I don’t propose spending time to correcting the factual errors and

understandings you make about the history of the Qumran Editorial
Project; I have rarely seen more per page—they do not improve your
reputation for competence in these matters ... I am puzzled why you
felt constrained to broadcast your ‘letter’ with its deadline (the only one,
ni fallor [Latin, for “lest I’m mistaken”], that you have ever sent me) to
half the “Who’s Who” of Israel. I do not propose to follow your example.
As a rule I do not write answers to public letters—I make just this one
exception in your case, hoping it will inspire you in any further letters
to politer and more acceptable norms; or is adab [Arabic for “good man-
ners”] so much different among the lotus-eaters?
The situation was reaching high pitch. Even Time magazine was cov-
ering it. One “scholar in the field,” who declined to give his name to the
Los Angeles Times for fear of retribution, told the paper, “I find it hard to
believe that a few scholars can stonewall the Dead Sea Scrolls and keep
them from scholarly access for much longer. The situation has become an
embarrassment in the field.”
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Freeing the Scrolls
“WHO CONTROLS THE SCROLLS?” In the March/April 1991 BAR, we

lampooned the two scroll committees’ lack of direction with this cartoon
that pictured a cart being pulled in six different directions by two
three-headed horses. The scrolls are in a safe, as chief scroll editor John
Strugnell falls off the back of the cart. BAR, as a little dog, barks at the
cart while the drivers head off looking far a dark place where they can
open the safe and look at the scrolls.
At the same time, it was becoming obvious that Strugnell was having
other problems. He regularly appeared disheveled. His hair was uncombed.
A short, stumpy man, he now walked with a limp. He constantly had a
three-day beard. And he was clearly an alcoholic. I recall visiting him one
day in his cell at the École biblique. His files were kept on shelves in old
beer cartons. Beneath his bed was a case of beer. An American scholar who
would become a chief editor for the biblical scrolls and a young female
graduate student who would later become a leading Dead Sea Scroll
scholar were also in the room. They would look at each other furtively as
Strugnell reached for another beer every 15 minutes, while he and I talked.
142
The Israelis clearly wanted to control Strugnell, but without creating

a crisis. They urged Strugnell to speed things up, to make a more definite
time schedule, to add new members to the team. In addition to the Israeli
oversight committee, in 1990 a highly respected text-critical Bible scholar
from Hebrew University, Emanuel Tov, was appointed co-editor in chief,
or something like that. He was secretly appointed to work with Strugnell.
Tov’s appointment was made without Strugnell’s approval. Strugnell was
simply “informed” of this appointment. But nothing was made public. The
first time I talked to Tov about his appointment, he denied any knowledge
of it. The public—and BAR—were left to wonder what was happening. In
addition, a second co-chief editor was appointed for the biblical scrolls; he
was Eugene Ulrich, a former Strugnell student teaching at Notre Dame.
“Who Controls the Scrolls?” we asked in a headline. “In the Land of Kafka,
Where the Marx Brothers Rule” was the BAR headline we printed over a
cartoon in which the scrolls in an iron safe were on a cart pulled by two
three-headed horses going in six different directions. One of the horses was
labeled “Israel Oversight Committee” and the other “Chief Scroll Editor(s).”
The drivers holding the reins included two members of the original team
and the director of the Antiquities Authority.
In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Ulrich, the new co-chief edi-
tor, declared that the editing process had not gone too slowly, but too
quickly: “The editing of the scrolls has in fact suffered not from foot-
dragging but from undue haste.” In Ulrich’s view, quick publication would
“shackle” the public with poor scholarship.
As we pushed on with our campaign to release the scrolls, one of
the members of the Israel Oversight Committee, Jonas Greenfield, a major
scholar and a long-time friend, publicly declared me “an enemy of Israel.”
In an ABC television newscast, an unrepentant Strugnell described
our campaign for the release of the scrolls. “It seems,” Strugnell said on
national television, “we’ve acquired a bunch of fleas who are in the business
of annoying us.” This led to BAR’s most famous cover. In the March/April
1990 issue, I put on the cover a picture of a scowling Strugnell in a televi-
sion frame. Below this picture was the flea quotation. Otherwise, the cover,
including Strugnell, was covered with large fleas. I placed identifications
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Freeing the Scrolls
on some of the fleas—the scholars who had objected to the fiasco of the
scroll publication team. (Scholars from many countries were represented,
but none from Israel.) I identified the biggest flea as BAR.
Inside I commissioned a political cartoon, quoting defenders of
the status quo. Magen Broshi, the curator of the Shrine of the Book, was
quoted from an interview on Good Morning America: “There’s no urgency;
it’s not like we’re dealing with cancer.” From John Strugnell: “We’re not
running a railroad. Even trains are sometimes late.”
Under pressure, the team was expanded and new scholars were
added. This focused attention on something that had largely been ignored
since the late 1950s—the concordance of the Cave 4 fragments that had
been compiled by Joseph Fitzmyer, Raymond Brown and Willard Oxtoby.
Each word in the fragments was listed on a three-by-five index card, listing
each reference to the word, noting in which texts the word could be found
and quoting the adjacent words in that text. In those early years, when the
members of the team were working in Jerusalem the file cards were read-
ily accessible to them. When, 30 years later, new scholars were added to
the team and they were working in their home bases far from Jerusalem,
the concordance was in effect unavailable. Then, all of a sudden, someone
remembered it. Strugnell decided to make a few copies of the concordance
available for members of the team—a fatal mistake.
Strugnell had someone (Hans-Peter Richter) take the three-by-five
cards and line them up one above the other, seven cards to the page. He
then had each page photocopied and the photocopies gathered together as
a book. The title page advised that this was “A Preliminary Concordance
... Including Especially the Unpublished Material from Cave IV.” Thirty
copies were “Privately Printed in Gottingen, 1988 ... on behalf of Professor
John Strugnell, Harvard University.” In the center of the page, in all caps
and underlined, were the Latin words “EDITORUM IN USUM,” or “for
the use of the editors.” For all others, the very existence of the concordance
remained a secret.
I had long before heard rumors about a concordance that had been
assembled in the late 1950s. I tried to confirm its existence in an early inter-
view with the then-director of the Department of Antiquities, Avi Eitan. Its
144
CLASSIC COVER. In a 1990 ABC News interview, John Strugnell

described BAR and other critics as “fleas who are in the business of
annoying us.” On the cover of the March/April issue, we featured this
quote along with a scowling Strugnell on a TV screen surrounded by
fleas. Each flea is labeled as a prominent critic of the scroll publication
team. The largest flea is labeled “BAR.”
existence was important because it proved that by the late 1950s the team
of editors had transcribed all of the unpublished scrolls. The texts of the
Dead Sea Scrolls could have been released then. They were not because the
team scholars did not want anyone else to see them until they had com-
pleted their book-length commentaries on the texts. Eitan was extremely
cagey with me about the existence of the concordance:
HS: I understand that shortly after these Dead Sea Scroll materials were
brought to the museum in the 1950s ... a concordance [was made] of
25,000 cards with every word that appeared in these Dead Sea Scroll
materials. Is that right?
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Freeing the Scrolls
Eitan: I must say this is again at a time before I held this position and
I’m not too familiar with these details ...
HS: I understand that concordance now sits in this very building.
Is that true?
Eitan: Maybe so.
HS: Well, the first thing I want to know is whether you can confirm
that it exists, and you say you can’t.
Eitan: No, what I’m saying is you are driving at a certain point. I’d like
to know what point you are driving at.
HS: I must say it seems unusual to me and strange that you really don’t
want to say whether such a concordance exists. Let me ask you this: If
such a concordance exists, wouldn’t it be a very valuable aid to scholars
working on Dead Sea Scroll problems?
Eitan: Yes.
HS: So if it exists, shouldn’t scholars generally be told that it exists?
Eitan: That the fragments of the scrolls themselves exist and that they
are here is much more important than the fact that a concordance like
this exists.
This concordance later proved to be the key to the release of the

Dead Sea Scrolls.
****
As Strugnell’s health was deteriorating, in the fall of 1990 he gave an inter-

view to Avi Katzman, a journalist with the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz. I
soon learned about it and arranged with Katzman to publish a modified
English version, including additional details, in BAR. The interview clearly
exposed Strugnell not simply as anti-Zionist, but as a rabid anti-Semite—as
had been widely rumored.
Katzman noted that, although Strugnell drank beer throughout
the interview, he did not appear to be drunk. He was lucid and spoke
in a firm voice.
When Katzman asked him if he was “anti-Israel,” Strugnell replied:
146
“That’s a sneaky way of coming at the anti-Semitic question, isn’t it?”

When Katzman asked him directly if he was an anti-Semite, Strugnell
denied it: “I’ve spent my life studying Semites from Ethiopia to Baghdad.
I don’t know anyone in the world who’s an anti-Semite.”
He described himself as an anti-Judaist:
[Judaism] is a folk religion; it’s not a higher religion. An anti-Judaist,

that’s what I am. I plead guilty. I plead guilty in the way the Church has
pleaded guilty all along, because we’re not guilty; we’re right. Christianity
presents itself as a religion which replaces the Jewish religion. The cor-
rect answer of Jews to Christianity is to become Christian. I agree there
have been monstrosities in the past—the Inquisition, things like that.
We should certainly behave ourselves like Christian gentlemen. But the
basic judgment on the Jewish religion is, for me, a negative one.
Katzman asked him what annoyed him about Judaism. Strugnell

replied:
The fact that it has survived when it should have disappeared ... For me
the answer [to the Jewish problem] is mass conversion ... It’s a horrible
religion. It’s a Christian heresy, and we deal with our heresies in different
ways. You are a phenomenon that we haven’t managed to convert—and
we should have managed.
As for Israel:
I dislike Israel as an occupier of part of Jordan ... The occupation of

Jerusalem—and maybe of the whole State—is founded on a lie, or at
least on a premise that cannot be sustained.
He compared Israel to the Crusaders:
One of the great building periods was the Crusades; but, basically, they
were unsustainable. That’s me on Israel ... Am I opposed to Zionism?
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Freeing the Scrolls
I think we’ve had enough of it but you can’t say it’s not out there. It
would’ve been nice if it hadn’t existed, but it has, so it’s covered by a
sort of grandfather clause.
In a separate sidebar to the interview in BAR, I expressed compas-

sion for the man, but contempt for his views. I wrote:
Initial reaction to the interview ... can only be shock and disbelief. A
distinguished theologian at Harvard Divinity School, a professor of
Christian Origins, a man who has spent his life studying the Dead Sea
Scrolls, harboring thoughts like this? Impossible! Unfortunately, it is pos-
sible. The stories, the rumors, the gossip we had heard, but refused to
print, have turned out to be true.
I then called for his dismissal as chief editor: “It is clear that Strugnell
cannot be permitted to function any longer as chief editor of the Dead Sea
Scrolls.” I quoted Professor Morton Smith of Columbia University regard-
ing the reluctance of the Israeli authorities to do anything: The Israelis,
said Smith, should “stop shaking in their shoes over what people might
think of them at Harvard.”
I urged the Israelis to throw open the doors and release the scrolls.
The immediate scholarly reaction to our publication of the Strugnell
interview was different. I called the dean of Harvard Divinity School, Mark
Edwards, to see what he thought of it. When I telephoned his office, I was
told he was out with a cold. When I called later, he was in a meeting. Then
he was in an all-day meeting. After repeated calls, his secretary told me he
would not speak with me. Only when Time called did he take the call and
condemn Strugnell’s remarks as “personally repugnant.”
From 85 of Strugnell’s academic friends and colleagues, I received a
letter for publication in BAR. Despite the interview, they “remain deeply grate-
ful to a man who has contributed so much to the study of ancient Judaism.”
Of course, I printed the letter. The roster of signatories included
some of world’s greatest scholars. The letter attributed Strugnell’s untow-
ard remarks to his mental imbalance at the time:
148
“While we find these remarks [in his interview] abhorrent, it is our

understanding that they were made at a time when he was seriously ill. We
cannot know how much his illness influenced what he said.”
There was no question that Strugnell was inebriated and suffering
from manic-depression. He soon entered a psychiatric hospital for treat-
ment. Whether this can serve as an explanation for his anti-Semitic rant is
another question, however. Drunks and mentally impaired often go off the
deep end, but the content is not simply undetermined. Why did he not
rant at Catholics or his colleagues or his wife or the Antiquities Authority,
rather than Jews? The alcohol and mental problems simply unlocked what
was already there, at least in embryo.
As a matter of fact, it was not simply the alcohol or mental illness
that unlocked Strugnell’s anti-Semitism. It had been widely acknowledged
previously in the halls of academia. One scholar (who was Jewish and
signed the letter to BAR!) told a reporter that when in the past Strugnell
would make derogatory remarks about Jews, she would call Strugnell on it
and he would laugh and back down. Another signer of the letter acknowl-
edged that Strugnell was known for anti-Semitic “slurs.”
As I put it in the magazine:
Certainly but for his illness, Strugnell would not have expressed him-
self in these crude terms publicly. But beneath this name-calling lies a
far more sophisticated, intellectual, carefully developed form of anti-
Jewish polemic. It is the repudiated doctrine of a past age. It is the view
that Judaism is a not a valid religion, the view that Christianity is the
true Israel and the Jews the false Israel, the view that the Jews are ‘stub-
born’ because they have not accepted Christ, the view that the New
Testament has invalidated the covenant reflected in the Old Testament,
the view that Christianity has ‘superseded’ Judaism and that Judaism
should disappear.
Eugene Fisher, the director of the secretariat for Catholic-Jewish

Relations of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, wrote a strong
piece in BAR declaring that “supersessionism,” as it is known, had been
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Freeing the Scrolls
definitively rejected by the Catholic Church. While it had been a com-

mon belief in ages past, Fisher noted that it had never been the official
doctrine of the church. “The statements by Professor John Strugnell (now,
I understand, hospitalized),” Fisher wrote in BAR, “are classically anti-
Semitic. They deserve to be condemned publicly for what they are: not
only sick, but sinful.”21
At the end of 1990, Strugnell was silently removed from his position
as chief editor (or co-chief editor). As I described it in an op-ed piece in
the New York Times, he was “fired.” But his scroll assignments remained his
to publish, to give to his students, or to bequeath to a colleague.
****
As I mentioned earlier, the limited publication of the concordance in 1988

for the use of the editors was itself kept secret. Joseph Fitzmyer, who was
one of the principal compilers of the concordance in the 1950s, learned
of its publication when he received a communication asking if he was
interested in buying a copy for $300. With that, the secret was out. It was
soon common knowledge.
When Ben Zion Wacholder, with whom I began this chapter and
who would play a key role later in breaking the scroll monopoly, found
himself in a taxi with Strugnell at a scholarly conference in Israel, he
asked Strugnell if he could get a copy of the concordance for the library
of Hebrew Union College. Strugnell suggested Wacholder send him a
letter “and we’ll take it up.” So Wacholder did. And a copy of the concor-
dance was sent to the Hebrew Union College library. Whether the copy
was sent because of Wacholder’s request or because the college was one
of three institutions—two in the United States and one in England—
where security copies of the photographs of the unpublished texts had
been deposited is unclear.
In any event, Wacholder was able to use his college’s copy of the
concordance. With his purblind eyes he perused the concordance cards.
Then he shared the treasure with his graduate student, Martin Abegg, who
was accustomed to reading to the old man. Abegg was writing his doctoral
150
dissertation on the War Scroll, one of the seven intact Dead Sea Scrolls
that had been published, but there were several other fragmentary cop-
ies of this scroll among the hoard from Cave 4. Abegg hungered to see
them. Here in his hands was the opportunity to view the secret copies.
He was soon able to reconstruct from the concordance some of the texts
that he needed for his dissertation. When he took the results to his men-
tor, Wacholder was startled. Abegg recalls Wacholder’s first reaction: “We
must publish this material.”
Abegg also vividly recalls his own reaction to this: “I will never be
able to get a job,” he thought. “No one will ever hire someone who pla-
giarizes these texts.” To publish this material would contravene a basic
scholarly tradition. Abegg consulted his friends. Their advice: “Don’t do
it! You’ll never work.” He asked his pastor. He said, “Do it!” He consulted
his father: “It looks to me like the ethical shoe is on the other foot. I think
you should do it.”
The deciding factor, however, was a feeling for his mentor. As Abegg
has expressed it:
Here was a man who was one of a very special generation who had
been uprooted from Eastern Europe during World War II, who had
spent their whole lives studying Jewish literature and law and knew it
by heart, and yet had been kept away from this material all these years.
For Ben Zion and others like him, I finally made the decision. Yes, I
would agree [to publish it].22
With the help of his computer, Abegg found the task infinitely easier,
and work proceeded apace. It was at this point that Wacholder telephoned
me to talk about our publishing the material. I knew immediately that I
wanted to publish it. There were two problems: (1) The process of recon-
structing the text had just begun; and (2) We didn’t have the money to
publish it. I suggested to Wacholder that we publish the material in fas-
cicles. This would solve both my problems. As to the first, we would be
able to publish the first fascicle quickly because we would include only
25 of the texts in a book of a mere hundred pages. Then, with the sale
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Freeing the Scrolls
of the first fascicle, we would get enough money to publish subsequent

fascicles, and so on.
Wacholder agreed and on September 4, 1991, the Biblical Archaeology
Society published Fascicle One of A Preliminary Edition of the Unpublished
Dead Sea Scrolls. I began my foreword with these words:
“This is a historic book. A hundred years from now this book will
still be cited—not only on account of its scholarship, but because it broke
the monopoly on the still-unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls.”
In their own introduction, Wacholder and Abegg wrote:
If we are not totally mistaken, the works published in this fascicle alone
will shed new light on the history, social structure and literature of the
group of men and women who founded this community, ultimately
known to us as the Essenes. Some current hypotheses as to the nature
of these people and their literature will be confirmed; others will neces-
sarily require revision or abandonment.
Abegg, incidentally, has had a stellar academic career. He is now a

leading Dead Sea Scroll scholar—with a job.
Abegg recalls his first encounter after the publication of Fascicle
One with Emanuel Tov, now the chief editor of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It
was in November 1991 at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical
Literature. Abegg had a special reverence for Tov; it was Tov who had intro-
duced him to the Dead Sea Scrolls when Abegg was studying at Hebrew
University in Jerusalem. When Fascicle One came out, however, Tov was
still fiercely resisting the release of the unpublished texts. Abegg was imme-
diately apprehensive when he spied Tov at the book exhibit. Tov greeted
him in Hebrew: “Banim gidalti v’romumti.” Abegg immediately recognized
the quotation—from Isaiah 1:2: “I have reared children and brought them
up.” It was only that night that Abegg recalled the end of the line: “v’ham
pashu vy”—“And they have rebelled against me.”
The rupture was not permanent, however. Abegg and Tov subse-
quently became good friends again and continue to work together on
scroll materials to this day. This is a tribute to Tov’s character, who was
152
also very antagonistic to me personally, but with whom I now have excel-
lent relations.
Strugnell characterized the publication of Fascicle One as “stealing.”
“What else would you call it but stealing?” he declared. I answered in an
op-ed piece in the New York Times, saying that under international law the
scholars who have been hoarding the scrolls are fiduciaries, trustees for all
mankind. They do not own the scrolls. We the public are the beneficiaries
of their trust. By keeping them secret and as if they owned them, they are
in breach of trust. “We are taking only what is rightfully ours,” I said. “It
is they who are the lawbreakers. It is they who are stealing from all of us.”
The publication of Fascicle One received widespread publicity and
recognition. Abegg’s computer caught the popular imagination—the latest
technology applied to uncover the text of the ancient scrolls—and it was
quickly dubbed “Rabbi Computer.” Editorials (following frontpage news
articles) in the Washington Post and New York Times were typical.
Said the Times:
The first volume of the reconstructed text has just been published by
the Biblical Archaeology Society of Washington, D.C. More will be
forthcoming as the researchers press on with their work ... Amazingly,
two scholars at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati have now broken
the scroll cartel ... Mr. Wacholder and Mr. Abegg are to be applauded
for their work ... The committee, with its obsessive secrecy and cloak
and dagger scholarship, long ago exhausted its credibility with scholars
and laymen alike.
Likewise, the Post said:
Mr. Shanks and others on his side of the issue believe the scrolls will be
best understood if they are treated like any other such source material—
that is, made as freely available as soon as possible to all ... Judging their
effort by the material that is known, they believe they’ve been remarkably
successful, and they intend to do more. Some of the authorized scholars
are irked; they doubt the accuracy of the effort and question its propriety.
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Freeing the Scrolls
Some even talk of lawsuits. They’d do much better to accept the fact that
things are inevitably going to move a lot faster now.
We ultimately published four fascicles of texts reconstructed by

Wacholder and Abegg. These fascicles did more than simply release the
texts. As the title page announces, these texts were “reconstructed and
edited.” Wacholder and Abegg were able to improve a number of the read-
ings. When the scroll photographs were finally released, they could make
further improvements by comparing the concorded texts with the texts as
they appeared in the photographs.
Some scholars harshly criticized the quality of the reconstructed
texts in Fascicle One. Eugene Ulrich told the Times that no scholar could
“base solid work” on these computer-reconstructed texts. But in time this
criticism turned to praise. One of the early doubters was James Sanders,
director of the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center. As he later told me,
“I’ve revised my opinion. They’re g-o-o-d. They’re amazing!” Hartmut
Stegemann, who taught at Göttingen University and who had arranged
for the private printing of the concordance at the university, wrote me
not long after Fascicle One came out: “I checked the reliability of this
preliminary edition ... Congratulations to this almost perfect way of pub-
lication!... [It] is a trustworthy representation of about 98 percent of the
textual evidence.” As late as 1994, Professor Lawrence Schiffman of New
York University wrote in the Religious Studies News, “Virtually everyone in
the field regularly uses these volumes.”
With the publication of Fascicle One, the scroll monopoly was broken.
****
At the same time we were working with Wacholder and Abegg on Fascicle
One, we were working on an entirely different Dead Sea Scroll project.
Wacholder and Abegg gave the scholarly world the Hebrew (or Aramaic)
text of the scroll fragments in modern Hebrew letters, as transcribed in the
1950s. It in effect reproduced the text of the fragments as transcribed by the
original publication team. But at this point, scholars could not check the
154
transcription in Fascicle One against the scroll fragments themselves—or

against photographs of the scroll fragments. This still remained unavailable
to the scholarly community at large.
Just as the original team of scholars had engaged another team of
young scholars to construct the concordance, they had also engaged a
superb Arab photographer named Najib Albina to take pictures of the frag-
ments, both with ordinary film and with infrared film. These photographs
are extraordinarily valuable, for in many cases they are more legible than
the scrolls themselves. Over the years, the text of the scrolls would often
deteriorate and become unreadable. The photographs often provide better
evidence of what the scrolls originally said than the fragments themselves.
Very near the time we began work on what became Fascicle One,
I received a telephone call from a California lawyer named William Cox,
who was calling on behalf of an unnamed client. When he wouldn’t tell
me who his client was, I almost hung up on him. I told him that I was
not interested in talking to him. Fortunately, he convinced me to stay on
the line. In fact he was calling on behalf of Robert Eisenman, who had
copies of Najib Albina’s photographs of the scrolls, taken more than 30
years earlier—nearly 2,000 of them. He wanted us to publish them. I did
not hesitate. Of course, we would.
I must say at the outset that I don’t know where Eisenman got them.
To this day, he has refused to tell me—even to give me a hint. Eisenman
had contacts with some prominent political figures in Israel, who may
have been the source. He was also close to a far-right philanthropist named
Irving Moskowitz, who ended up financing our publication of the pho-
tographs (I was not aware of his political views at the time Eisenman
enlisted him). Eisenman may well have gotten the photographs through
Moskowitz, who had superb connections in Israel. Another less likely pos-
sibility is that Eisenman somehow got access to a security copy that had
been deposited with the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center in Claremont,
California, or even from another copy held by the Huntington Library in
San Marino, California.
I later learned that Eisenman had originally sought to publish
the photographs with a leading international academic publisher in the
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Freeing the Scrolls
Netherlands, J.J. Brill of Leiden. Brill anticipated charging $800 for its
microfiche edition and netting $200,000 from the deal. When it became
clear to Brill at a Dead Sea Scroll conference in Madrid that the Israelis
would vehemently object to the publication of the photographs (thus
endangering Brill’s prospects of publishing books by them), Brill with-
drew its commitment to Eisenman.
Doubtless aware that he lacked the scholarly prestige that would
adequately distinguish the publication, Eisenman sought the association
of an eminent West Coast scholar, James M. Robinson of the Claremont
Graduate School in Claremont, California. Robinson was both a major
scholar as well as somewhat of a renegade himself. He was the hero of
the Nag Hammadi codices, a dozen tattered books containing 52 trac-
tates of early Christian literature. They were found by peasants near Nag
Hammadi in Egypt two years before the Bedouin discovered the first
Dead Sea Scrolls. The Nag Hammadi codices too languished unpub-
lished by a team assembled to publish them. The scholars on the French
team, like the Dead Sea Scroll team, had intended to publish the texts
only when their commentaries were completed. Finally, in 1970, with
help from UNESCO, the Nag Hammadi codices were given to Robinson
and his colleagues, who promptly decided to publish translations with-
out commentaries. The first translations appeared two years later. By
1977 all were published. The Nag Hammadi codices thus became avail-
able to everyone, for which Robinson has received worldwide plaudits.
Robinson’s involvement with Eisenman in the publication of the pho-
tographs of the Dead Sea Scrolls gave it a scholarly heft it would not
otherwise have.
When the two cartons of photographs arrived by mail from Eisenman,
my assistant and I spent the day, from early morning to night, designating
the photographs for each page of the two volumes.
The names of Eisenman and Robinson, in that order, appear on the
title page. They appear not as editors, but as having “prepared [the edition]
with an introduction and index.” Their three-page introduction (dated June
5, 1991) is followed with an index of 1,787 photographs keyed to the num-
ber assigned to them in the Palestine Archaeological Museum.
156
I wrote an 11-page “Publisher’s Foreword,” with 22 plates of support-

ing documents labeled “Figures 1–22.”
The two-volume folio-sized set (priced at $200) came out on
November 29, 1991. By that time, however, we had been upstaged.
This part of the story goes back to an imperious West Coast phi-
lanthropist named Elizabeth Hay Bechtel, whose money helped support
early Dead Sea Scroll research. She also provided the money to found
the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center (ABMC), whose mission was to
collect high-quality photographs of important biblical manuscripts for
scholarly study. The ABMC was directed by the distinguished biblical
scholar James Sanders, whom I have already mentioned. Mrs. Bechtel was
also associated philanthropically with the Huntington Library, a major
research institution near Pasadena, so she sent its photographer, Robert
Schlosser, to Jerusalem to make copies of Najib Albina’s negatives for the
ABMC. While Schlosser was in Jerusalem, Mrs. Bechtel and Sanders had
a falling out and a bitter struggle ensued for control of the ABMC. (Mrs.
Bechtel eventually lost.) When Schlosser returned with the photographs
(negatives), Mrs. Bechtel met the plane. A set of the photographs was
eventually deposited with the ABMC, which signed an agreement with
the Israeli authorities to keep the photographs secret. But Mrs. Bechtel
also obtained a separate copy for herself. These she deposited in a spe-
cial safe constructed for this purpose in the Huntington Library. The
Huntington’s research interests are worlds away from concerns with the
Dead Sea Scrolls, so there the microfilm lay forgotten and untouched for
a decade. Mrs. Bechtel died in 1987.
In 1990 William A. Moffett was appointed librarian (director) of
the Huntington Library. When he read about BAR’s efforts to free the
scrolls, he realized he had a copy of them. But paradoxically, the trigger
was provided by the scroll cartel itself. When Strugnell was removed as
chief editor, a triumvirate was created to advise the publication team; the
triumvirate consisted of Emanuel Tov, Eugene Ulrich and Father Emile
Puech of the École biblique. Part of the committee’s assignment was to
protect the secrecy of the scrolls. The committee had of course followed
BAR’s campaign closely, and this led them eventually to focus on the copy
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Freeing the Scrolls
of the photographs in the Huntington. This set was Mrs. Bechtel’s personal
copy. It was, in effect, a loose cannon. Neither the Huntington nor Mrs.
Bechtel had signed a secrecy agreement. The scroll committee decided that
they had better take action to protect against a leak at the Huntington.
On July 23, 1991, Eugene Ulrich wrote Moffett a letter oh-so-warmly
expressing the committee’s “gratitude” for the care the Huntington Library
provided in preserving this copy of the photographs: “Your contribution
in this regard to the field of Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship has been much
appreciated by ourselves and our predecessors.” The time has come, how-
ever, the letter went on, for the Huntington’s copy to be transferred. “It is
important to us that no copies of them be retained hereafter in your care.”
The letter closed by thanking the Huntington “for the care until now you
have given the treasures in your trust.”
The letter of course had just the opposite effect on Moffett. Shortly
after we published Fascicle One of Wacholder and Abegg’s reconstructed
texts in September 1991, Moffett announced that he would open his micro-
film of photographs to everyone. On Sunday, September 22, 1991, the New
York Times featured the story above the fold on its front page.
This was two months before we came out with our two-volume edi-
tion of the photographs.
If anyone thought the Huntington’s announcement would end the
matter, they were wrong. The Israeli contingent had just begun to fight.
The Israel Antiquities Authority (as it was now called) and the new chief
editor, Emanuel Tov, immediately faxed the Huntington a peremptory let-
ter as if dressing down a schoolboy: “Your legal and moral obligation ...
clearly forbids [your release of the photographs] ... We expect you to honor
the terms of the agreement and save us the trouble of taking legal steps.
We expect your immediate reply.”
The Huntington was sure of its ground, however. It had signed no
agreement to maintain the secrecy of the photographs. Only the ABMC
had signed such an agreement (as had the two other depositaries of security
copies of the photographs, Hebrew Union College and Oxford University.)
The Huntington was in receipt of Mrs. Bechtel’s personal copy—and she
had signed nothing.
158
Moffett replied politely, but firmly: “You, I am confident, respect

and understand the principle of intellectual freedom we are committed
to uphold.”
“When you free the scrolls, you free the scholars,” Moffett told
the press.
The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) called an emergency meet-
ing for December in Jerusalem that was to include Moffett of the
Huntington, as well as representatives of the three institutions that held
security copies and who had signed secrecy agreements. There, accord-
ing to the IAA, they would decide on procedures for granting access
to the photographs, while also protecting assigned scholarly rights to
publication. In its own words, the IAA wanted “to facilitate access.” The
Israeli authorities wanted any outside scholar allowed to see the scroll
photographs to sign a statement saying that the scholar would not pub-
lish an edition of the scrolls. Moffett declined to attend the meeting. It
was never held.
The IAA took to the press. Drori, describing the Huntington’s release
as “not ethical,” characterized Huntington’s announcement as “a mere pub-
licity stunt.” According to the New York Times, some of the scroll editors with
assigned texts described the photographs held by the Huntington as “stolen
property.” The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that the Huntington’s
move “was bitterly attacked by the Israel Antiquities Authority as tanta-
mount to trafficking in stolen property and as a flagrant violation of a
longstanding agreement.”
The press’s editorial comment, however, was withering. New York
Times columnist William Safire described the scroll monopolists as “a little
band of academics representing no interest but their own arrogant selfish-
ness.” He called the IAA officials “insular jerks ... Prime Minister Shamir
should shut them up.”
IAA director Drori went so far as to charge that the source of the
pressure to release the scrolls was anti-Semitic: “It seems,” he mused, “to
have something to do with the fact that Israel and Jews are in control.”
Shortly thereafter, however, the IAA gave up. It simply dropped its
opposition. On the contrary, it promptly began work on its own microfiche
159
copy of the scrolls that would be available to everyone—which were pub-
lished several years later by Brill.
As for the Huntington, it is doubtful that more than two scholars
have ever looked at its copy of the photographs. The photographs were
much more accessible in BAR’s two-volume set and subsequently in the
IAA’s set.
I guess it can be argued that the Huntington stole our thunder.
Simply by making the announcement of free access, they captured the
front page of the Sunday Times. But I have always been grateful to the
Huntington and for Bill Moffett’s firm stand. (Unfortunately, he died of
bladder cancer in 1995 at age 62.) The Huntington is big and powerful.
They are not easily pushed around. I naturally wonder, with considerable
trepidation, about what would have happened if BAR had stood alone in
the publication of the Eisenman and Robinson photographs. I believe I
would have been sued over the publication of the photographs and the
texts reconstructed from the concordance. The IAA had already forbidden
its archaeologists to write for BAR (something it would do again during
the forgery crisis described in a later chapter).
By 1996, director Drori’s fury had subsided and we talked about the
old days (he died in 2005). Indeed, he had considered suing me, he said:
“We think [note the present tense!] your publication [of the scroll photo-
graphs] is illegal ... We think, even now, that we are one hundred percent
right, [but] I decided not to go to court about it.” He also considered suing
the Huntington: “I think what the Huntington did was an awful thing—to
break the law. It was a one-sided decision of the Huntington. They didn’t
ask us. The pictures were stolen material ... We were one hundred percent
right. No doubt about it. But I decided not to go to court.”
Because of the Huntington’s release of its photographs, I didn’t get
sued by the Israel Antiquities Authority. But I did get sued. And I lost. But
that’s for the next chapter.
chapter x
Losing in Court
the lawsuit against me and bar grew out of the pugnacious
“Publisher’s Foreword” I wrote in the two-volume set of scroll photographs.
Both Eisenmen and Robinson had strongly urged me not to publish it,
as they thought it would be inappropriate to a scholarly production. But
I had other reasons for taking a belligerent stand: I feared the IAA would
sue me, and I wanted them to know that if they did, they would have a
fight on their hands. One commentator called me “leather-lunged.”23
In retrospect, my fear of being sued was entirely justified, as detailed
in the preceding chapter. For the IAA, what I was doing was stealing.
Perhaps my belligerence lent a note of caution to the IAA’s thinking and
ultimate decision not to pursue their supposed legal claims.
The poster child for my “Publisher’s Foreword” was the scroll text
known as MMT. It provided an excellent example of the scholarly abuses
in the handling of the scrolls more generally. As mentioned at the outset
of the previous chapter, MMT was first brought to the attention of the
wider scholarly community at an archaeology conference in Jerusalem in
1984 in a paper by John Strugnell and his junior colleague Elisha Qimron.
Their presentation electrified the otherwise staid scholarly conference. Here
was a document that the two scholars—who were preparing it for pub-
lication—readily acknowledged was “highly important.” But while they
described the text in their paper, they released only six of its 130 lines—and
40 years after the assignment.
MMT, they said, was the only letter identified among the more than
900 Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts.24 That fragments from six copies survived
reflects its importance. The letter seemed to come from the head of the
community at Qumran, the Teacher of Righteousness, and was probably
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Losing in Court
addressed to the high priest of the Temple in Jerusalem. The heart of the
document is approximately 20 legal rules, mostly dealing with purity laws,
in which the stricter laws of the Dead Sea Scroll community are contrasted
with the more lenient laws of the priestly hierarchy in the Jerusalem Temple.
In short, this document was crucial to understanding what divided the
Qumran community from mainstream Judaism of the time—and perhaps
what led to their separation. The text of MMT also revealed that the Dead
Sea Scroll community followed a different calendar, a solar calendar with
a 364-day year (in contrast to the lunar calendar of mainstream Judaism).
MMT was important for understanding the roots of Christianity
as well as the history of ancient Judaism. As mentioned in the previous
chapter, MMT stands for Miqsat Ma’aseh Ha-Torah, which officially trans-
lates as “Some precepts of the Torah.” Martin Abegg—who, with “Rabbi
Computer,” had recreated the transcripts from the secret concordance—
cogently pointed out that this translation of the name MMT “unfortunately
obscures MMT’s relationship to Paul’s letters.”25 In fact, MMT is the same
phrase in Hebrew that Paul uses in Greek, meaning the familiar “Works of
the Law” (see Romans 3:20,28 and Galatians 2:16, 3:2,5,10). A better trans-
lation of the Hebrew would be, as is sometimes used, “Some Works of the
Law.” In short, if you want to understand what Paul meant by “Works of
the Law,” then study MMT.
For the history of Judaism, MMT is, if anything, even more impor-
tant. The earliest extant rabbinic code is the Mishnah, dating from about
200 C.E. It presents a fully developed legal (halakhic) system governing all
aspects of life. This system must have had a substantial development over
a long period of time. How did this complex, subtle legal structure evolve?
On what sources did the laws of the Mishnah draw?
The Mishnah was followed by the Talmud several hundred years
later. For Rabbinic Judaism (the form of Judaism to which modern
Judaism is heir), the Mishnah and Talmud are known as the Oral Law.
According to tradition, it was handed down from God to Moses at Mount
Sinai. But where did this legal structure come from? What are its roots in
the period before the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E.? MMT
offers important apercu in answering these questions.
162
MMT© When we published the

reconstructed Hebrew text of the ancient
MMT manuscript (see p. 127) in our
1991 Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea
Scrolls, scroll scholar and MMT co-
editor Elisha Qimron sued for copyright
infringement in an Israeli court. Though
Qimron’s scholarly reconstructions of
the text were later shown to be minimal,
he won the case. Legal experts continue
to debate the court’s reasoning and
application of copyright law.
In my “Publisher’s Foreword,” I recounted how university courses

were being taught on MMT, but only at schools where the professor had
been given a copy by the official editors. Then stray copies went almost
everywhere; Strugnell referred to them as “daughters of the Xerox machine.”
To have an underground photocopy of MMT was a kind of status symbol
among scholars.
One of these underground copies found its way to a Polish bibli-
ographer and librarian named Zdzislaw J. Kapera. In 1989 Kapera had
organized an international scholarly conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls
in Mogilany, a small village south of Krakow. He invited almost all Dead
Sea Scroll scholars (and some like me who were not) and enough attended
(perhaps out of curiosity to see post-Communist, post-Holocaust Poland)
to have a very successful conference. The papers were printed in two vol-
umes by Kapera’s own press, which he calls The Enigma Press. In addition,
the participants passed the “Mogilany Resolution,” which protested the
delay in publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls and demanded access to the
unpublished texts.
After the conference, Kapera established a journal, The Qumran
Chronicle, for scholarly articles on the Dead Sea Scrolls. When one of the
samizdat copies of MMT fell into Kapera’s hands, he promptly published
it in The Qumran Chronicle. This was the first publication of MMT, a his-
toric accomplishment.
His victory was short-lived, however. The Israel Antiquities Authority
and the scholars who controlled the scrolls were furious.
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Losing in Court
Another Dead Sea Scroll conference was held in Madrid in March

1991, sponsored by the Universidad Complutense. My own invitation to
the conference was apologetically cancelled a week before the conference;
the organizers succumbed to pressure from the Israel Antiquities Authority,
who had their own plans for the conference and they didn’t want me
interfering. Kapera, the editor of The Qumran Chronicle, would be attend-
ing and he was their target.
At the conference, the Israeli authorities confronted Kapera in what
scroll scholar Philip Davies called a 20th-century version of the Spanish
Inquisition. They accused Kapera of stealing, of unethical conduct, and of
trampling scholarly norms. They heaped scholarly opprobrium on him.
They threatened him with a lawsuit. IAA director Amir Drori sent a let-
ter to Kapera, a letter that he pointedly copied to the head of the Polish
Academy of Sciences. The letter accused Kapera of “a violation of all legal,
moral and ethical conventions and an infringement on the rights and
efforts of your colleagues.”
Kapera caved. He agreed to stop distributing copies of The Qumran
Chronicle containing MMT and to destroy all his office copies. And he
apologized in writing for his transgressions.
I recounted all this in my “Publisher’s Foreword” to Eisenman and
Robinson’s collection of scroll photographs. In my best smart-alecky, fin-
ger-in-the-eye style, I wrote that “outsiders must still await publication of
the commentary [of MMT] if they want to see the text”; then I added in
parentheses “(unless they look at Figure 8)” which was included in my
“Publisher’s Foreword.” Figure 8 was a copy of the text of MMT taken
from The Qumran Chronicle.
Earlier in the “Publisher’s Foreword,” I had referred to Figure 8 as
“Strugnell’s transcription of MMT.” And I referred to Strugnell’s work on
the commentary together “with a colleague,” whom I did not name. The
colleague was in fact Elisha Qimron. For this omission, the heavens fell.
I of course knew that the yet-unpublished commentary was the work
of Strugnell and Qimron, the young Ben-Gurion University scholar whom
Strugnell enlisted to help him understand the intricacies of Jewish law
and philology. When I had written about MMT in BAR, I had always
164
identified both men by name. Why, then, did I omit Qimron’s name from
my “Publisher’s Foreword”? Simply because I was being harshly critical and
I did not want to bring this criticism down on the head of an innocent,
young, untenured professor. I readily admit that no one—or practically
no one—believes this, but it is true. I had no reason to omit Qimron’s
name as “the colleague,” except that I did not want to bring obloquy on a
young scholar who was not really guilty of any wrongdoing. But Qimron
interpreted my omission of his name as depriving him of what he hoped
would be his “fame” for his work on MMT.
Qimron filed suit against me and BAR in an Israeli court. It has been
called “one of the most dramatic cases ever tried in the history of copyright
law,”26 and elsewhere “a copyright case of biblical proportions.”27
Elisha Qimron is a small, shy, timid-looking man with an almost
expressionless face. In conversation, he looks down, almost apologetically.
In a BAR article,28 I once compared him to Peter Lorre in The Maltese
Falcon—inscrutable and diffident, glancing here and there. The comparison
is apt. For, like Peter Lorre’s Joel Cairo, inside his quiet exterior, Qimron is
fierce, tenacious, aggressive and tough as nails. And of course, in addition,
Qimron is a superb scholar.
His lawyer, Yitzchak Molcho, was one of the most prominent
members of the Israeli bar. A close friend of Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu and his personal attorney, Molcho was also active politically,
eventually serving for a time as head of Israel’s negotiating team with
Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority. (The question naturally arises
as to how Qimron got to know Molcho. Rumor has it that Qimron’s sis-
ter is married to a well-known Jerusalem physician who knows Molcho.)
As Qimron is a superb scholar, Molcho is a superb lawyer. He knew
the Israeli judicial system well and used it to his client’s advantage. He
virtually wiped up the floor with us.
For example, he did not precede the lawsuit with claims and nego-
tiations for a public apology. He simply filed a formal complaint with
the court, initiating the lawsuit. He simultaneously went into court seek-
ing a Temporary Restraining Order. He asked the court to order us to
immediately stop selling or distributing the two-volume set of photographs
165
Losing in Court
anywhere in the world—in advance of any trial and without notice to us.
And the court granted his motion! It was all done, in legal jargon, ex parte,
without the other side participating. Molcho could easily have advised us
that he was going to court, in which case we would have had our own law-
yer in court to oppose his motion. He had my fax number, demonstrated
by the fact that he promptly faxed me the court’s order after it was entered.
This would never have happened in an American court. An American
judge would have, at the very least, inquired as to the applicant’s efforts to
notify the defendant so he could defend himself. The Israeli judge appar-
ently felt there was no time even to fax me a notice of the motion, nor time
to notify me of the court hearing at which the motion would be decided.
My own efforts at finding the right Israeli lawyer were less successful
than Qimron’s, despite my legal background. A good friend and excellent
lawyer was working with a large Tel Aviv law firm, and I simply retained
the lawyer in that firm whom my friend recommended. My lawyer filed
a motion to dismiss the case on the grounds that the Israeli court did not
have jurisdiction since I was in America and the “Publisher’s Foreword”
was published in America. The court denied the motion, ruling that the
Israeli court had jurisdiction because three copies of the set of photographs
had been mailed to Israel by American purchasers and also because the
books of photographs were advertised in BAR, which was distributed to a
handful of Israeli subscribers.
My lawyer wanted to appeal the ruling. He had good grounds for
appeal. But I said no because the jurisdictional defect could easily be
cured whenever I came to Israel. If the complaint were served on me in
Israel (which would be very easy to do and in fact was done just before
I gave a public lecture at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem), there is
no question that the Israeli court would have jurisdiction. I decided to
get a new lawyer.
All this proved critical because, according to Israeli procedure, the
time had passed for me to demand to see Qimron’s drafts of the MMT com-
mentary he and Strugnell were writing. I needed this in order to determine
what Qimron (as opposed to Strugnell, who had not joined the suit) had
supplied to the final draft of the reconstructed text. Once this time period
166
had elapsed, it was up to the court’s discretion whether I could “discover”

(the technical legal term) Qimron’s working papers that would reveal just
what his contribution to the reconstructed text of MMT had been.
We filed a motion to obtain this material. Since the time period in
which we had a right to obtain the material had passed, it was a matter of
the court’s discretion. Our motion was denied.
This was a critical loss. It meant that we were never able to determine
whether Qimron’s claims as to his contribution to the reconstruction were
correct. (As it turned out, they were not, but that is getting ahead of the
story.) The only thing we could examine was the text of MMT as printed
in the attachment to my “Publisher’s Foreword.” According to scholarly
convention, anything added by the scholars to the original text found in
the cave was contained in brackets, indicating a reconstruction. But the
copy we had printed was such a bad copy that, try as we might, we could
not determine the reconstructions. Here and there, we could see—with a
magnifying glass—a bracket indicating the beginning of a reconstruction,
but we could not find the end. Or, in other cases, we could find an open-
ing bracket, but not a closing one.
At the time, we did not realize that the denial of our motion for
discovery would be a critical loss, because even if we could identify the
reconstructions, we could not analyze this difficult Hebrew text. I was not
a scholar, and there was no scholar in Israel with expertise in this area who
had any sympathy for our position.
The core issue in the case was whether Qimron had a copyright in
the reconstructions to MMT. If he did, we violated his copyright by “copy-
ing” his copyrighted creation without his permission.
At this point, I have to describe what must appear to a non-lawyer to
be a subtle distinction in copyright law—the distinction between expres-
sion (which is copyrightable) and facts (which are not). Let’s say someone
says that something looked blue. Anyone can report that it was blue; that
fact is not copyrightable. But let’s say that someone writes that it gave off
a hue that reminded him of the feeling he had when he first studied the
early paintings of Picasso’s blue period. That way of expressing blueness
is copyrightable.
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Losing in Court
Obviously the line is often difficult to draw. That is what makes law-
suits. How about the reconstructions in MMT? It’s especially difficult because
the scholars doing the reconstructing are really trying to find the words of
the ancient author of the text. And that ancient text is not copyrightable.
We could not even identify the reconstructions that Qimron had
made to the text. We were entirely dependent on Qimron’s testimony
in this regard. In court, Qimron referred only to two “examples” of
his reconstructions. In one case, a letter was missing from a word. If
the missing word was completed with one Hebrew letter (an ayin), it
would mean “animal hides”; if completed with another Hebrew letter
(an aleph), it would means “lights.” With Qimron’s understanding of
Jewish law, he was able to say that the missing letter was an ayin and
the word meant “hides.” As another example, Qimron testified that, with
his knowledge of the Jewish context of the discussion in MMT, he was
able to place a fragment of MMT horizontally that Strugnell had previ-
ously placed vertically.
In her opinion, Judge Dahlia Dorner, who presided at the two-day
trial, cited these two and only these two examples as evidence of Qimron’s
contribution to the reconstruction.
The court was clearly under the impression that these were only
two of many examples. But even if there were other examples, was the
resulting text of MMT, which had been written by an ancient theologian,
copyrightable under 20th-century copyright law? Were the reconstructions
themselves copyrightable? Was there enough new “writing” to constitute a
“writing” under copyright law?
Judge Dorner decided the answers were “yes”.
Regarding my failure to mention Qimron by name, Qimron testi-
fied that when he saw himself identified simply as “a colleague,” he was
“shocked.” “I can’t describe the feeling,” Qimron had told the court. “It’s
as if someone came and took away the thing I had made by force, tell-
ing me: ‘Go away! This belongs to me’ ... During the years I worked on
[MMT], I did almost no other work ... [My] whole family lived very fru-
gally ... When my wife complained, I would tell her, ‘Look, this is our life;
we will achieve fame.’”
168
The judge adopted this testimony: When Qimron saw that his name
was omitted, wrote the judge, “His dream to achieve fame had vanished ...
[He] felt that he had been robbed of his life’s work ... He decided that he
had to file suit ... to save his honor.”
We appealed Judge Dorner’s decision to Israel’s Supreme Court,
which, in a lengthy opinion, affirmed the judgment of the lower court.
The court recited that Qimron had worked on the reconstructed text
for 11 years. “From the 67 fragments that he received from Strugnell,”
according to the court, “[Qimron] was able to construct a 121 line text
..., 40 percent of which are completions that are not found in the writ-
ing on the fragments.”
The court cited the same two examples about which Qimron
had testified and which the trial court had cited—the reconstruction
of orot with an ayin rather than an aleph, and the placement of a frag-
ment of MMT horizontally rather than vertically. It later turned out that,
according to a major Dead Sea Scroll scholar who examined the photo-
graphs that we published, these two examples are apparently the only
reconstructions that Qimron made. The rest were made by Strugnell
in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Moreover, it turned out that Hebrew
University professor Menachem Kister had originally suggested the
horizontal placement of the MMT fragment. Qimron simply adopted
Kister’s suggestion.29
The court noted that “the primary purpose [of my publication of
MMT in my “Publisher’s Foreword”] was to publish the Deciphered Text
in defiance of the research ‘monopoly’ given to the international team
of scholars.” This was of course true, but it was stated as a justification
of Judge Dorner’s award. “Shanks is not an innocent infringer,” said the
Supreme Court.
In justification of the amount it awarded for damages, the court
noted that Qimron “was prevented from being the first to publish [MMT],
and because of this the level of the sales of the book in which he published
the Deciphered Text, together with Strugnell, at a later date, was damaged.
This violation also injured [Qimron’s] reputation and lowered his expected
income from lectures.”
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Losing in Court
The court awarded Qimron 100,000 shekels in damages (more than

$40,000 at the time). Under Israeli law, the loser in a lawsuit must pay the
winner’s attorney’s fee. With proceedings in two courts, with lawyers’ fees
for both sides and an award of 100,000 shekels to Qimron, the case cost
us over $100,000, a very hefty sum in the mid-1990s.
The case has been widely discussed in the law journals, which have
harshly criticized the courts’ reasoning and application of the law.30 One
law review article, after referring to this case as “a publisher’s nightmare,”
described the outcome this way: “The final end of such a nightmare, of
course, would be an award of damages on a scale unprecedented in the
foreign country. This nightmare came true for Hershel Shanks.”31 The lead-
ing multi-volume treatise on copyright law in the United States is known
as Nimmer on Copyright. It is written by David Nimmer, son of the famous
legal theorist Melville Nimmer. David Nimmer wrote a 221-page erudite
legal article (with over a thousand footnotes) severely critical of the Israel
Supreme Court’s opinion.32 “Sound copyright doctrine should always
doom the claim of any scholar to copyright over the reconstruction of an
antecedent manuscript,” he said. “Qimron’s suit constitutes an attempt to
use copyright law not to promote the progress of science, but as an engine
of suppression ... For the wealth of reasons posited above, Qimron lacks
copyright over his reconstruction.”
In 1994, MMT as reconstructed was published with commentary by
Oxford University Press as Volume X in the official Dead Sea Scrolls pub-
lication series Discoveries in the Judaean Desert. The authors were listed as
Elisha Qimron and John Strugnell, not John Strugnell and Elisha Qimron.
Many in the Dead Sea Scroll scholarly community have never forgiven
Qimron for this grab for notoriety. In the academic community Strugnell
would clearly be regarded as the senior author (just as he was in the paper
read by Qimron at the scholarly conference in Jerusalem in 1984). Not
only had MMT been assigned to Strugnell, but everything in the published
volume—from the table of contents to the text itself—makes clear that
Strugnell was heavily involved in its writing and scholarship. Moreover, in
every other published scroll volume, when a second scholar was brought
in to assist the original editor or to take over after an editor’s death, the
170
scholar with the original assignment was always listed first. This small
detail revealed much about Elisha Qimron’s character.
But that was not all. Volume X of DJD (as the series is known) also
has a unique copyright notice. In every other volume in the series (which
has now reached almost 40 volumes), the copyright owner of the text
is listed as “Oxford University Press.” In Volume X, the copyright owner
is “Elisha Qimron.” But this notice is followed by a long qualifying sen-
tence beginning: “Without derogating in any rights vesting in the Israel
Antiquities Authority with regard to the Scrolls’ fragments, photographs
and any other material ...” This obviously reflects a hard-fought negotiation
between Qimron’s attorney and the IAA, which was fearful that Qimron’s
unusual claims would infringe on its own rights to MMT.
Indeed, Qimron’s rights as defined by the court decision were so
broad that even after the publication of Volume X a scholar could still be
prevented from “copying” MMT as reconstructed by Qimron and Strugnell.
Qimron had already written Wacholder and Abegg threatening them with
a lawsuit if they made “any use” of the reconstructed text of MMT in recon-
structing their own text of MMT from the concordance prepared in the
1950s. If Qimron could assert these rights before the publication of Volume
X, he would continue to do so after the publication of Volume X.
Although today it is generally acknowledged that Qimron will not
sue a scholar who quotes (that is, “copies”) his reconstruction of MMT,
under the court’s decision, he would have a good case. Indeed, when
Oxford don Geza Vermes published the fourth edition of his translation
of the scrolls, he refrained from including a translation of MMT, even
though the translation would be his own. Vermes noted that the Israeli
court had “ordered [Shanks] to pay $43,000 to Professor Qimron ... In the
circumstances, I have decided to postpone the full translation of MMT
until the legal storm has blown over.” Subsequent editions of Vermes’s
book do include a translation by Vermes of MMT. While technically (and
legally), Vermes and other scholars could be sued for doing this, it is gen-
erally agreed that now there is no danger.
Although the copyright notice in Volume X is unique, the paragraph
relating to permissions to reproduce the copyrighted material used the
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Losing in Court
standard language: “Enquiries ... concerning reproduction [of copyrighted

material] should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University
Press.” So I sent a letter to the Rights Department of Oxford University
Press requesting permission to reprint the copyrighted 135-line text of
MMT. The request was granted and we published MMT, both the original
Hebrew and the English translation, in BAR.33
Through his lawyers, Qimron promptly threatened to have us held
in contempt of court for publishing MMT in BAR. We of course directed
his lawyers to the permission granted by Oxford University Press. Oxford
had even waived any fee for the reproduction rights. And nearly 200,000
copies of BAR had now been distributed all over the world.
With some masterful lawyering, Qimron’s lawyers managed to con-
vince Oxford University Press that it had made a mistake in granting us
permission to reprint MMT. We got another letter from Oxford:
We have been in correspondence with Professor Elisha Qimron’s law-

yers and have agreed to write to you again ... We feel obliged to protest
at the nature of your approach to us for permission: Your request of 12
July 1994 was disingenuous ... because it ignored the previous (March
1993) court injunction against your publishing this text.
In the end, Qimron decided not to pursue the matter further, how-
ever. Obviously, it would be impossible to put the genie back into the
bottle. Since we had Oxford’s permission to do what we did, we could
hardly be guilty of contempt of court.
But even that was not the end of the matter. With the publication
of Volume X of DJD, it became possible to compare what was finally pre-
sented as the reconstructed text with the various fragments as they had
been photographed and transcribed in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This
comparison was made by an internationally prominent Dead Sea Scroll
scholar, Florentino Garcia Martinez, when he was asked to review Volume
X of DJD in The Journal for the Study of Judaism. His findings were devas-
tating. He found:
172
1. The selection of fragments belonging to each manuscript, the totality

of the isolated fragments, their transcription [and] translation ... were sub-
stantially completed in 1961 [before Qimron was involved with MMT].
2. The combination of various manuscripts in a more or less unbroken
text (...the composite text) was also substantially completed in 1961.
In an article Qimron had written defending and explaining his con-

tributions to the reconstructed text of MMT, he cited only two examples,
the same two examples he cited in his court testimony: (1) the reconstruc-
tion of an ayin rather than an aleph, and (2) the horizontal placement of
one small fragment.34 Apparently, these were Qimron’s only contributions
to the reconstruction of the text! Based on his testimony, however, the court
had concluded that he was responsible for a substantial number of recon-
structions. The Israel Supreme Court praised the trial judge for having
“thoroughly examined the process of Qimron’s work”; she had concluded,
the Israel Supreme Court said, that Qimron “assembled from 60 to 70 frag-
ments of ... a composite text of 121 lines.”35
Badly embarrassed by Garcia Martinez’s review and its conclu-
sions regarding his contribution to the reconstruction of MMT, Qimron
demanded that Garcia Martinez “apologize in print for defaming my char-
acter. Needless to say, I reserve the right to utilize all legitimate means at
my disposal to redress this wrong if Garcia Martinez chooses to ignore
this demand.”
We printed Qimron’s demand under the headline “Israeli Scholar
Bares His Fangs—Again!” But in the end Qimron decided to drop the mat-
ter “to avoid further controversy and save my time and energy.” Apparently,
he had had enough of the courtroom.
I would not want to leave the impression that Qimron made little
contribution to the interpretation of MMT (in contrast to the reconstruction
of the text). By all accounts, he made an enormous contribution to the
interpretation. But not to the text, only to the interpretation. This inter-
pretation is extensively expressed in Volume X of DJD, but we did not
copy that. Moreover, interpretation—insofar as it consists of ideas—is not
copyrightable. He has a copyright in the expression of his ideas, but not
173
Losing in Court
in the ideas themselves. As reflected in Strugnell’s foreword to Volume

X, Qimron contributed mightily to Strugnell’s understanding of the text,
but not in its reconstruction: “By 1959,” wrote Strugnell, “the six copies of
MMT had been identified, transcribed, materially reconstructed and partly
combined into a common text, but how were such odd fragments to be
understood?” That is where Qimron came in.
Perhaps understandably Qimron has barely been able to speak to
me when I have seen him at scholarly conferences (which mostly he
does not attend). But it is he who won! At the end of the legal case I
was left on the floor bloodied (but unbowed). It is I who would more
understandably decline to speak to him. Or is it that, as one commen-
tator has remarked, “Regardless of how the various courts in fact ruled,
Shanks would appear to be the winner in the grand sense. His attack on
the cartel has succeeded.”36
Paradoxically, my post-lawsuit relationship with Qimron offers a
striking contrast to my relationship with Strugnell.
To the end, Strugnell (who died in 2007) maintained that, all things
considered, the pace of publication had not been slow. As he wrote in a
2001 publication, “Hysteria and cris à scandale are really uncalled for, nor
do they reflect any credit upon the knowledge or judgment of such crit-
ics.”37 But Strugnell never exuded the vitriol that characterized Qimron.
On the contrary, we had a pleasant relationship in his later years after he
returned to Cambridge.
The contrast between Strugnell and Qimron is striking. I have
had no effect on Qimron’s life, except for the obloquy he brought on
himself with his litigiousness. Strugnell could claim with considerable
justification that I ruined his life. He was dismissed from his position
as chief editor of the scroll publication team, he was disgraced by his
anti-Semitic interview, and he was forced into retirement from his
professorship at Harvard. Yet we could regularly agree to have a meal
together whenever I was in Cambridge. I refer to him as a Christian gen-
tleman. But he is also what I call an intellectual anti-Semite. He was not
prejudiced against Jews, only against their “silly” religion. He would not
burn them at the stake. He would not even deny them tenure. Indeed,
174
he would warmly associate with them. But he could never understand

their theological obtuseness.
All this did not prevent the two of us from enjoying our associa-
tion, although we sometimes (respectfully) disagreed. The marks of his
mental and physical deterioration were clear, however. And they soon
became worse. I recall the last time I saw him. I had to help him up the
stairs to his third-floor flat. I left him alone slumped in a chair in his
stench-filled apartment.
175
FIRST DISCOVERED in 1979 by Sorbonne scholar André Lemaire in a
Jerusalem antiquities shop, this small inscribed ivory pomegranate was
long considered to be the only surviving relic from Solomon’s Temple.
Now, some Israeli officials and archaeologists question the authenticity of
this and many other finds that have surfaced on the antiquities market. I
believe the pomegranate inscription is authentic, a position supported by
leading paleographers.
chapter xi
Two Extraordinary
Inscriptions—
The Pomegranate and
the Ossuary
The Ivory Pomegranate Inscription—

A Relic from Solomon’s Temple—Or Is It?
in the summer of 1979, sorbonne professor André Lemaire was

staying in Jerusalem and, as is his wont when in the Holy City, he made the
rounds of antiquities dealers, looking for ancient inscriptions. It was July
as he recalls it that a dealer invited him to the back of his shop—Lemaire
still won’t tell me who the dealer was—and showed him a tiny ivory
pomegranate that was inscribed on the shoulder of the ball (or grenade).
The inscription was engraved in paleo-Hebrew letters, the kind that were
used before the Babylonian destruction of Solomon’s Temple in the sixth
century B.C.E. About a third of the ball had broken off, so the inscription
was incomplete. The part that survived, however, could be easily read:
“(Belonging) to the house (temple) of [xxx]h; holy to the priests.”
It was a startling inscription. Only the last letter of the name of
the God to whom the temple was dedicated survived, an h. The rest had
177
Two Extraordinary Inscriptions—The Pomegranate and the Ossuary
broken off. But the missing letters were almost surely the Hebrew letters
that would spell Yahweh, the personal name of the Israelite God. Based on
the shape and form of the letters, the inscription could be dated to the
eighth century B.C.E.
In the flat bottom of the pomegranate was a hole, apparently for a
rod. The pomegranate itself was the head of a wand or scepter from the
Temple. Several of these pomegranate scepters had been recovered, but
they had no inscriptions.
Given its date and the restored name of the God, it seemed clear that
this pomegranate had once been part of the paraphernalia of the priests in
Solomon’s Temple! If so, it was the only surviving relic from the Temple.
Lemaire, a former priest who left the priesthood many years ago
to marry, is a mild-mannered, soft-spoken, even self-effacing scholar who
lives modestly in Paris. He is one of the world’s two or three leading pale-
ographers of ancient Semitic inscriptions. He lives for his scholarship and
is widely admired not only for his scholarship, but also for his character.
His reaction to the inscribed pomegranate was completely in character:
He wrote a careful, precise but short note about it that he published
(in French, of course) along with black-and-white pictures in the Revue
Biblique, the arcane journal of Jerusalem’s École biblique et archéologique
Française. Although he had seen the inscribed pomegranate in the antiqui-
ties shop in 1979, the note in the Revue Biblique did not appear until 1981.
The publication made not a ripple. No other publication—in French
or English—picked up on it.
I met Lemaire at a scholarly conference and was naturally eager to
see his scholarship in the pages of BAR. We talked about an article on
the Canaanite goddess Asherah, who figures importantly in the Bible.
This appeared in the November/December 1984 issue. In the course of
preparing this article, however, André (we were soon on a first-name
basis) told me of the notice in the Revue Biblique about the inscribed
ivory pomegranate. Of course, I immediately knew that I wanted to pub-
lish a more extensive article about the inscription on the pomegranate
in BAR. We postponed the article about Asherah and began working on
the pomegranate article.
178
I wanted to illustrate the article with a full-page color photograph of

the pomegranate. Could it be obtained? This was more than four years after
Lemaire had seen it in the antiquities shop. The antiquities dealer had told
Lemaire that he himself did not own it. Naturally, the owner was never iden-
tified. Now Lemaire wanted to know from the dealer if a color picture of it
could be obtained for publication. Could the antiquities dealer still locate
the owner? Had it changed hands in over four years? Would the owner con-
sent to having a color picture published? With bated breath I waited. The
answer was ultimately yes, the antiquities dealer could get a picture of it.
Four years after the publication in the Revue Biblique, Lemaire’s
article appeared in BAR—in the January/February 1984 issue—with a stun-
ning full-page photograph in color.
After we published our article, the next question was where was the
pomegranate? Lemaire had not seen it since 1979. And he had no idea
who owned it, let alone where it came from. He had carefully examined
it for authenticity and was satisfied on this score (a conclusion that was
buttressed in my mind by the fact that in at least five years, there had
been no attempt to sell it for a huge sum or otherwise to capitalize on it).
I strongly felt that the public should have an opportunity to see the
pomegranate with its inscription. In the May/June 1984 issue of BAR, we
lamented that no one knows who owns it—except the owner himself and
the antiquities dealer who showed it to Lemaire. “We can only plead with
the owner to identify himself—or at least allow the Israel Museum to dis-
play it anonymously, so that the public can view this beautiful relic, which
can now be seen only in BAR’s lifelike color photographs.” We also called
on Israel’s attorney general and the director of the antiquities authority to
look into the matter.
The best sleuths in Jerusalem, however, could not find the tiny
object—a little more than an inch-and-a-half high. We know it was smug-
gled out of Israel because in 1985 it was displayed in an exhibit in Paris’s
Grand Palais. Then it disappeared again.
In 1987 a tour guide named Meir Urbach (son of the eminent
Talmud scholar Ephraim Urbach), who often escorted dignitaries around
Israel, approached the Israel Museum: The pomegranate was available for
179
purchase. The circumstances of the purchase are clouded. A purchase price

of $550,000 was negotiated. (The initial purchase price of the pomegranate
in the shop where it was first shown to Lemaire was reportedly $3,000.)
But of course the museum did not have a half-million dollars lying around.
Then suddenly, as if from heaven, the museum received an anonymous gift
of one million Swiss francs (at that time about $675,000). This was enough
to purchase the pomegranate and pay the ever-present middlemen.
The money was placed in a numbered Swiss bank account and the
museum sent Israel’s preeminent paleographer, Professor Nahman Avigad
of Hebrew University, to Basel to make sure a fake was not substituted for
the real thing when the price was paid and the precious package deliv-
ered. Avigad came home with the real thing, which was then placed in a
special room of the museum with a narrow beam of crystal light focused
on it. Amid great fanfare, it was reported that this was the first and only
relic ever recovered from Solomon’s Temple. The opening of the museum
exhibit was the first item on TV news in Israel that night. The museum
stayed open until midnight to accommodate the crowds.
Sixteen years later, in 2004, a scientific committee appointed by the
Israel Antiquities Authority examined the inscription on the pomegranate
and found it to be a forgery.
The Antiquities Market and Looted Antiquities
even if the pomegranate with its inscription was authentic and

had been used in Solomon’s Temple, other questions relating to it arose.
Should André Lemaire have been in an antiquities dealer’s shop prowling
around for such things? Should BAR have given publicity to the artifact
by publishing it, thereby adding to its value on the antiquities market?
Many scholars, especially field archaeologists, detest the antiquities
market and, derivatively, antiquities dealers. The artifacts they sell, in the
jargon of the trade, are “unprovenanced”: We don’t know where they came
from. The dealers usually say they come from old collections that have just
been put on the market, but that’s an obvious ruse.
180
If we don’t know where they were found, they have no archaeologi-

cal context that would tell us much more about the object in its setting.
Some archaeologists say that an unprovenanced object, without context,
is worthless. But this is going too far. I usually reply, “It may be worth less,
but it is not worthless.”
But that’s not the worst of it. Most of the artifacts you see in the
antiquities shops have been looted. These objects represent nothing less
than the destruction of our cultural heritage (although some may simply
have surfaced after a rain or turned up when a farmer was seeding his
field).
I surely agree that looting is a scourge. It is worse than ever today.
Looters should be caught and jailed—in small cells. But the fact is that
the only way to discourage looting is to catch the looters on the ground. It
often helps to involve the locals in the vicinity of a site; when they under-
stand the cultural treasure that is near where they live, they often develop
a local culture that effectively discourages looting.
Everyone, including the severest critics of the antiquities market,
admits, however, that the campaign of some archaeologists to shun the
market has had no effect whatsoever on looting. Looting is worse than
ever. So shunning the antiquities market is simply a statement of prin-
ciple, not a means to reduce looting. Even when legal markets are closed,
the market simply migrates elsewhere and the scholarly community never
hears of these cultural treasures.
And shunning the antiquities market is not cost-free. It comes with
a price. It deprives us of cultural treasures of extreme importance. Think
of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Almost all of them were looted and purchased by
scholars—of course through middlemen—from the Bedouin who looted
them. The scrolls are generally recognized as the greatest archaeological
find of the 20th century—and often dismissed by scholars who want to
shut down antiquities shops as the exception to the rule concerning shun-
ning the antiquities market. Of course there are many others who argue
that we must look at objects that come to us via the market.
Recently, a three-foot-high stela from the market enriched our under-
standing of the Jewish roots of Christian messianism. In addition to being
181
reported in BAR,38 it was reported on the front page of the Sunday New
York Times.
Another recently surfaced inscription provides the historic back-
ground to characters in the Hanukkah story.39
A royal inscription in which a Moabite king brags of his military
victories and his great construction projects was found in an antiquities
shop by an Israeli scholar and is now displayed in the Israel Museum.40
More than 90 percent of ancient coins, which teach us so much
about our past, come from the antiquities market.
Recent books and articles in BAR reveal a culture of magic, illu-
minated by strange inscriptions in so-called Aramaic incantation bowls,
virtually all of which come from the antiquities market.41
Are we to ignore all of this because the objects come from the antiq-
uities market and were probably looted?
Othmar Keel, a distinguished Swiss scholar who has spent a lifetime
studying the iconography on seals and other archaeological artifacts, most
of which are unprovenanced, told me in an interview, “I don’t think a
history of the ancient Near East can be written without relying on unprov-
enanced material.”42 Indeed, all leading paleographers—Frank Cross, Joseph
Naveh, Kyle McCarter, Dennis Pardee, Pierre Boudreuil, Felice Israel and, of
course, all Dead Sea Scroll scholars—publish and rely on unprovenanced
finds. As Alan Millard, a leading British scholar, told a forgery conference,
“If they’re not published, they are virtually destroyed.”
For the scholars who shun any contact with the antiquities market,
however, it is a matter of moral principle. It is not simply a difference of
opinion: Any contact with the antiquities market and its unprovenanced
artifacts is consummate evil.
Taking this position, the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA)
and the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR), the two major
scholarly organizations of archaeologists in the United States, will not
publish unprovenanced artifacts in their scholarly journals. Nor will they
permit papers on artifacts that come from the antiquities market to be
read at their scholarly conferences.
Yet they are hypocritical: They interpret the prohibition to apply
182
only to the first publication of the artifact or inscription. After it is pub-

lished elsewhere, it can be discussed in their journals. Andrew Vaughn,
the executive secretary of ASOR, once explained to me how he (and many
others) get around the prohibition: He wrote his doctoral dissertation
on ancient seals, many of which are unprovenanced and in the hands
of private collectors whom he visited. In order to discuss the objects in
ASOR’s journal, he had to “jump through hoops,” to use his language.
First, he had to publish the unprovenanced materials in journals that had
no objection to the publication of artifacts that come from the antiqui-
ties market. Then he would publish articles discussing them in ASOR’s
own scholarly journal.
Many junior, especially untenured, faculty members are fearful of
any involvement with unprovenanced material, lest this damage their pros-
pects for advancement or tenure. As I said, to those scholars who despise
the antiquities market, this is not a matter of debate. It involves the dif-
ference between rectitude and evil. William (Bill) Dever, my long-time
friend who figures in an earlier chapter of this autobiography, is one of
America’s two or three most distinguished archaeologists. He has recently
retired, so he is not subject to the kind of pressure that would affect a
younger untenured professor. But Dever is a field archaeologist and even
he is affected by those who shun the market on principle, as illustrated
by the following story:
We recently published an article on some fascinating small house
shrines that were unprovenanced and came from the well-known collec-
tor of biblically related artifacts, Shlomo Moussaieff. As a result of this
article, another house shrine was brought to our attention in the collec-
tion of a collector who wished to remain anonymous lest he be subject
to the vitriol that some sections of the academy now heap on collectors.
This newly surfaced house shrine was unusual in another respect. It was
apparently consecrated to a divine couple, as indicated by the double
(two-seated) throne inside. Did this deity have a wife? This is a subject of
deep interest to Bill Dever. So I asked him to write an article for BAR that
treated this house shrine as it related to the much-discussed question of
whether Yahweh, the early Israelite God, had a consort. Bill said he would
183
write the article, but only if the house shrine were previously published,
so that he could say that he was just discussing an unprovenanced arti-
fact that had been previously published. I agreed. We simply published
a picture of the house shrine on the page preceding Bill’s article, so he
came within the exception to the rule against publishing anything from
the antiquities market.43
I sometimes wonder whether the reason field archaeologists so
roundly condemn any association with unprovenanced artifacts is that
these artifacts are often much more exciting than the finds dug up in
professional excavations. Not that they are more important. There is no
comparison of what we learn from unprovenanced artifacts to what we
learn from professional excavations. The latter involve much detail, often
dull but necessary detail, and careful, often lengthy and painstaking study,
but they sometimes lack the excitement and immediacy of an important
relic. And field archaeologists may miss this, especially when they see the
attention lavished on exciting unprovenanced finds.
Why is it that what may appear to be the most dramatic artifacts are
often found by looters rather than professional archaeologists? Certainly
professional archaeologists trumpet their most stunning finds—when they
find them. But they do so less often than the looters. “The looters know
where to look,” says Shlomo Moussaieff. Often the most beautiful artifacts
are found in tombs, a favorite target of looters. But this is not the whole
story. The puzzle remains.
The Ossuary Inscription—“James, Son

of Joseph, Brother of Jesus”
in 2002, eight years after we published Lemaire’s article on the

ivory pomegranate, I was having dinner with him in a fine Jerusalem fish
restaurant across from the King David Hotel when he told me about some-
thing that had recently come to his attention. He had been at a gathering
in Shlomo Moussaieff’s elegant apartment overlooking the Mediterranean
from the 14th floor (the whole floor) of a fashionable Herzliya hotel, when
184
Lemaire was approached by another collector, Oded Golan, who asked

Lemaire if he would help him read an inscription. Lemaire later went
to Golan’s apartment in downtown Tel Aviv to look at the inscription. It
was engraved on an ossuary, a limestone box in which the bones of the
deceased were placed about a year after death, when the flesh had desic-
cated and fallen away. This was a Jewish custom mainly in the Jerusalem
area that lasted for about a century, ending with the Roman destruction
of the Holy City in 70 C.E. The inscription that Golan was having trouble
reading was indeed a difficult inscription to decipher. One of Israel’s lead-
ing paleographers, Ada Yardeni, had already looked at it and struggled to
read it. Lemaire did too. It took him several days to decipher the heavily
cursive script. The inscription indentified the woman whose bones had
once lain within: Although unnamed, she was the daughter of Samuel the
priest and was brought from Apamea to be buried in Jerusalem.
Before Lemaire left, Golan showed the scholar pictures of some other
pieces that he kept in a warehouse, unlike the prize pieces featured in the
vitrines of his apartment. One was another ossuary, this one with an inscrip-
tion that was easily read:
“James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.”
It was not a particularly elegant looking ossuary. It was slightly trap-
ezoidal rather than rectangular, as if the manufacturer had not been very
competent. The box was about 21 inches long, 10 inches wide and 12
inches high. The only decoration was a single framing line and two very
faint rosettes on the long side opposite the inscription. The rosettes were
so faint Golan hadn’t even noticed them.
I later talked to Golan about why he hadn’t appreciated the impor-
tance of this inscription. “I never realized God could have a brother,” he said,
hardly a surprising comment for an Israeli Jew. Moreover, all three names
in the inscription were quite common in the first century. Even someone
more familiar than Golan with the New Testament would have difficulty
recognizing the name James on the ossuary. The reason is that the Aramaic
letters on the ossuary spell “Yaakov.” This is the Hebrew name of the patri-
arch Jacob, easily recognizable by any Israeli. It takes a special arcane bit
of knowledge to realize that Aramaic Yaakov came to be translated, via
185
Sorbonne scholar André Lemaire,

who first published the ivory
pomegranate inscription and the
James ossuary inscription.
the Greek then Latin of the New Testament, as James in English rather
than Jacob. So it was entirely understandable that Golan hadn’t recognized
“Yaakov” as “James.” (Incidentally, if the inscription was forged, as some
would later claim, the forger would have to know that Aramaic Yaakov
became James in English translations of the New Testament.)
When Lemaire told me about the ossuary at our Jerusalem dinner,
I naturally suggested an article about it in BAR. Two questions immedi-
ately presented themselves of which I was well aware: (1) As with any item
from the market, was the inscription a forgery?; (2) Was this Yaakov a ref-
erence to James, the brother of Jesus of Nazareth (Matthew 13:55; Mark
6:3), leader of the Jerusalem church following Jesus’ crucifixion (Acts 15;
Galatians 2:9)? Or was this simply another James whose father happened
to be named Joseph and who happened to have a brother named Jesus?
Based on his paleographic study, Lemaire was confident that the
inscription was authentic. Nevertheless, I thought it the better part of cau-
tion to have the inscription examined by a scientific expert. I contacted
Amos Bein, head of the Geological Survey of Israel, who agreed to assign
two members of his staff to study it, for which the magazine paid. Their
examination found nothing suspicious.
I also consulted one of the world’s leading Aramaicists and Dead
Sea Scroll scholar, Father Joseph Fitzmyer, who lived in Washington. His
examination was especially important because he found a problem. The
word “brother” was spelled incorrectly in the inscription—or rather in a
way that was not adopted until hundreds of years after the time of Jesus.
186
When Father Fitzmyer proceeded to research the matter, however, he found

the same spelling in one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Then he also found this
spelling in another ossuary inscription. “I stand corrected,” he told me. The
implication of this was that if this inscription was a forgery, the forger had
to know Aramaic better than Joe Fitzmyer!
I was satisfied that the inscription was authentic and I was comfort-
able publishing it. The second question was more difficult: Was this Jesus
the Jesus who is called Jesus of Nazareth in the New Testament?
Lemaire thought it was. That was good enough for me to publish
it, although this kind of thing can never be established with certainty.
Lemaire’s conclusion was based on a statistical study of the size of the pop-
ulation at the time, the frequency of these names (found on all inscriptions
from the period) and the probability that the three names would occur in
this order as James, followed by father Joseph, followed by brother Jesus.
Lemaire concluded that there were probably 20 people in Jerusalem at the
time who would fit this profile. That would give it a 5 percent chance that
this Jesus was Jesus of Nazareth. But at this point, another factor enters
the judgment. We have thousands of ossuaries. Most people 2,000 years
ago were identified simply as “X son of Y.” This formula appears frequently
on ossuary inscriptions. Indeed, there are at least two ossuaries inscribed
“Jesus son of Joseph.” The names were so common that no one thought to
relate these ossuary inscriptions to Jesus of Nazareth. But it is very unusual
to mention a brother on an ossuary. Indeed, in all the known ossuaries,
this has occurred only one other time. Lemaire suggests two possible rea-
sons for mentioning a brother in an ossuary inscription: First, because the
brother is responsible for the burial; or, second, because the brother is well
known and the deceased would want to be associated with him. It is the
latter that substantially increases the likelihood that the Jesus referred to
in this inscription is Jesus of Nazareth. On this basis, Lemaire concluded
that “it seems very probable” that this Jesus is indeed Jesus of Nazareth.
Before we published Lemaire’s article, I was asked to appear on a
television program in Toronto. By coincidence, I also received a call from
a TV producer from Toronto named Simcha Jacobovici, who wanted to
talk to me about working with him. I declined the opportunity, although
187
I was going to be in Toronto. When I resisted his importuning, he asked

me if I would be willing to give an interview to the Toronto newspapers,
including the Toronto Globe. I agreed to this. Of course, Simcha arranged
the interview in his own offices, so naturally I had to talk with him as well.
I admit I was impressed with him. He was intelligent, informed
and articulate. He had produced several award-winning programs, includ-
ing one entitled “Falasha: Exile of the Black Jews.” In the end, I confided
to him about our forthcoming article on the James ossuary. We agreed to
make a television production about it.
In November of that year, the American Schools of Oriental Research,
the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion
would be holding their annual meetings in Toronto, which would bring
together more than 8,000 archaeologists and biblical scholars. I contacted
the Royal Ontario Museum and arranged for the museum to exhibit the
James ossuary in a special room during the meetings and for a few weeks
afterward, provided of course that Golan could get permission from the
Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) to take the ossuary out of the country.
Golan applied for a temporary export permit, noting on the applica-
tion that the shipment was insured for a million dollars and quoting the
inscription on the ossuary. He had no difficulty in obtaining the permit
from the Israel Antiquities Authority. But this would later be the source
of intense enmity of the IAA’s director, retired general Shuka Dorfman,
toward me. I was completely unaware of it at the time. All I knew was that
Golan, the owner of the ossuary, had applied for a temporary export permit
and that the permit was granted. (To
(To this
this day,
day,Shuka,
Shukaaswill
I always refer to
not speak to
me. Nor will he permit his archaeologists to write for BAR. We still
manage to report on all the important finds from IAA excavations,
however.)*
Back in Washington, we held a press conference on October 21, 2002,
featuring Lemaire’s article on the ossuary. The next day the ossuary was
on the front page of the New York Times and practically every other paper
in the world. This was soon followed by intense media coverage in Time,
Newsweek, etc. as well as on ABC, NBC, PBS, CNN, etc.
*Late bulletin: In January 2010 Shuka and I had a sulkha (an Arab peace meal)
in Jerusalem. We are now friends.
188
THE JAMES OSSUARY sits proudly in its display case during a special
2002 exhibit at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum (top). The inscription
on the ossuary (bottom) reads “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.”
It has been declared a forgery by a committee of the Israel Antiquities
Authority. But BAR, together with every leading paleographer who has
opined on the matter, has defended the authenticity of the inscription.
When the ossuary arrived in Canada, the museum carefully trans-

ported it from the airport and proceeded to unpack it. It was enclosed in
a cardboard box rather than a wooden crate. Inside, it was encased only in
layers of bubble wrap. When museum officials removed the bubble wrap,
they found the limestone box inside had cracked into five separate pieces.
The front page of the Sun, Canada’s leading tabloid, blared in 72-point
white type on a black background, “Oh, My God—2,000-year-old relic
linked to Jesus cracked on way to ROM.”
Until this time, the owner of the ossuary, Oded Golan, had requested
anonymity in our coverage. And we respected that. But the Israeli newspaper
189
WHILE EN ROUTE to its world premiere at the Royal Ontario Museum,

the James ossuary broke into several pieces. As shown on the front page
of the Canadian Sun, one of the cracks even went through the inscription.
Fortunately, museum conservators easily repaired the fractures and, in
the process, gained significant insight into the inscription’s authenticity.
Ha’aretz soon smoked him out, and the paparazzi descended on him. He
soon became a very public figure.
After the ossuary broke, I asked Oded (we were now on a first-name
basis) whether he was going to make a claim against the insurance com-
pany or against the shipping company that had packed the ossuary. Despite
the fact that he had engaged what he described as the leading company
in Israel for such purposes (Atlas/Peltransport Ltd.), it had been packed
unbelievably poorly, in a way that would almost guarantee that it would
break. Yet Oded said he was not interested in making a claim. The money,
190
he said, was unimportant. Strange. Why was this? Was it because he knew
there was no monetary damage? Was there no monetary damage as a result
of the breakage because it was fake—and Oded knew it? It is this kind of
reasoning that began to build the case against him. (Remember this later
in the book when we consider his storing the ossuary on an unused toilet
on the roof of his apartment building.)
Fortunately, the Royal Ontario Museum had a superb restorer on
staff who mended the ossuary prior to the exhibit. The cracks were barely
visible. One of the cracks ran through the inscription and this gave the
museum the opportunity to examine the inscription from the side, where
any evidence of forgery would more likely be visible. All of the muse-
um’s extensive tests confirmed the authenticity of the inscription.44 Its
conclusion was the same as the Israel Geological Survey’s earlier examina-
tion—the ossuary inscription was old and authentic.
The ossuary was exhibited in its own room in the museum against
a wall that dramatically proclaimed, “Jacques, fils de Joseph, frère de
Jesus.” We arranged a special viewing for the scholars at the conferences.
Even scholars closely affiliated with ASOR snuck in to see it, despite the
organization’s policy statement that cautioned members to refrain from
exhibiting unprovenanced artifacts. While ASOR officially ignored the
exhibit, the Society for Biblical Literature held a special session on the
ossuary in the grand ballroom of the hotel where it was meeting. The
session was attended by nearly 1,200 scholars, many times more than any
of the hundreds of other sessions at the meetings. André Lemaire spoke
at length, explaining why he considered it clearly authentic, based on his
paleographic examination. The former president of ASOR, Eric Meyers,
nevertheless questioned the authenticity of the inscription simply on the
basis that it had come from the antiquities market, a position that was con-
sistent with his intense animosity toward the antiquities market.
The public flocked to the museum exhibit—more than 100,000 in
seven weeks, forming lines around the block. The museum wanted to
extend the exhibit for another month. But the IAA, by this time furious
at me, would not extend the permit even for a month. They wanted the
ossuary back in Israel.
191
In the months after the exhibit, Simcha Jacobovici and I met in Tel
Aviv to film a TV special about the ossuary in Oded’s apartment. And
New Testament scholar Ben Witherington and I wrote a book about
the ossuary and the character of James that was published by a major
American publisher.45
Later, like the tiny pomegranate inscription, the James ossuary
inscription was declared to be a forgery.
But was it?
192
chapter xii
A Royal Israelite
Inscription—
The Yehoash Plaque?
exactly when the yehoash (or jehoash in English) plaque sur-
faced on the antiquities market is unknown. Unlike the ivory pomegranate
inscription and the James ossuary inscription, the Yehoash inscription
was suspected of being a forgery from the moment it was seen by senior
paleographers.
It consists of 15 lines of ancient Hebrew script on an 11-by-9-inch
black stone plaque and describes the collection of money for repairs to the
Jerusalem Temple. It closely parallels the descriptions of the same events
in 2 Kings 12:5–17 and 2 Chronicles 24:4–14. According to the Bible,
Yehoash reigned more than a century after Solomon built the Temple
and by that time it needed repairs. If authentic, the Yehoash inscription
would be the first royal Israelite (Judahite) inscription ever discovered. If
authentic, it could well have been a plaque that had actually hung in the
Temple of Solomon—or an ancient copy thereof. Indeed, rumors had
it that it had been discovered in the Muslim cemetery just outside the
eastern wall of the Temple Mount, perhaps when someone was digging
a new grave. So it could well have come from the Temple. Or it might
have come from the area of recent extensive unsupervised Arab excava-
tions on the Temple Mount.46
Early on the Yehoash inscription was shown under mysterious cir-
cumstances in a Jerusalem hotel to Israel’s senior paleographer, Joseph
193
A Royal Israelite Inscription—The Yehoash Plaque
TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE? This 15-line Hebrew inscription, known as

the Yehoash inscription, describes repairs to the Jerusalem Temple by
King Yehoash in the ninth century B.C.E. Like the ivory pomegranate
and the James ossuary, the inscription is currently at the center of
controversy as to whether it is a forgery or authentic.
194
Naveh, who immediately thought that it was probably a forgery. It was

then offered to the Israel Museum, which had it in its possession for more
than a year and a half while examining it—and ultimately declined to pur-
chase it. Too dangerous.
It was also taken to the Geological Survey of Israel which found it
to be authentic.
After that, the plaque disappeared.
Rumors about the plaque swirled around the antiquities mar-
ket. Then articles about the rumors were published in Ha’aretz and the
Jerusalem Post. The matter thus came to the attention of then Education
Minister Limor Livnat. Here was an inscription that, if authentic, would
provide evidence for Israel’s claim to the Temple Mount. If authentic, it
would demonstrate the accuracy of the biblical accounts. It might even
prove that the Temple was decorated in gold, because gold globules were
found in the patina. What was the Israel Antiquities Authority (then a part
of the Education Ministry) going to do to locate the inscription? Livnat
demanded to know. Locating the plaque then became a top priority of the
antiquities authorities. Forgery did not seem to be a question at that time.
But locating the plaque was not an easy task. At one point, the
owner of the plaque was represented by one of Israel’s leading law firms,
Israel, Herzog, Fox and Neeman. One of these lawyers, Isaac Herzog, was a
member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. But the lawyer-client privilege
prevented the police from requiring the lawyer to identify his client. The
owner of the plaque and its location remained elusive.
In the days that followed, Amir Ganor, head of the IAA’s theft inves-
tigation unit, intensified his search for the plaque. The mystery man who
had brought the Yehoash plaque to the Geological Survey for examination
had told the geologist that he had gotten the geologist’s name from Oded
Golan. Ganor was thus alerted to the name Oded Golan. Ganor’s sixth
sense also led him to suspect the Tel Aviv collector of having the Yehoash
inscription: Golan had the ossuary. What about the Yehoash plaque?
Ganor was already building up a head of animosity against this fellow
over the ossuary. Not that Ganor (yet) thought the ossuary was a forgery,
but rather it was Golan’s underhanded way of dealing with it—not telling
195
the IAA about it—that angered Ganor. Ganor had paid a routine visit to
the collector’s apartment not long before the world learned of the ossuary,
just looking for looted items and taking the temperature of the antiqui-
ties market. Golan hadn’t even mentioned the ossuary that was about to
explode in Ganor’s face. Ganor was “furious” at Golan for not telling him
about the ossuary.47
When Ganor finally caught the mysterious man who had taken the
Yehoash plaque to Naveh and then to the Israel Museum and the Geological
Survey—a man named Tzur who often used the name Tzuriel—Tzur iden-
tified Golan as “the guy that trained me to do everything.” According to
one reporter who talked to Ganor, Tzur identified Golan as the owner of
the plaque.48 This was music to Ganor’s ears. It confirmed his suspicions,
although at this point the issue was still not forgery, but the location of
an immensely valuable looted object.
According to the same source, when Golan denied any connection to
the plaque, Ganor obtained a search warrant for Golan’s apartment—and
found nothing. Ganor grilled Golan daily for 30 days, from late February
to mid-March 2003, but came away with no information about the plaque.
He did learn about Golan’s warehouses where he stored antiquities; Ganor
searched those as well—still no plaque. Finally, with Golan in handcuffs,
he took Golan to his parents’ apartment during the night. Golan’s parents
were sleeping. The banging on the door awakened them; they let the police
and their handcuffed son inside. The search of their apartment proceeded
as Golan and his parents looked on. The search was completed, all but the
parents’ bedroom, without finding anything.
When the police began to enter the bedroom, Golan broke. He
said he would deliver the Yehoash plaque if they would not press charges
against him for lying that he knew nothing about it. Two days later, Golan’s
lawyer delivered the Yehoash plaque to the police.49
It’s a strange story. It didn’t make sense to me. Why did Golan resist
for so long? Why didn’t Golan tell them earlier that at one time he had
the stone in his possession and that, as he now claims, it belonged to an
Arab dealer from East Jerusalem? Why did Golan break only when they
were going to search his parents’ bedroom? After all, there was nothing in
196
there. I talked to Amir Ganor about what he thought: “Why didn’t Golan
tell you sooner?” I asked. Ganor had no explanation.
I then talked to Golan himself. His story didn’t make much more
sense than Ganor’s. Golan claims that he had given the Arab antiquities
dealer (who has since died) a promise that if Golan did not return it, he
would be liable for its value. Golan admits he lied when he denied having
the inscription in his possession, but he did not lie when he denied owning
it. He claims from the beginning he told the investigators that he could get
the plaque for them, but they would not accept this offer. It all sounds fuzzy.
In any event, the IAA now had the plaque. On May 17, 2003, the IAA
held its own press conference, featuring Education Minister Limor Livnat
with her finger pointing to the Hebrew writing on the plaque, proving
that the Jewish Temple was a historical reality, that it was not the fiction
that a chorus of Arab “temple deniers” had been feeding to the media.
Until now, the IAA’s (and Ganor’s) focus had been looting, not forg-
ery. Ganor felt certain that the James ossuary had been looted—and it
probably was. And of course the Yehoash plaque was too. An Israeli law
provides that any antiquity recovered after 1978 belongs to the state. If the
ossuary had been looted after this date, it belonged to Israel, not to Oded
Golan. Similarly with the Yehoash plaque. Ganor and the IAA wanted
these extraordinary relics for the State of Israel.
True, questions as to authenticity had been raised. But as for the
James ossuary inscription, the forgery claim had not been made by what
scholars consider “serious” people. Apart from a woman whom no one in
the community of paleographers had ever heard of (Rochelle Altman),
there were people like Eric Meyers who despised the antiquities market
and raised the issue only in general terms—anything that comes from
the market is likely to be a forgery, especially if it is “too good to be true.”
As for the Yehoash plaque, it had yet to be studied before any question
would arise as to its authenticity. At this point, neither Naveh nor the Israel
Museum was prepared to declare the Yehoash inscription a forgery and the
Geological Survey scientists had declared it authentic.
What changed the focus to forgery? The most important thing
was that the James ossuary and the Yehoash plaque were both traced to
197
the same source at the same time—Oded Golan. Ganor suspected that
Golan badly needed money and that he desperately forged two mind-
boggling artifacts, one after the other, to relieve his financial situation.
“In the pressure to get money quickly, he made a mistake. He put out
the [James] ossuary and the [Yehoash] stone at the same time,” Ganor is
quoted as saying.50
And of course the IAA and Ganor were delighted to pursue Golan
for a more serious crime than buying looted antiquities or lying to inves-
tigators. They were already irate because Golan had squirreled the ossuary
out of the country without telling them. Similarly with the Yehoash
plaque: Golan had passionately resisted divulging the fact that he was in
possession of it.
And there was something else. In the course of their searches of
Golan’s apartment and his warehouses, the IAA found what it took to
be forger’s tools and accessories: a dentist’s drill, bags of soil labeled by
the archaeological site from which they came, wax, chemicals. There was
more to come: In another box, the police found drawings of seals and
half-completed archaeological artifacts. One of the drawings was for a
seal of Jotham, a Judahite king who had ruled during the second half of
the eighth century B.C.E. Ganor felt he had discovered a forgery factory.
Director Shuka Dorfman announced that the IAA had discovered a forg-
ery factory that had been operating for 15 years.51
Finally, when the police came to seize the James ossuary from
Golan’s apartment after it had returned from Canada, they discovered
that Golan had been keeping it on the roof of his apartment building in
an old unused toilet room that had been illegally constructed long ago.
The ossuary was wrapped in layers of bubble wrap and sealed in a card-
board box, which had been placed on the toilet. The police tore open
the box, unwrapped the ossuary and placed it back on the toilet. They
then took photographs of it and released them to the media. Here was
clear proof that Golan knew that it was a forgery: If it had been authen-
tic and valuable, he would surely not have stored it up there on a toilet.
That he did so demonstrated that he knew it was not a valuable artifact.
So the police reasoned. Golan, on the other hand, claimed that he was
198
fearful that his now-famous ossuary might be stolen from his apartment
by robbers. The locked room on the roof, he said, was the safest place in
the apartment building.
Paradoxically, the seizure of the Yehoash plaque provided an argu-
ment for its authenticity. When the police transported the plaque from Tel
Aviv to Jerusalem, they broke it! Just how is not clear. Did they drop it?
Did it occur as a result of the rumble or bump of the police vehicle? The
plaque previously had a crack that ran through four lines of the inscription
and when the plaque broke, it broke through this crack. This provided an
opportunity to view the inscription from the side.
As the crime changed from looting to forgery, the identification of
the forger or forgers became the new focus. Of course, Oded Golan was
the prime suspect. The ossuary was admittedly his and the Yehoash plaque
had been found in his possession. Besides, he appeared to have materials
and equipment that would support his guilt.
But who else was involved?
It seemed unlikely that one person could possess all the skills nec-
essary to forge either of these artifacts—and surely not Oded Golan. It
was even more unlikely that one person could have forged both of them.
Clearly the IAA was focusing on Golan. But if there had to have been more
than one forger, who else was involved?
Rochelle Altman, the hitherto unknown expert in scripts who
quickly obtained publicity for her comments, used her expertise to identify
the forger of the ossuary inscription: none other than Shlomo Moussaieff,
the 80-year-old multimillionaire with the world’s greatest collection of bib-
lically centered antiquities. Moussaieff made much of his fortune from a
jewelry store he owned in the International Hilton in London, so he would
have all the tools he needed to forge the inscription.
In Jerusalem the most commonly mentioned suspect was Robert
Deutsch, a leading antiquities dealer who had also become a scholar.
Studying for two Ph.D.s, one at Tel Aviv University and the other at Haifa
University, Deutsch had written numerous books on antiquities in private
collections. Some of them were coauthored with Professor Michael Helzer
of Haifa University; others with André Lemaire.
199
At a conference at Harvard, deputy director of the IAA Uzi Dahari

told me in front of others that the conspiracy of forgers included “an hon-
ored Israeli archaeologist.”52 To this day, Dahari has not identified him (or
her), however.
André Lemaire was also a suspect in the rumor mill, something that
hurt him deeply.
A mysterious Egyptian named Marko was another suspect. Marko
was a jeweler who had worked on and off for Golan for 15 years, some-
times staying in his apartment. Marko eventually got himself an Israeli
girlfriend. He apparently helped Golan with his pottery restorations. The
big question was whether he forged the ossuary inscription and the Yehoash
inscription. The Israeli police sent a team to Cairo to interview Marko
(apparently illegally because a foreign government needs Egyptian permis-
sion to conduct a criminal investigation in Egypt). Marko flatly denied that
he had ever inscribed something on an ossuary, but the police interview
was about the inscription on the Yehoash plaque. Later the CBS program
60 Minutes interviewed Marko with a hidden microphone and camera. In
the broadcast transcript, Marko again denied that he had made the ossu-
ary inscription. When he was shown a picture of the Yehoash inscription,
he said he had made things “just like that.” I wondered just what that
meant—“just like that.” So I asked 60 Minutes for the complete transcript
of their interview with Marco. They turned me down. “60 Minutes knows
how to ask questions,” I wrote, “But it is not as good at answering them ...
The only basis for 60 Minutes to deny [us this transcript is that it] might
show that the producers produced a biased report.” Marko has refused to
return to Israel. I obtained his telephone numbers in Egypt, but the num-
bers had been disconnected.
There was also another suspect. Contributing BAR editor Suzanne
Singer and I had gone to London for a conference at the British Museum
and decided to pay a visit to Shlomo Moussaieff in his mammoth apart-
ment on Grosvenor Square. When we arrived, Moussaieff introduced us
to a guest who had preceded us—Amir Ganor, head of the IAA’s fraud
unit. He had come to London to interview Moussaieff as part of the IAA’s
investigation in the burgeoning forgery crisis. I had not met Ganor before,
200
although I of course knew of him. Moussaieff immediately informed me

that I was “under suspicion” of being part of the forgery conspiracy. André
Lemaire was also “under suspicion,” Moussaieff added. I broke out laugh-
ing. But Ganor quickly confirmed that I was indeed under suspicion and
that when I would next come to Israel, I would become part of the inves-
tigation and could be called in for questioning.
I didn’t know whether to go on laughing or to become enraged. So I
decided to “confess”: I told Ganor that I had originally received a call from
Oded Golan in which he offered me a thousand dollars a month for ten
years if I would publish an article about the ossuary inscription. I replied
to Golan that that was not enough money. I then received a call from
Lemaire urging me to accept the offer because he, too, had been offered a
thousand dollars a month for ten years and he would not get his money
if I refused to take Golan’s money and publish the article. I told Lemaire
that I would publish the article only if, in addition to the money I was to
receive from Golan, Lemaire would give me half of the money he was to
receive. Lemaire agreed—and that’s how the article was published in BAR.
It was clear, even to Ganor, that I was joking. It was time for lunch,
and Moussaieff took us all out to an elegant London restaurant, where we
had a pleasant conversation.
As late as 2006, Ganor told a journalist that Shanks “is connected.
I don’t know how.”53 By 2007, however, Ganor confirmed that I was no
longer under investigation, adding that “He is a very good journalist.”54
Uzi Dahari, who had chaired the IAA committee that found the
ossuary inscription to be a forgery, had a very different view. I invited him
to participate in a scholarly session at an SBL conference in San Antonio.
He took the occasion to castigate me:
“I accuse (publicly, not legally) the magazine BAR and its editor
Hershel Shanks with being the catalyst for [a] series of forgeries ... Mr.
Shanks, you are playing with fire when you continually publish finds of
this nature.”55
More recently (September 2008), Yuval Goren, a Tel Aviv University
clay petrologist and the principal scholar who supposedly has uncovered
proof that the inscriptions are forgeries, wrote that it is “crystal clear” that
201
I have played a “pivotal role” in the forgery, as he “always suspected, but

now became evident.”56
One thing seems clear: No single person could possess all the skills,
both physical and academic, required to forge these inscriptions, and if
there were a conspiracy, there would have been at least one “leaker” (a point
made by both Gaby Barkay and Ronny Reich at our forgery conference).
To induce a leak, we offered in BAR a reward of $50,000 for information
leading to the arrest and conviction of the forger of the Yehoash inscrip-
tion.57 There have been no takers.
As the list of suspects grew, so did the list of suspected forgeries. I
called it a “forgery frenzy.”58 According to a New Yorker article, between
100 and 200 artifacts from the biblical period to the Roman destruction
of the Temple are “currently suspected by the Antiquities Authority to be
forgeries.”59 Eric Meyers, with no expertise whatever in detecting forgeries
and with no basis whatever, estimated that between 30 and 40 percent of
the inscriptions in the Israel Museum are fakes.60
The IAA had no doubt about either the Yehoash plaque inscription
or the James ossuary inscription. Both were forgeries in its view. It early
on organized a committee of experts under the direction of deputy IAA
director Uzi Dahari to study the two objects and determine whether they
were authentic or forgeries. In less than three months, the committee com-
pleted its work. On June 15, 2004, the committee met “in order to arrive
at a collective conclusion.” On June 20, that conclusion was announced at
a press conference: Both the James ossuary inscription and the Yehoash
inscription were forgeries.
202
chapter xiii
“The Forgery Trial of the

Century” and Beyond
it was not long before the authenticity of the ivory pomegranate

inscription also became an IAA target, although it had been prominently
displayed in the Israel Museum for 16 years. Instead of a formal accusation,
it began with rumors. These rumors were so persistent, as I previously
noted, that in March 2004 they were finally reported in the press.
I called James Snyder, the director of the Israel Museum, to find
out what he knew. “I only know what I read in the newspapers,” he told
me. “Nothing has been presented to us. We are always willing to look
at evidence that one of our pieces is a forgery, but in this case there is
nothing to look at. We had it carefully examined before purchasing it by
independent experts outside the museum and they raised no question
about its authenticity.”
Snyder’s statement meant that the pomegranate had not been out
of the vitrine in which it was exhibited. The rumors about its being a
forgery could not have been based on an examination of the pome-
granate itself. No one could conclude anything about whether it was
authentic or a fake only by looking at it through the glass enclosure.
Snyder attributed the rumors to a less-than-honorable motive: “It is too
bad that it [the rumor] has just been presented to the media as a plat-
form for publicity,” he told me.
Of course, there might be bases for the pomegranate rumors other
than an examination of the inscription. For instance, someone involved in
making the forgery might have confessed or something might have been
203
“The Forgery Trial of the Century” and Beyond
found relating to the fashioning of the forgery. Because the rumors seemed
to emanate from the IAA, at least one newspaper (Ha’aretz) went to the
IAA for confirmation or denial. Unlike the museum, which said that it
knew nothing about where the rumors had come from, the IAA fed them
by simply refusing to reveal the nature or origin of the information it had
regarding the forgery of the pomegranate inscription.
In September 2004, the IAA appointed a committee to determine
whether the ivory pomegranate inscription was a forgery. It was suppos-
edly a joint committee of the IAA and the Israel Museum, but the chief
curator of archaeology at the museum later revealed that the committee
was “determined” by the IAA; she was only an “observer” of the commit-
tee’s deliberations. The curator’s name was listed as one of the authors
of the published committee report, however, although she had never
previously seen it.61
The committee report was published in the March 2005 issue of the
Israel Exploration Journal. The committee concluded that the ivory pome-
granate inscription is a modern forgery.
By that time, however, another major action had been taken by the
IAA. Three days before the end of 2004, a criminal indictment was brought
against five defendants alleging that the pomegranate inscription, the ossu-
ary inscription, the Yehoash inscription and numerous other artifacts and
inscriptions were forgeries.
Golan was the lead defendant. The next defendant was Robert
Deutsch, the Tel Aviv antiquities dealer/scholar. The indictment almost
immediately devastated his scholarly career. His contract to teach epigraphy
at Haifa University was not renewed. His position as area supervisor of the
archaeological excavation at Megiddo was terminated. He has threatened
to sue the IAA and its officials for $20 million when the case is over, on
the ground that it had no credible evidence whatsoever on which to base
the indictment.
A third defendant, Rafi Brown (or Braun), was a former chief con-
servator at the Israel Museum who had retired to become an antiquities
dealer with a shop across from Jerusalem’s King David Hotel. It was in his
shop that André Lemaire was able initially to examine the pomegranate
204
Oded Golan, owner of the James

ossuary and the chief defendant in
the “forgery trial of the century.”
inscription under a microscope (although this was not where he origi-

nally saw the pomegranate). Brown has since given up the shop and lives
for a major part of the year in Switzerland, where he spends his time on
archaeological conservation.
Two other men complete the roster of defendants: “Momi” Cohen,
a dealer who worked with Brown; and a Palestinian Arab named Fayez
el-Amleh.
As of this writing, more than three years after the indictment was
filed, the case is still dragging on. The government has dropped the case
against Brown and Cohen—for unexplained reasons. According to an
article in Ha’aretz, they have agreed to turn state’s evidence and will tes-
tify against the other defendants, but this seems not to be the case since
the government has now rested its case and Brown and Cohen have not
been called. The Palestinian Arab is also out of the case: He pleaded guilty
to a minor offense unrelated to forgery—for lying about the source of a
looted artifact. He received a suspended sentence of four months. Golan
and Deutsch remain in the case, the sole defendants. IAA director Shuka
Dorfman once described Golan as “the tip of the iceberg,”62 but he has not
yet found the iceberg.
When the government rested its case, it had called 120 witnesses. The
trial transcript extends over 8,000 pages.63 The trial has turned into a battle
of experts. The prosecution has even called to the stand what would seem
to be defense witnesses—like André Lemaire. No witness has identified
anyone who actually forged or participated in any of the forgeries alleged
205
Shuka Dorfman, director of the

Israel Antiquities Authority,
who won’t speak to me. He has
instructed his archaeologists not
to write for BAR.
in the indictment. An Israeli trial is very different from an American trial.

In Israel there are no juries. So the trial is not held continuously. Testimony
before the judge is taken one or two days a month. What is most striking
to me is that there seems to be no objection on grounds of irrelevancy.
The testimony goes on and on, seemingly without purpose.
More recently the judge himself has indicated that the government’s
case is falling apart. He suggested to the prosecution that it consider drop-
ping the case.64 The government did not take the suggestion, however.65
As I write, the two remaining defendants are calling their witnesses. The
prosecution presumably hopes to improve its case on redirect.
The judge’s decision, whichever way he decides, is in a way irrelevant.
It means only that the government has not proved its case beyond a rea-
sonable doubt, the standard of proof in a criminal case. Legally, even if it
is more probable than not that the ossuary inscription is a forgery, but the
proof does not rise to a level “beyond a reasonable doubt,” the court must
acquit. Moreover, the judge will make no decision regarding the pomegran-
ate inscription. Although it was alleged to be a forgery in the indictment, it
was not listed in any of the specific counts. Therefore the judge will make
no finding with respect to it.
My own view is that both the ossuary inscription and the pomegranate
inscription are authentic.
I am deeply affected by the fact that two of the world’s most dis-
tinguished paleographers, André Lemaire and Ada Yardeni, are convinced
that the James ossuary inscription is authentic.
206
Gaby Barkay, a leading Jerusalem archaeologist who has also ana-

lyzed and published ancient inscriptions, pretty much expressed my view
when, at a Jerusalem conference of scholars that I convened to consider
these questions, he stated:
It is true that one has to suspect everything. But still my assumption

a priori is that if André Lemaire, a very sharp-eyed and knowledgeable
scholar, has some observations about the ossuary inscription, I accept
it because of his knowledge, his expertise and his honesty. But still I’m
going to check the object myself. I went to see the ossuary. I went to
touch it myself. I went to the Rockefeller Museum. My impression is
that the inscription is genuine. And my feeling is also that of a very
well-known expert in Jewish script, Ada Yardeni.
At the same conference, Yardeni remarked:

“I am sure it [the ossuary inscription] is no fake, unless Oded [Golan]
comes and tells me he did it. So he’s a genius. But I don’t believe it.”
On the other side, no paleographer has even suggested that any
paleographic aspect of the inscription might indicate it is a forgery. The
sole exception is someone I have already mentioned, Rochelle Altman,
who has attained a modicum of fame because of her contention that the
ossuary inscription is a forgery. She reached her conclusion simply by look-
ing at a picture of the inscription. She described the inscription as excised,
while in fact it was incised. She based her judgment not on the shape and
stance of the letters, as do standard paleographical experts, but on what
she calls “writing systems.” Her 2004 book on this subject, Absent Voices:
The Study of Writing Systems in the West, was reviewed in Maarav, a schol-
arly journal devoted to Semitic inscriptions. It is the most damning review
I have ever read.66 A single paragraph, said the reviewer, “about exhausts
Altman’s treatment of the Semitic scripts.” The review then refers to the
author’s “bizarre assertion” and her “proceed[ing] by free association,” and
her use of words “like no one before her.”
I dwell at length on Rochelle Altman because she alone is featured
in two accounts by first-class journalists who wanted to find some script
207
expert on the other side, who would say that the ossuary inscription is a
forgery.67 Rochelle Altman is the best they could find.
How, then, do I deal with the unanimous judgment of 14 experts
in a variety of fields on the IAA committee that condemned the ossuary
inscription as a forgery?
It’s not quite accurate to say their judgment was unanimous. As
Father Joseph Fitzmyer has observed, there is no “final report” to which
all committee members have subscribed. There are only individual letters
to the committee chairman from individual members of the committee.
Some of these letters express no opinion.
For example, Victor (Avigdor) Hurowitz and Haggai Misgav express
no opinion regarding the authenticity of the ossuary inscription. Yet they
are included in the “unanimous” opinion that it is a forgery.
The committee’s carbon-14 expert, Elisabetta Boaretto, concluded
that a carbon-14 test would be “irrelevant” to determining the authenticity
of the stone ossuary inscription, but she too was counted as a forgery vote.
The conclusions of other members, as Fitzmyer notes, are quite
nuanced. Indeed, committee member Orna Cohen concluded that “the end
of the inscription, ‘brother of Jesus,’ appears authentic; in some places [in the
inscription] there seems to be the remains of old [original] patina.” (Oddly,
in the criminal indictment, only the last part of the inscription is alleged
to be forged, just the part that appeared to Orna Cohen to be “authentic.”)
Still another committee member, Tal Ilan, wrote:
I do not pretend to be an expert on ossuary production techniques or

carved inscriptions or paleography ... Therefore, regarding the question
of authenticity and the inscriptions, I will rely on what the experts have
determined ... My main claim in this report is that even if the ossuary
[inscription] is authentic, there is no reason to assume that the deceased
is actually the brother of Jesus [of Nazareth].
Yet she was counted in the unanimous vote concluding the inscrip-
tion was a forgery.
Shmuel Ahituv expressed himself similarly:
208
I do not see myself qualified to decide in this area of Second Temple

period paleography. The conclusions should come from the colleagues
engaged in the physical aspects of the [ossuary] inscription: patina in
the letters, etc.
Each of the foregoing members of the committee was counted as an

affirmative vote for the forgery of the ossuary inscription.
Other infirmities in the “committee report” abound. The IAA’s intro-
duction to the “report” admits that it chose members “even if they had,
in the past, expressed an opinion on the subject.” Yet, as Fitzmyer points
out, the committee members who had previously expressed an opinion
all expressed a negative opinion. Lemaire, for example, was not invited to
be a member. Neither were people like Ada Yardeni, Bezlel Porten, Gaby
Barkay, to name only Israelis. Lemaire’s views were not considered in any
of the separate papers that comprised the report. Indeed his name was
not mentioned. The IAA obviously chose the committee members with
an eye to how it wanted the result to come out. Fitzmyer accuses the IAA
of engaging in “politicized archaeology.”
Another major problem with the committee’s “unanimous” decision
is that many members based their conclusion on the expertise of others
(as we have seen in the case of Tal Ilan), rather than their own expertise.
This is perhaps most glaring in the decision of Ronny Reich, a prominent
Jerusalem archaeologist, who, on his own, would have found the ossuary
inscription to be authentic. After carefully examining the inscription and
analyzing the various paleographical issues, he concluded that, “It appears
that each of the characteristics of the inscription, as detailed above, and
all of them together, with no exception, indicate an authentic late Second
Temple period (mainly first century C.E.) inscription.” In the end, how-
ever, he changed his mind. “I am forced to change my opinion,” he wrote,
not because of his own expertise, but because of the scientific arguments
advanced by Yuval Goren. (More recently, Reich told a BAR banquet that
he now believes the ossuary inscription to be authentic.)
Which brings us to the central character in the committee’s conclu-
sion: Yuval Goren. A fair reading of the report and the individual letters of
209
Tel Aviv University scientist Yuval

Goren, who insists that the James
ossuary inscription, the ivory
pomegranate inscription and
the Yehoash inscription are all
modern forgeries.
the committee members leaves the distinct impression that the committee’s
decision was driven by a single scientist with whom none of the humanistic
members could argue. His very position commands attention, if not assent.
He was the chairman of Tel Aviv University’s department of archaeology.
His conclusion is supposedly based on a scientific analysis that would be dif-
ficult for anyone other than another scientist to understand, let alone refute.
Goren enlisted a colleague named Avner Ayalon, a specialist from
the Geological Survey (the same government agency that had previously
found no reason to question the authenticity of the ossuary inscription),
to perform an oxygen isotope analysis on the patina-like covering that
Goren says he found on the inscription (ever the smart aleck, Goren called
this covering the “James Bond”). The oxygen isotope analysis revealed that
the patina-like covering on the inscription had been compounded with
water at 50 degrees centigrade (about 120 degrees Fahrenheit). Water at
this temperature is not found naturally in the Jerusalem area. Therefore it
must be an artificial compound, Goren and Ayalon concluded. The com-
pound consisted, according to their analysis, of crushed stone (“perhaps
the powder from the newly engraved inscription”) mixed with hot water
to form a paste. “Heated water was used to insure good adhesion of the
[fake] patina. Another possibility is grinding carbonate, spreading it over
the surface and warming inside an oven [to make it adhere].” (Even with
this, Goren noted the James Bond could be removed with a wooden tooth-
pick.) Using this method, the forger was able “to blur the freshly engraved
signs [of the inscription].”
210
The initial problem is that Yuval Goren is out of his specialty. He is a

clay petrologist, not a stone petrologist. His résumé lists his specialties, but
none of them involves stone. Of the hundreds of articles on his 13-page
résumé, only five appear to involve only stone artifacts. That he is not a
stone petrologist was exposed most embarrassingly in his analysis of the
plaque on which the Yehoash inscription was written. He found that the
stone is greywacke, which is “not native to Israel and the adjacent areas.”
According to Goren, it probably came from “the Troodos Massif in Cyprus.”
This was later shown to be absurd. The stone is simple arkosic sandstone,
very common in Israel, near the Dead Sea and in the Sinai Peninsula.68
Moreover, Goren himself admits that this “James Bond” on the ossu-
ary could have been formed either by the method described above “or” as
a result of cleaning the inscription. It is well known that antiquities deal-
ers clean inscriptions to make them stand out. According to the ossuary’s
owner, Oded Golan, his mother also cleaned the ossuary regularly while
it was on the balcony of his parents’ apartment.
But the weakest part of Goren and Ayalon’s argument was expressed
by James Harrell, whom I enlisted to help me understand Goren’s scien-
tific arguments. Jim, a professor at the University of Toledo, is an officer
and prominent member of ASMOSIA, the Association for the Study of
Marble and Other Stones in Antiquity. To paraphrase Jim’s characteriza-
tion of the Goren and Ayalon contention: IT JUST WON’T STICK. Goren
and Ayalon had argued that hot water was used to make the paste so
that it would adhere to the newly engraved inscription. But, as Harrell
pointed out in an article in BAR,69 it still won’t stick, even when made
with hot water.
But Goren and Ayalon had an alternative argument: The forger used
cold water to make the paste, but after applying it to the inscription, he
placed the ossuary in a hot oven. But it still won’t stick, Harrell explains.
This is not the worst of it, however. You can’t make a paste of crushed
stone and water, even if you heat the water or heat the whole thing; crushed
stone will not dissolve in hot water. For this, as Harrell wrote, you need
hot acid in the mix, but if you do this, there would be an acid residue in
the paste, giving it away.
211
Neither Goren nor Ayalon has ever attempted to refute this argu-
ment. And no other geologist or related expert has come to their defense.
On the contrary, all the other scientists who have opined on the mat-
ter have come out on the other side. The geologists from the Geological
Survey (Amnon Rosenfeld and Shimon Ilani) who originally authenticated
the inscription continue to maintain their position. The scientists at the
Royal Ontario Museum did their own tests, especially when they could
examine the ossuary inscription on the side (when the ossuary had bro-
ken), and came to the same conclusion. A distinguished German geologist,
Wolfgang Krumbein, testified for the defense that the inscription was genu-
ine. And James Harrell, whom I mentioned earlier, found no impediment
to the authenticity of the inscription.
Moreover, five scientists have recently reported in a peer-reviewed
scholarly journal that the isotope analysis Goren and Ayalon used to detect
the forgery is “unreliable,” adding that “to our knowledge, this method is
not used in any lab in the world.”70
Yuval Goren stumbled on still another even more important point.
He had been unable to see any original patina in the inscription when he
first looked at it with his stereoscopic microscope, even though another
member of the committee (Orna Cohen), as noted above, found old patina
in the end of the inscription, in the word “Jesus.” When Goren got on
the stand to testify at the trial, he repeated his previous conclusion that
there was no original patina in the inscription. However, this time he was
subject to cross-examination. When shown photographs of this part of
the inscription taken by another expert (Wolfgang Krumbein), Goren was
flummoxed; it looked like there was original patina in the end of the
inscription, the very part that the indictment alleged was a forgery. In
desperation, he asked the judge if he could be excused to come back the
next day after he had taken another look at the inscription through his
microscope. When he came back, he revised his earlier testimony. There
was indeed original patina in the last letter of the Aramaic word for Jesus.
Goren explained that his microscope “has an oblique illumination,”
so some parts can be in shadow. What he thought was a shadow was
actually patina.
212
Moreover, in the course of the police examination, Goren explained,

the police had put some silicone putty into the inscription to take an
impression; this, Goren said, “pulled out the ‘James Bond,’ you know, the
soft patina-like material coating the letters.” Only after the James Bond was
pulled off could the original patina be seen underneath. And there under-
neath the coating was original patina. “And this of course caused some
problems,” said Goren with considerable understatement.71 “Problems,”
indeed! There was original ancient patina in the word “Jesus.”
I had a three-hour dinner with Goren when we were both in San
Diego in November 2007 for the ASOR/SBL annual meetings. There he
gave me his new explanation of how there happened to be original patina
in the last letter of “Jesus.” The last letter is an ayin, composed of two or
three strokes. Maybe the left stroke, Goren told me, was an ancient scratch
that had acquired patina; perhaps the forger decided to use this ancient
scratch with the ancient patina as part of the ayin and simply engraved the
other curving line to connect to it.
If you believe this, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you. I didn’t say this
to Goren, but listened politely.
As this undermining of the IAA committee report unfolded, we
organized a protest petition that 1,500 people signed, asking the IAA to
appoint an international panel of experts to take a second look at the
James ossuary inscription. Committee chairman and deputy IAA direc-
tor Uzi Dahari sarcastically dismissed our petition, congratulating us on
obtaining “1,500 names out of five billion people in the world ... I don’t
need this list.” Dahari told a Washington Post reporter that I was “pathetic”
and “totally crazy.”72
I mentioned a three-day conference that the Biblical Archaeology
Society convened in Jerusalem in January 2007 to consider the whole
issue of forgeries. Scholars came from the United States, England, France,
Germany and of course Israel. Yuval Goren, although he lives in Jerusalem,
declined even to respond to our invitation.
During the discussion, the question came up as to whether we should
look primarily to the hard sciences or to the humanistic sciences in mak-
ing a decision concerning the authenticity of an inscription. Some thought
213
the answer was the material sciences, the so-called exact sciences. But the
geologist Wolfgang Krumbein, the major representative of the hard sciences
at the conference, thought otherwise. This only emphasized the view from
within that there are subjective elements even in scientific demonstrations.
My own view is also to some extent subjective. Yes, I do have regard
for the opinions of people like André Lemaire and Ada Yardeni and for
the findings of scientists like Wolf Krumbein, but I’m also affected by what
I call human factors.
For example, Golan located an old photograph of some ancient arti-
facts on a wooden shelf in his apartment. The amateur photographer took
the picture vertically, instead of horizontally. As a result the photograph
gives a glimpse of what is on the shelf above and on the shelf below. On
the shelf below we see the James ossuary. Only the end of the inscription
is there, but that is enough to identify it. On the shelf above are some
books. One is a 1974 Tel Aviv telephone book. Another book contains
marks indicating it was borrowed from the Technion library, where Golan
was studying at the time.
For the trial, Golan retained Gerald Richards, a former FBI agent in
the United States who had served as the chief of its Special Photographic
Unit, to analyze the photograph. On the back of the photographic paper
was a date: “EXP[ires] 3/[19]76.” That is, the paper expires in March 1976.
Richards found that Kodak no longer made this paper after the late 1970s
or early 1980s. All this indicates that the photograph was taken in the late
1970s, as Golan claims.
It is of course possible that this picture is itself forged, that Golan
went online and found some old photographic paper that would still print,
that he forged the markings on the book from the Technion, that he some-
how obtained a 1974 Tel Aviv telephone book—and, voila, we’re tricked
again. Actually, there is even a picture of his old girlfriend on the shelf. She
is willing to testify that that is how she looked some 30 years ago and that
she was indeed his girlfriend. But maybe Golan had an old picture of her
which he put on the shelf for the post-2000 shooting. All this is possible
but does seem highly unlikely. At some point, when piling up far-fetched
scenarios to justify a finding of forgery, the process must stop and it is time
214
to conclude that the inscription is authentic. And if Golan owned the ossu-
ary with its inscription since the late 1970s, it is almost surely authentic. If
that is a subjective conclusion, then make the most of it.
It is impossible to prove with 100 percent certainty, however, that an
inscription is authentic. There is always one, perhaps yet-unknown, test that
you failed to apply, which, if you had applied, would have demonstrated that
it is a forgery. The same thing is true even of inscriptions uncovered in pro-
fessional excavations. You can never be 100 percent sure that a find has not
been salted, perhaps with the connivance of someone on the excavation staff.
****
What about the ivory pomegranate inscription from the First Temple
period? I have already described how the supposedly joint committee of
the IAA and the Israel Museum was in fact “determined” by the IAA. The
Israel Museum observer did not participate in the deliberations.
And the critical member of this committee was the same Yuval Goren
who had dominated the IAA committee that had previously found the
ossuary inscription to be a forgery. Avner Ayalon, who did the oxygen iso-
tope studies on that inscription, was also on the pomegranate committee.
Added to them was a third member of the Geological Survey, Miryam Bar-
Matthews, who for years had worked with Goren and Ayalon on numerous
projects and papers. That it was Goren who led the troops, however, is plain
from the fact that in the publication of their report all eight members of
the pomegranate committee are listed in alphabetical order—except for
Goren. Like Abou ben Adhem, his name leads all the rest.73
The other five members of the committee included two Israeli epig-
raphers, Shmuel Ahituv and Aaron Demsky, who had no experience in
detecting forgeries. In addition, the committee consisted of the deputy
director of the IAA (Uzi Dahari, who brought no relevant expertise to the
committee) and someone from the Israel Police (Nadav Levin). The pome-
granate committee was, in a word, Yuval Goren’s show.
Goren’s scenario of the forger’s drama is little short of bizarre. About
a third of the ball (or grenade) of the pomegranate had broken off. On
215
close examination, it is clear that one break, in the middle, is an ancient

break. On either side of this ancient break are two other breaks which,
from their light coloration, appear to be modern breaks. On this, all agree.
Goren argues that the forger began with a genuinely old ivory pomegran-
ate that had an ancient break. When the forger began to inscribe it, he
accidentally broke off another piece of the pomegranate, creating one of
the new breaks. He then did this again, creating the second new break.
Now comes the critical part: The forger then completed the
inscription, but he was so fearful of causing still another break in carving
subsequent letters that he stopped short of the breaks, fearing to go over the
edge lest he break off more of the pomegranate.
Otherwise, the committee’s arguments to support a finding of forg-
ery were flimsy at best. For example, paleographically all the committee
could say was that one letter, a mem, was “problematic.” The committee
acknowledged, however, that this “might have been caused by a slip of the
engraving tool on the hard surface of the pomegranate’s shoulder, as well
as by its small dimensions.” To this might have been added the fact that
the engraving surface at this point is curved and slanted.
Moreover, on the issue of paleography, the inscription not only
passed Lemaire’s examination, but also that of Nahman Avigad, Israel’s
leading paleographer before his death in 1992. Avigad was quite conscious
of the possibility that the inscription could be a forgery. After his careful
examination, however, Avigad declared, “I am fully convinced of ... the
authenticity of the inscription ... [T]he epigraphic evidence alone, in my
opinion, is absolutely convincing.”74
When I heard of the committee’s finding that the inscription was a
forgery, I wrote to museum director Snyder and offered to buy the pome-
granate for the same amount that the museum had paid for it ($550,000),
confident that Snyder was no more convinced than I was that the inscrip-
tion was forged. As expected, Snyder turned down my offer. Although “the
ivory pomegranate no longer carries the historical significance which it
was previously thought to have,” he wrote me, “it remains for us an impor-
tant story of museological process.” Whatever that means, it is obviously
a valuable thing to have.
216
In light of the committee’s now-published conclusion in September

2005, André Lemaire traveled to Jerusalem to reexamine the pomegranate
under a microscope. Based on this reexamination, he wrote a devastat-
ing response to the committee report, which, like the initial committee
report, was published in the Israel Exploration Journal.75 He dedicated his
response to the memory of Nahman Avigad. Geologists Amnon Rosenfeld
and Shimon Ilani, who were the principal authors of the original study of
the pomegranate inscription by the Geological Survey, wrote an appendix
to Lemaire’s article responding to the geological aspects of the committee
report that had found the inscription to be a forgery.
Lemaire’s article was careful and detailed; it considered each of the
several alleged indications of forgery, either demolishing it or neutralizing
it. For example, the committee’s contention that the new breaks in the
pomegranate were created by the forger as he forged letters too close to
the old break is described by Lemaire as “clearly pure conjecture ... New
breaks are often made when an ancient object is dug up during excava-
tions. [This] is very well known in field archaeology.” Lemaire calls the
committee’s explanation of how the new breaks occurred “strained.”
Lemaire recognized that “the principal argument advanced by the
[committee] authors ... is that the engraving of certain fragmentary letters
stops before reaching the old or new breaks.” Lemaire concedes that “If
true, this would be a clear indication that the engraving of the letters was
made after the old and new breaks. Consequently the inscription would
be a modern forgery.” Lemaire expressed agreement with this principle.
Indeed, it was a principle “well-known to experienced epigraphers.” But,
Lemaire wondered, “Why was this not noticed by” Avigad and himself
in their original microscopic examinations of the inscription? It was not
noticed because it did not occur! If it had occurred, Lemaire and Avigad
would have noticed it.
At our Jerusalem forgery conference, we discussed the authenticity
of the pomegranate inscription. It was generally recognized that the only
question—the issue on which authenticity/forgery turned—was whether
the partial engraved letters stopped short of the breaks. The other issues
raised by the committee report pretty much faded away. Thus, for example,
217
Aaron Demsky, one of the two epigraphers on the committee, remarked at

our forgery conference that the pomegranate inscription “is perfectly fine
from a paleographical point of view.”76
The discussion centered on whether the partial letters stopped short
of the edge of the breaks. All agreed on the principle: If they did, the
inscription was a modern forgery; if, on the other hand, partial letters
went into the old break, they preceded the old break and the inscription
was authentic.
This was recognized not only by Lemaire and IAA committee
members Demsky and Ahituv, but also by the other epigraphers and pale-
ographers at the conference. It thus seemed sensible to take another look
at the pomegranate to see whether, in fact, the letters stopped short of the
breaks or went into the breaks. Shmuel Ahituv and Aaron Demsky agreed
to take a second look with “an open mind.”
With this, I set out to organize a viewing of the pomegranate at the
museum with all interested parties on hand. The big question was whether
we could get Yuval Goren to attend. He was obviously the key man on the
pomegranate committee (as he had been on the committee that declared
the ossuary inscription to be a forgery). He had refused even to respond
to my invitation to attend our forgery conference. And he had refused
to discuss the matter with Lemaire privately. Nor had he responded to
Lemaire’s powerful “dissenting” opinion in the Israel Exploration Journal.77
After consultations with the Israel Museum, we set May 3, 2007, as
the date for a meeting to reexamine the pomegranate at the museum. In
my invitation to Goren, I recounted the discussions at our January con-
ference and the decision to take another look at the object itself and that
everyone “very much wanted you [to attend our May meeting] ... We would
very much like to have the benefit of your expertise at this session.”
This time Goren replied to my invitation. He said that the members
of the committee had:
already discussed in the past the possibility of re-examining the pome-

granate under the microscope in light of Prof. Lemair’s [sic] paper ...
The only thing that I fail to understand is how you fit into all this ...
218
As we ... have already ... decided to do it anyway in the near future, it

is clear that we don’t need any coordinators. One more thing that we
don’t need is more archaeological pulp fiction ... I don’t think that you
should be involved in it, nor your journal.
I replied in as conciliatory manner as I could, explaining that the

May 3 meeting grew out of the January conference I had organized, and
that “I had taken the lead in trying to arrange the [May 3] session.” I con-
cluded by saying that “I would be delighted to work with you in assuring
that the proper procedures were followed and in providing a congenial
and collegial atmosphere for the discussion.”
In a later email I outlined the format for the discussion saying that
“I will serve as moderator only as needed.” Goren quickly responded: “We
do not need coordinators and we can manage the discussion very well
without anyone setting for us the agenda in advance.”
Goren had not yet agreed to attend. Ahituv felt Goren’s atten-
dance was essential. So he sided with Goren: “No need to arrange for us
the schedule,” Ahituv wrote me. “We can manage for ourselves.” Ahituv
in effect took charge of the meeting. From that point on, I was simply
allowed to attend the session. I had previously invited the American pale-
ographer Kyle McCarter to attend, and Ahituv allowed him to attend.
But I wanted Ahituv to invite Israeli paleographer Ada Yardeni to attend
as well. He refused to allow her to attend, probably because she had
defended the authenticity of the ossuary inscription. I was not privy to
the discussions between Ahituv and Goren, but the final decision was
that Goren would attend; and that, although I was permitted to attend, I
would not be a moderator.
Having now agreed to attend, Goren brought his own stereoscopic
microscope to the session, which was superior to the one at the museum.
The museum brought the pomegranate. There it was—in all its glory
without even the glass of a vitrine to intervene between the eye and the
object. The little prince, as it were. If authentic, it was the only surviving
relic from Solomon’s Temple. I kept my awe to myself. No one remarked
on it. Was I the only one excited by this? I don’t know.
219
Another thing: The museum did not tell us that it could be handled
only with rubber or plastic hand-coverings, as I had expected. We handled
the object with our bare hands.
In attendance were Goren, Avituv, Demsky, Lemaire, Michal Dayagi-
Mendels from the Israel Museum, Kyle McCarter and me. In contrast to
his behavior prior to the meeting, Goren was cordial, collegial and helpful
in his operation of the microscope. He acceded to all requests to adjust
the angle, direction or focus of the pomegranate and its inscription. He
took all the photographs that we asked for. We ate lunch together in the
museum and engaged in friendly, if irrelevant, conversation. The only thing
that was strange about Goren’s behavior was that he had almost nothing
to say about the images of the inscription that he was flashing on the wall.
He acted as a kind of willing technician who was there solely to work the
microscope, not to participate in the discussion of whether the partially
engraved letters did or did not stop short of the breaks.
Only three partial letters were involved and the simple (ha!) question
was whether they stopped short of the breaks or were cut by the breaks.
At the end of the day, it was clear to Lemaire that indeed the breaks cut
these three partial letters; these three partial letters went into the breaks.
Goren thought otherwise, but barely expressed himself. Both Ahituv and
Demsky stuck to their guns, although they admitted that they had rarely,
if ever, looked through a microscope for any reason, let alone to deter-
mine whether an inscription was a forgery. Lemaire had vast experience,
as did Kyle McCarter. McCarter wanted to study the photographs, how-
ever, before coming to a conclusion. I, of course, was a novice at looking
through a microscope and could give no opinion.
At the end of the meeting, we agreed that we would wait for the
photographs and further study before making a decision.
The entire inscription consists of 15 letters. Seven of these let-
ters form the phrase qodesh kohanim (Mnhk vdq), “holy (or sacred) to the
priests.” All of the letters are there. The other eight letters, as reconstructed,
form the phrase l’beyt [Yahwe]h (h[why]tybl), “(Belonging) to the House
(or Temple) of [Yahwe]h.” Of these eight letters, only two are complete
and three (the first three letters of Yahweh) are completely missing. The
220
remaining three letters are partly there but clearly identifiable, which
allows the reconstruction of this half of the inscription. It is these three
partial letters that were the focus of the reexamination of the inscription
under the microscope. One of them (yod) is adjacent to a new break. A
second partial letter (tov) had two strokes, one adjacent to a new break
and one adjacent to the old break. The third partial letter (heh) is adja-
cent to the old break. If a letter stopped short of a new break, this meant
the inscription was a forgery. But the reverse was not true (if it went into
a new break, this would not necessarily indicate authenticity; this would
only show that the inscription was engraved prior to the new, modern
break). On the other hand, if a letter goes into the old break, this would
indicate authenticity.
Goren’s photographs, which he later distributed to everyone at the
session, were excellent. You don’t have to be an expert to read them. And
you can see the partial letters both from the top down and from the side—
and from all angles in between. From the side, the letter would form a
“v” if it extended into the break, but not if it stopped short of the break.
The yod was the easiest of the three. Even during the session, Demsky
and Ahituv readily admitted they had erred with respect to the yod. The
committee, they conceded, had been “mistaken” in concluding that the yod
stopped artificially short of the break. In the language of the grudging con-
cession that Ahituv, Demsky and Goren published in the Israel Exploration
Journal following the session at the Israel Museum, “We accepted Lemaire’s
observation ... The shallow v-like indentation seen on the section might sup-
port Lemaire’s contention that the tip arrives at the new break below this
letter” (emphasis supplied).78 Because it went into a new break, however,
the yod wouldn’t indicate authenticity. All it would show is that the yod
was engraved prior to the new break.
Although the yod could not establish authenticity, it was instructive
as to how the IAA committee functioned. It indicated how easy it was
for this committee to err. It also indicated that the other members of the
committee simply followed the lead of Goren and the two epigraphers
(Ahituv and Demsky) on the committees. And Ahituv and Demsky sim-
ply followed Goren’s lead. Moreover, Goren is not an epigrapher. The error
221
with regard to the yod demonstrated how easy it is for this combination
of “experts” in different fields to reach a flawed conclusion.
The second partial letter is a tov, which in the paleo-Hebrew script of
the inscription looks like an “x.” The upper tip of each of the two strokes
has survived. One (the right one) goes into a new break. The left one, how-
ever, goes into the old break.
Next to the right stroke of the tov is a bulge in the ivory of the
pomegranate. When viewed from an oblique angle it can appear that this
stroke stops behind the bulge. To Lemaire, Kyle McCarter and even to me,
it appeared that this stroke went directly into the new break, both when
photographed from above and when photographed straight on from the
side. But Goren, Ahituv and Demsky were of the view that it stopped
behind the bulge. This then—one stroke of one letter about which there
is great controversy—is the basis of their conclusion that the inscription
is a forgery. As they state in their Israel Exploration Journal report: “The
main reason for this conclusion [that the inscription is a forgery] is the
apparent caution of the engraver not to access the old break” (emphasis
supplied). They probably mean new break, because the only stroke that
even arguably stops short of a break is the right tip of the tov—and that
goes into a new break. As we will see, in the only two instances where
partial letters are adjacent to the old break, they do go into the old break,
indicating authenticity.
The left tip of the partial tov is adjacent to the old break. Although the
“v” in the section is clear, Goren, Ahituv and Demsky had a difficult time
admitting this. All they could say in their report in the Israel Exploration
Journal is that “it is difficult to determine whether the left stroke [of the
tov] arrived at the old break, creating a v-like indentation on the section.”79
Why it is difficult to determine is not explained. As Lemaire wrote, “I do
not see any reason to doubt that the left stroke [of the tov] arrives at the
OLD break since it creates a v-like indentation in the section.”
The last partial letter was the heh. The trio’s treatment of this letter is
even worse: The short surviving vertical stroke of the heh clearly goes into
the old break. Here there is no bulge to use as a forced observation that
the heh stopped short of the break. At the session, we extensively discussed
222
the vertical stem of the heh, which formed a “v” in the section. I wondered
what the trio would write regarding the heh in their report of the session
for the Israel Exploration Journal. I didn’t have long to wait. Somewhat
astonishingly, they simply ignored it! Not a single mention of the heh. No
discussion whatever of whether the heh did or did not go into the break.
I wrote a letter to the editor on this blatant omission. Ahituv is editor of
the journal, however. I received a reply from the editorial office saying
that the “policy [of the journal was] not to publish Letters to the Editor.”
Aaron Demsky had written in his abstract at our earlier forgery
conference that “Some of the letters were engraved after the pomegranate
was initially damaged in antiquity!” (The italics are mine; the exclamation
point is Demsky’s!) In fact, only one stroke of one letter is even argued to
stop before a break, while two letters clearly go into the old break.
As with the IAA committee that found the ossuary inscription to
be a forgery, the committee that found the pomegranate inscription to
be a forgery seems to have been largely driven by a preordained conclu-
sion. The failure even to mention the partial heh seems inexplicable except
as a determination to confirm the earlier finding that the pomegranate
inscription is a forgery.
Kyle McCarter, the independent (and universally respected) observer
at the museum session felt he could not make a decision at the conclu-
sion of the session; he wanted to see the photographs. After seeing the
photographs, he too concluded that the three partial letters did go into the
breaks. He was still not ready to judge the inscription authentic, however.
He was concerned at something else. In its original report, the commit-
tee found on stylistic grounds that the admittedly genuine ancient ivory
pomegranate dated from the Late Bronze Age (14th–13th century B.C.E.);
the inscription, however, dated by paleography, was from Iron Age II, more
specifically about the eighth century B.C.E. To the committee, this was one
indication that the inscription had been forged. Lemaire never accepted
this argument. Even if the pomegranate was created in the Late Bronze
Age, it could have been a rare relic that had survived and was inscribed
in Iron Age II. He pointed to examples of Late Bronze artifacts that had
been excavated in Iron Age II contexts.
223
McCarter agreed that this was possible, but it also seemed unlikely.
He concluded that an extra measure of caution would lead us to have the
pomegranate tested by carbon-14 analysis to determine its date. Indeed,
in his original response to the committee report, Lemaire himself had
proposed that a carbon-14 test be performed on the pomegranate: “A car-
bon-14 test could perhaps clearly decide between the two possible dates [of
the pomegranate].”80 When the museum’s Michal Dayagi-Mendels proved
unavailable to McCarter in his efforts to urge a carbon-14 test, I decided to
call Dayagi-Mendels myself. She was cordial but said she feared that taking
the sample might shatter the object. I had already been in contact with
Tom Higham at the Oxford Radiocarbon Laboratory, who had assured
me this would not be a problem; the new AMS technique required only
a minute sample, barely the head of a pin. When I told this to Dayagi-
Mendels, she said that if the test was to be done, she wanted it done by the
Weizmann Institute in Israel. I replied that this was of course satisfactory.
She said she would contact Weizmann. When she failed to do so, I called
Elisabetta Boaretto, who heads Weizmann’s radiocarbon lab. Boaretto con-
firmed that only a minute sample would be needed (that could be taken
from the bottom of the object). She agreed to contact Dayagi-Mendels.
After Boaretto had done so, she reported back to me that Dayagi-Mendels
had told her that the museum was not interested in having a carbon-14
test performed on the pomegranate.
****
What about the Yehoash inscription, which, if authentic, would be the first
royal Israelite inscription ever discovered?
BAR has never taken a position with regard to the authenticity of
the Yehoash inscription. Some of the most eminent paleographers and
linguists feel certain that it is a forgery. Among them is Joseph Naveh,
although when he first saw the inscription years before, he was not sure.
Others include John Hopkins’ Kyle McCarter, who has characterized
some of the forger’s errors as “real howlers.” Harvard’s Frank Cross agrees.
Add to this leading Semitic linguists like Avigdor Hurowitz and Edward
224
Greenstein. We extensively published all of their negative analyses, giving

prominence to the forgery argument.81
There is another side, however. There are scholars, like the late David
Noel Freedman, who contend that we simply don’t know enough about
the Hebrew of this period to declare the Yehoash inscription a forgery.82
History has shown how often we have been surprised, said Freedman. He
cited as an example, in personal conversation, the famous Mesha Stela or
Moabite Stone: If it were to come on the market today with the limited
knowledge of Hebrew that we had at the time it was discovered in the
19th century, it would be judged a forgery.
Chaim Cohen, a leading Hebrew and Semitic linguist from Ben-
Gurion University in Beer Sheba, has written extensively (some might say
exhaustively) about the text of the Yehoash inscription. (His latest paper
on it is 80 pages long.) Cohen finds numerous Hebrew usages in the
text that reflect an intimate knowledge of 8th-century B.C.E. Hebrew—
even beyond what the most sophisticated researchers have yet observed or
written about. Cohen is not ready to say that the Yehoash inscription is
authentic, but he does say that if it is a forgery, the forger was an extraordi-
narily brilliant and insightful Hebrew linguist, seeing usages never before
understood by scholars.
Another factor that suggests to me that it might well be authentic
is the length of the inscription. As I frequently put it in my conversations
with scholars, “The first thing they teach you in forgery school is, ‘Make
it short.’” I don’t know of another forged Semitic inscription, even alleg-
edly forged inscription, that is anywhere near as long as this one (15 lines).
Recently the strongest case for the authenticity of the Yehoash
inscription has been made in a scientific article that appeared in the
highly regarded, peer-reviewed Journal of Archaeological Science, which I
have already briefly mentioned.83 Two of the authors are associated with
the Geological Survey of Israel, another with Tel Aviv University, another
with a leading German university and the last with the American Museum
of Natural History.
As I have already mentioned, the Yehoash tablet had a crack in
it that ran through four lines of the inscription. The forger—if it was
225
forged—would have had to inscribe the text across the crack, which would
have been not only extremely difficult (if not impossible) but also danger-
ous. If the forger chose a tablet to work on with such a crack, it might
break, ruining all his previous work. It is highly unlikely that a forger
would choose such a tablet with which to create his forgery. Why would
he be so foolish when it was so unnecessary? Why start with a stone in
which one more tap might ruin all your work? As the journal authors
express it more scientifically: “The presence of the crack favors the authen-
ticity of the inscription since a modern engraver would have known that
incising across this line of weakness would have jeopardized the structural
integrity of the tablet.”
After the Yehoash tablet was seized from Oden Golan’s Tel Aviv
apartment, the police took it to Jerusalem. On the way, the tablet broke
in two along the crack. Whether it was dropped and then broke is not
known. But that is unlikely. Probably it was simply fragile and broke from
the rumbling or bumping of the truck. This only emphasizes how unlikely
it is that a forger forged the inscription across the crack.
In any event, when it broke, the inscription could be seen from the
side. As reported in the Journal of Archaeological Science, the upper (outer)
part of the crack had developed a patina, indicating the crack was there
in ancient times. The new part of the crack, where it broke, was clean.
In the words of the scientific article: “The sudden breakage of the tablet
revealed that the top half of the fissure exhibits some natural bleaching
and incipient patina formation due to weathering whereas the lower part
of the table exhibits a clearly fresh line of breakage.” This indicates that
the inscription was very likely ancient, having been inscribed before the
tablet developed its crack.
But this is not all.
The patina on the plaque contains miniscule globules of gold so
small (1 micron, a millionth of a meter) that they are unavailable on the
commercial market. The smallest size available on the commercial market
is 500 millimeters in diameter. Both the size and the scatter pattern of the
minute gold globules indicate that they were created by an intense confla-
gration. According to the authors, “The occurrence of pure gold globules
226
(1–2 micrometers) is evidence of the melting of gold artifacts or gold-

gilded items (above 1000 degrees Celsius).” Moreover, as the authors state,
“One would expect many gold globules of various sizes to occur in clus-
tered aggregates in the patina if it were of recent origin, but this is clearly
not the case. The small amounts detected and its distribution would be
difficult to produce within an artificial patina.”
The authors suggest that “the source of the gold globules may have
been gold artifacts or gold-gilded items that existed in Jerusalem at that
time. As Jerusalem was burned (2 Kings 25:9), some of the gold could
have been melted in the conflagration, been injected into the air and re-
solidified there, to settle later as minute globules on the ground. These
globules were later incorporated within the patina that developed on the
buried tablet ... Our analyses altogether support the authenticity of the YI
tablet and the tablet inscription.”
What Lies Behind the Forgery Crisis?
it is almost as if israeli officials, and particularly the Israel

Antiquities Authority, are determined by hook or by crook to confirm their
suspicions of forgery and to trash significant objects that provide a direct
link to the ancient Jewish and Christian world. It is difficult to explain.
My best guess, suggested by many, is that the IAA is out to destroy
the antiquities market.84 Israel is the only country in the Middle East
where antiquities dealers are legal. Not that outlawing antiquities deal-
ers has reduced looting in the slightest in those countries; it hasn’t. These
laws simply send the market underground, often into the hands of crimi-
nal elements. As in other antiquities-rich Mediterranean countries where
antiquities dealers are illegal, looting in Israel and the West Bank is ram-
pant. There is no difference between Israel and the countries that have
outlawed antiquities dealers.
All the defendants in the Israeli forgery case are, in one way or
another, involved in the antiquities trade, suggesting that that may be
the target of the case. The original defendants included two of the most
227
prominent and knowledgeable dealers in Israel (Deutsch and Brown); a

third is a less-well-known dealer (Cohen). One of the others is a promi-
nent Israeli collector (Golan). The last one is a Palestinian who pretended
to know where the looted objects came from.
In the end, the steadfast belief of so many that these inscriptions
are forgeries is based on the “smell” test. There is always some subjective
element in the decision as to whether an inscription is a forgery. A preva-
lent reason for a finding of forgery is the claim “It’s too good to be true.”
As Ronny Reich noted in his initial report on the ossuary inscription, if
the inscription had read “Joseph, son of James, brother of Jesus,” instead
of “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus,” “no one would have raised an
eyebrow” regarding authenticity. Only because of the possible importance
of the inscriptions is the question even raised. Another form of this argu-
ment was expressed at our forgery conference by Aaron Demsky: Because
the inscription came from the antiquities market, he said, “The onus of
proof is on the inscription.” In other words, until authenticity is proven
(which can never be proved beyond any uncertainty), the inscription is
assumed to be a forgery.
Perhaps naturally, considering the positions I have taken, my own
subjective predilections lean in the other direction. I am, first of all,
impressed with the enormous scholarly and technical knowledge that the
forger(s) must have had—if they are forgeries. For example, in the case of
the pomegranate, the forger had to find an uninscribed ancient pomegran-
ate; he had to know how to engrave an inscription on the pomegranate;
he had to know enough about the language of the time to make up a
plausible inscription; he had to know the paleo-Hebrew alphabet and the
shape and form of the letters so well that he could fool the world’s great-
est paleographers; he had to be able to carve letters into an old break in
the pomegranate with no tell-tale marks; he had to be enough of a psy-
chologist to know to leave out the three most significant letters in God’s
name. As Ronny Reich said in one of his earlier reports when he still felt
the Yehoash inscription might be authentic (contrary to his later vote,
“forced” on him by Yuval Goren’s scientific argument), “It is difficult for me
to believe that a forger (or group of forgers) should be so knowledgeable
228
of all aspects of the inscription—the physical, paleographic, linguistic and

biblical—to produce such an object.”
It is hard enough to imagine a forger skilled enough in all the
knowledge and skills required to produce one of these forgeries. But the
requirements are multiplied when we consider the enormous variations
in these alleged forgeries. The pomegranate inscription and the Yehoash
inscription must use the First Temple-period Hebrew script; the ossuary
inscription must be engraved in an entirely different Second Temple-
period Aramaic script. Still other skills and other knowledge would be
required in forging the numerous other artifacts alleged to be forgeries in
the 18 counts of the indictment in the forgery case.
As Ronny Reich has elsewhere remarked, if these are forgeries, no
one person could possess all the skills required. It must be a conspiracy.
Deputy IAA director Uzi Dahari agrees; he claims that the conspiracy
includes experts in Bible, history, archaeology and epigraphy. He even
knows who they are, but “I won’t tell you at this time.”85 That was nearly
five years ago, and he still won’t tell us.
And if it is a conspiracy, it’s hard to imagine that there wouldn’t be
at least one leaker (a point make by both Gaby Barkay and Ronny Reich).
True, what was found in Oded Golan’s apartment and warehouses may be
interpreted as forger’s tools, but none of these can be related to the arti-
facts alleged to be forgeries in the forgery case. We seem to have a forgery
case without a forger.
As many have suggested, perhaps the best way to resolve the forgery
question is by free scholarly discussion over time, rather than by a com-
mittee appointed to make a definitive decision—let alone a decision by a
court of law. “Allow the scholarly discussion to play out,” as Father Joseph
Fitzmyer has recommended.86 Over the years, a consensus might gradually
be reached. In the meantime, as Reich has said, “Let each one remain with
his [or her] degree of conviction about its authenticity.”
Unfortunately, the effect of the actions taken by the Israel Antiquities
Authority is to stifle the scholarly discussion.
229
chapter xiv
My Credo
bar continues to absorb me as i approach my 35th anniversary as
editor. I find it more exciting than ever. And I am working harder at it
than ever.
As I write, we are developing a story on fragments of a secret gospel
of Mark discovered in a Judean desert monastery by an eminent American
scholar named Morton Smith. Smith has died and he is now being charged
by several leading scholars with having forged the document from the
monastery. (We believe the charge is false.)
Another article we are working on involves the eruption of Mt.
Vesuvius in 79 C.E., almost nine years to the day after the Romans destroyed
God’s house in Jerusalem. Was this destruction of the watering hole of
Rome’s elite somehow seen as God’s revenge? As the pumice and debris
were settling on Pompeii, someone picked up a piece of charcoal and wrote
on the wall of a Pompeii house the words “Sodom” and “Gomorrah”!
Another article on the boards is by a prominent Israeli archaeolo-
gist who proposes a new account of Israel’s ethnogenesis—how and why
Israel first distinguished itself from other peoples. Still another article we
are preparing looks at the siege of Masada from the Roman point of view.
We have just put the finishing touches on a double issue of BAR
that we have created to mark our 200th issue. We think it will become a
collector’s item.
As I approach my 80th birthday, life is good. My wife of nearly 44
years and I are in good health. Our younger daughter Julia is building a
career as a restaurant and food consultant, while teaching accounting at
Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Our elder daughter Elizabeth
is happily married to Drew. They have two lovely children, Charlie and
231
My Credo
Nancy. And Elizabeth has recently received tenure at the University of

Virginia where she teaches rabbinics.
So with all of this, I turn to my own faith commitments. What of
my own struggle with faith and spirituality? How do I relate to the Bible?
While I sense that this has long been a matter of discussion among
BAR devotees, it has recently been raised in print. “I understand the editor
[of BAR] is not himself particularly religious,” Bible scholar Lester Grabbe
wrote in a new book, “yet he seems at times to pursue an almost funda-
mentalist agenda ... But as time has gone by I have wondered if there is
not something much more personal to it all.”87
I am often asked about these things. Except to make it clear that I
am Jewish (I don’t want to be accused of hiding the fact), I have always
regarded my faith as personal and irrelevant to judging BAR. Let me be
me. And let BAR (and me—they are often considered to be synonymous)
be BAR, judged by what appears in its pages.
However, in an autobiography it is appropriate to address these
matters.
Not long ago, I interviewed four Bible and religion scholars simul-
taneously—two who had lost their faith and two who hadn’t.88 Oddly
enough, the two who hadn’t—a Baptist minister and an Orthodox Jew—
had much in common. They both admitted that it was a continuing
struggle to maintain their faith in God. Indeed, Judaism has a command-
ment to have faith. As Lawrence Schiffman explained, “It wouldn’t be a
commandment if it were so easy.”
My faith is rather simple; some may say it is simplistic. My relation-
ship to the Bible is more subtle and complicated.
As for my faith in a deity, I recognize more than the two catego-
ries of yes and no. The third is uncertainty. That’s where I am. I simply
don’t know.
Of one thing, I’m pretty sure: If there is a God, he is not as he is
described in the Hebrew Bible (or the New Testament). If you ask me how
I know this, I can’t defend the statement, except to point to all the horrify-
ing undeserved suffering in the world. The God of the Hebrew Bible (or
the New Testament) wouldn’t allow this.
232
On the other hand, I cannot avoid the conviction that there must be
something behind all this, something I cannot conceive of.
To illustrate why I cannot conceive of the deity or its nature, I
summon some analogs: Try to teach a dog to speak. Or try to teach a five-
year-old, even one as bright as my granddaughter, the principles of algebra
or plane geometry. It can’t be done. Some things are simply beyond our ken.
I recently heard a lecture by a theoretical physicist (Lawrence
Krauss) who has extended the idea of black holes (negative matter) to
negative energy. There were many questions even he couldn’t answer, but
he seemed quite sure that an enormous number of constellations (or uni-
verses) similar to the one that includes the earth are out there. Moreover,
in 14 billion years the earth will inevitably be destroyed. Neither he nor
I can really contemplate this. It is only a mathematical construct. But the
bottom line is that we know enough to know that there is much we do
not and cannot know.
To my limited brain, it does seem that there must be something
behind it all. But what that is, I don’t and cannot know. Perhaps this is
what I think of as the deity—the mysterium.
“We never see, save through a glass, darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12).
Learned Hand, a great American judge whose judicial opinions were the
subject of my first book,89 spoke of “humility before the vast unknown.”90
The good judge also taught me to doubt—even some of his own
wisdom, as when he wrote, “A sparrow cannot fall without God’s will.”91
For me, the world is too random to see God’s will in every atom or falling
sparrow, except in some vague, unimaginable fashion. In any event, I am
resigned to living in doubt. In truth, it is not so uncomfortable.
Faith is not propositional, as the scholars say. It does not depend on
the truth of propositions. It cannot be proved—or falsified. It is—or it is
not. Or it’s an attempt.
For this reason, I do not regard one religion as truer or better than
another. The questions about life—and death—remain the same. So too
questions of evil—and good.
Judaism and Christianity represent man’s struggle to address these
issues—to understand, to explain why. All inevitably fall short.
233
My Credo
Different religious traditions give strength and comfort with differ-

ent content. We tend to find the most comfortable anchor in the tradition
in which we were raised. I was raised as a Jew, so I feel most comfortable
facing life’s limitations within this tradition. But I understand that others
raised in different traditions would find that same kind of comfort in the
traditions in which they were raised. I do not feel that mine is better—
except for me (and with all its faults). Yet I take pride in it.
As a general rule, however, I would not encourage conversion. You
are most likely to find comfort in the religious tradition in which you were
raised. But conditions vary. Today, it is very common to change religious
traditions. And most religious traditions welcome this.
A recent op-ed piece in the New York Times documents the recent
movement of the unchurched to churches.92 Their choice was not deter-
mined by doctrine. For most of these newly churched people, “the
most-cited reason for settling on their current religion was that they sim-
ply enjoyed the services and style of worship.” What did they want to know
about their new church/religion? “When does the choir sing? And when
is the picnic? And is my child going to get a part in the holiday play?”
Let me give an example of the pull of tradition from within my
Judaism. Lighting candles at the onset of the Sabbath, or Shabbat (Friday
evening), is part of the Jewish tradition. The candles are lit and the bless-
ing is said by the wife. This custom was not observed in my wife’s family.
But when we married, she agreed to adopt the tradition. I once had occa-
sion to study the tradition and concluded that it was kind of silly. Why
light candles? What was the significance? It seemed to have none. You just
light candles! Moreover, the short prayer you say (or chant) when you light
them makes no sense: “Blessed art thou O God, ruler of the universe, who
commands us to light the lights of Shabbat.” Nowhere in the Bible are we
commanded to light candles for Shabbat. The rabbis invented the custom!
So why say, “God commanded.” It is even worse than this; nowhere do the
rabbis specifically command this. It has to be inferred.
When my wife began lighting Shabbat candles, she did it to please
me. But gradually, she did it for herself. She is certainly not into religious
observance. Nevertheless, there is some strange meaning—undefined and
234
unarticulated—with which the custom has infused our household. It lends

a serenity and specialness to our Friday evening meal. It marks the begin-
ning of a day of peacefulness (most of the time) and a day different from
the hurly-burly of the other days.
The lighting of candles gradually became the first of a growing list
of traditional Jewish customs we have adopted on Friday evenings—the
recitation of Proverbs 31 (a tribute of the husband to his wife), the Kiddush
(or sanctification of the Sabbath meal), including the blessing over wine
(something else that God commanded!), the ritual washing of the hands,
the blessing over the bread, and, yes, the blessing of the children.
What does all of this have to do with faith, the problem of evil in
God’s world (theodicy) and the really big issues? Seemingly, nothing. Yet,
in some strange way, we somehow—“understand” is not the right word—
“imbibe” our place in the universe, even with all its limitations.
This is hardly the only Jewish tradition that has this subtle effect.
And for many Jews, it does not. And for other religious traditions, the
same effect is reached through other traditions. We are not in a rational
world here of proof or disproof. What is right for one person does not
necessarily work for another.
All of which brings me to the sacred writings, specifically the Bible,
to which I have devoted the past 35 years.
The Bible makes historic claims. Are they true?
An Orthodox Jew named James Kugel, who taught a popular course
on the Bible at Harvard (when his course became more popular even
than Economics 101, the Harvard Crimson headlined its story “God Beats
Mammon”), recently wrote a bestselling book that asked whether modern
critical scholarship on the Bible can be reconciled with traditional rabbinic
learning about the text.93 His answer, after nearly 700 pages, is “No.” The
two ways of looking at the Bible are irreconcilable.
Yet both are valuable. Each teaches truths about the text. The one
tells us how the book came to be, what the world of the Bible was like,
what in it is likely to be historically accurate and what is not. The other
teaches its meaning—subtle and complicated with unplumbable depths.
Simple as that. Both are rich treasures.
235
My Credo
Both ways of looking at the biblical text represent, for me, my ances-
tors’ struggle to understand the same mysteries that continue to mystify
me. We are on the same journey, Abraham and I. Both ways of looking at
the text make me feel this way. And so does archaeology, because it enriches
my understanding of the world in which the events occurred and were
written down (admittedly, mostly at a different time). My biblical stud-
ies—both traditional and historical—bring me closer to these ancestors
and the world they lived in. And archaeology is an exciting additional tool.
If I do not fully understand, I am not alone. The Bible is their record
of their struggle to understand. It is a never ending venture—it is mine as
well. We—they and I—are in the same struggle. It is ultimately invigorating
and life affirming. I love it.
236
notes
1 S.v. “Kishinev,” in Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 10, p. 1066.
2 S.v. “Odessa,” in Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 12, p. 1323.
3 Edward Davison, Collected Poems, 1917–1939 (New York and London: Harper and
Brothers, 1940).
4 “‘State Action’ and the Girard Estate Case,” 105 Univ. Pa. L. Rev. 213 (1956).
5 Hershel Shanks, “An Incised Handle from Hazor Depicting a Syro-Hittite Deity,” Israel
Exploration Journal 23.4 (1973), p. 234.
6 Mendel Kaplan, “Teddy Kollek, In Memoriam,” in Eretz Israel, Teddy Kollek Volume, vol. 28
(Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2007), p. ix at p. x.
7 This offer was also published in a note on p. 17 in BAR’s fourth issue. See Queries and
Comments, Biblical Archaeology Review, December 1975.
8 See Hershel Shanks, “Tom Crotser Has Found the Ark of the Covenant—Or Has He?”
Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 1983.
9 Hershel Shanks, “Memorandum—Re: Restoring Gezer,” Biblical Archaeology Review, May/

June 1994.
10 See Aren Maeir, “Did Captured Ark Afflict Philistines With E.D.?” Biblical Archaeology
Review, May/June 2008.
11 Michael O. Wise, et al., eds., Methods of Investigation of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Khirbet
Qumran Site (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1994), p.154.
12 See Hershel Shanks, The Copper Scroll and the Search for the Temple Treasure (Washington,
D.C.: Biblical Archaeology Society, 2007).
13 Frank Moore Cross, Jr., The Ancient Library of Qumran and Modern Biblical Studies, rev. ed.
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1961, reprinted 1980), pp. 35, 37.
14 Apparently, Israel’s Archaeological Council and the Shrine of the Book Foundation made
a decision that “The rights of the scholars previously given by the board of directors of the
Rockefeller Museum were to be respected and ensured by the Israeli authorities.” See Hershel
Shanks, “BAR Interviews Avraham Eitan: Antiquities director confronts problems and con-
troversies,” Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 1986.
15 See BARview, “Israeli Authorities Now Responsible for Delay in Publication of Dead Sea
Scrolls,” Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 1985.
16 See “Scroll Publication” in Lawrence H. Schiffman and James C. VanderKam, eds.,

Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
17 See John Strugnell, “The Original Team of Editors,” in Timothy H. Lim, Hector L.
MacQueen and Calum M. Carmichael, eds., On Scrolls, Artefacts and Intellectual Property
(Sheffield, U.K.: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001).
237
Notes
18 See Queries and Comments, Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 1990, pp. 16, 18.
19 Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 1989.
20 See Queries and Comments, “Are the Dead Sea Scrolls Being Suppressed for Doctrinal
Reasons?” Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 1989, p. 18.
21 Eugene R. Fisher, “The Church’s Teaching on Supersessionism,” Biblical Archaeology Review,

March/April 1991.
22 Hershel Shanks, “Will Marty Abegg Ever Find a Job?” Biblical Archaeology Review, January/
February 2003.
23 Robert Alter, “How Important Are the Dead Sea Scrolls?” Commentary, February 1992,
p. 35.
24 In the official publication of MMT, the editors preferred to call it a “treatise.” Elisha
Qimron and John Strugnell, Qumran Cave IV, Vol. V, Miqsat Ma’aseh Ha-Torah, Discoveries
in the Judaean Desert, Vol. 10 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), p. 121. But on p. 204 of the
book, Strugnell withdraws the suggestion.
25 Martin Abegg, “Paul, ‘Works of the Law’ and MMT,” Biblical Archaeology Review, November/
December 1994.
26 Niva Elkin-Koren, “Of Scientific Claims and Proprietary Rights: Lessons from the Dead
Sea Scrolls Case,” Houston Law Review 38.2 (Summer 2001), at p. 449.
27 David Nimmer, “Copyright in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Houston Law Review 38.1 (Spring
2001), at p. 50.
28 “MMT as the Maltese Falcon,” Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 1994.
29 Elisha Qimron and John Strugnell, Qumran Cave IV, Vol. V, Miqsat Ma’aseh Ha-Torah,
Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, Vol. 10 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), p. 201.
30 See, for example, Jeffrey M. Dine, “Authors’ Moral Rights in Non-European Nations,”
Michigan Journal of International Law 16 (1995), p. 545; Cindy Alberts Carson, “Raiders of the
Lost Scrolls: The Right of Scholarly Access to the Content of Historic Documents,” Michigan
Journal of International Law 16 (1995), p. 299; Lisa M. Weinstein, “Ancient Works, Modern
Dilemmas: The Dead Sea Scroll Copyright Case,” American University Law Review 43 (1994),
p. 1637; Dennis S. Karjala, “Copyright and Misappropriation,” University of Dayton Law Review
17 (1992), p. 885; “Who Owns Religious Information?” in Ann Wells Branscomb, Who Owns
Information? (New York: Basic Books, 1994).
31 Jeffrey M. Dine, “Authors Moral Rights in Non-European Nations,” Michigan Journal of

International Law 16 (1995), p. 545 at p. 566.
2001), p.1 at p. 50.
33 Hershel Shanks, “For This You Waited 35 Years,” Biblical Archaeology Review, November/
December 1994.
34 Elisha Qimron, “The Nature of the Reconstructed Composite Text of 4QMMT,” in John
Kampen and Moshe Berstein, eds., Reading 4QMMT: New Perspectives on Qumran Law and
History, SBL Symposium Series 2 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), pp. 9–13.
238
35 The Israel Supreme Court’s opinion, as well as that of Judge Dorner in the trial court,
can be found in English translation.
2001), p. 1 at p. 75.
37 John Strugnell, “The Original Team of Editors,” in Timothy H. Lim, Hector L. MacQueen
and Calum M. Carmichael, eds., On Scrolls, Artefacts and Intellectual Property (Sheffield, U.K.:
Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), p. 190.
38 Israel Knohl, “The Messiah Son of Joseph,” Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October
2008.
39 Hershel Shanks, “Background to Hanukkah—Inscription Reveals Roots of Maccabean

Revolt,” Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 2008.
40 “Is the New Moabite Inscription a Forgery?” Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 2005.
41 Hershel Shanks, “Magic Incantation Bowls,” Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February

2007.
42 See Update: Finds or Fakes?, “An Interview With Othmar Keel,” Biblical Archaeology Review,
July/August 2005.
43 William G. Dever, “A Temple Built for Two,” Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 2008.
44 See Edward J. Keall, “New Tests Bolster Case for Authenticity,” Biblical Archaeology Review,
July/August 2003.
45 Hershel Shanks and Ben Witherington, The Brother of Jesus: The Dramatic Story & Meaning
of the First Archaeological Link to Jesus & His Family (San Francisco: Harper, 2003).
46 Suzanne Singer, “Jerusalem Update: More Temple Mount Antiquities Destroyed,” Biblical
Archaeology Review, September/October 2000.
47 Nina Burleigh, Unholy Business: A True Tale of Faith, Greed, and Forgery in the Holy Land
(New York: HarperCollins, 2008), p. 54.
48 Burleigh, p. 168.
49 Much of this account in taken from Burleigh, pp. 171–177.
50 Quoted in David Samuel, “Written in Stone,” The New Yorker, April 12, 2004, p. 59.
51 Reported in Ha’aretz, March 24, 2004; see also Update: Finds or Fakes?, “Fakes Everywhere?
The Plot Thickens—and Widens,” Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 2004, p. 52.
52 Hershel Shanks, “The Trial of Oded Golan,” Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 2004,
note 12; see also Update: Finds or Fakes?, “All Bogus: Three New Rumors,” Biblical Archaeology
Review, July/August 2004, p. 59.
54 Ibid.
55 “Dahari: J’Accuse, Mr. Shanks,” Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 2005, p. 46.
56 See Strata, “BAR Editor Charged With Pivotal Role in Fraud and Forgery,” Biblical
Archaeology Review, January/February 2009, p. 13.
239
Notes
57 See Strata, “BAR Offers $50,000 Reward,” Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 2007, p. 18.
58 See First Person, “Needed: A Protocol Needed to Test Authenticity,” Biblical Archaeology
Review, July/August 2004.
59 Samuel, p. 59.
60 Ann Byle, “Duke University Professor Claims: A Third of Israel Museum’s Inscriptions
Are Forgeries,” Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 2004.
61 See Strata, “How an Israeli Forgery Committee Operates,” Biblical Archaeology Review,
March/April 2009, p. 10.
62 Matthew Kalman, “‘James Ossuary Trial’ Stalls After More Than Three Years,” Jerusalem
Post, April 1, 2009.
63 Ibid.
64 See Strata, “Forgery Case Collapses,” Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 2009,
p. 12.
65 See Strata, “Trial to Continue,” Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 2009, p. 11.
66 Peter T. Daniels, Maarav 11 (2004), p. 103.
67 See especially David Samuel, “Written in Stone,” The New Yorker, April 12, 2004; and Nina
Burleigh’s book Unholy Business: A True Tale of Faith, Greed, and Forgery in the Holy Land (New
York: HarperCollins, 2008).
68 See Hershel Shanks, “Ossuary Update,” Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 2004.
69 See James A. Harrell, “Final Blow to IAA Report: Flawed Geochemistry Used to Condemn
James Inscription,” Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 2004.
70 Shimon Ilani, Amnon Rosenfeld, Howard R. Feldman, Wolfgang E. Krumbein and Joel
Kronfeld, “Archaeometric Analysis of the ‘Jehoash Inscription’ Tablet,” Journal of Archaeological
Science 35 (2008), pp. 2966–2972.
72 Guy Gugliotta and Samuel Sockol, “Find or Forgery, Burial Box is Open to Debate,”
Washington Post, February 21, 2005.
73 Yuval Goren et al., “A Re-Examination of the Inscribed Ivory Pomegranate From the Israel
Museum,” Israel Exploration Journal 55 (2005), p. 3.
74 Nahman Avigad, “The Inscribed Pomegranate From the ‘House of the Lord,’” in Hillel
Geva, ed., Ancient Jerusalem Revealed (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1994), p. 137.
75 André Lemaire, “A re-examination of the Inscribed Pomegranate: A Rejoinder,” Israel

Exploration Journal 56 (2006), p. 167.
76 Hershel Shanks, Jerusalem Forgery Conference, p. 14. Published in a limited edition by

the Biblical Archaeology Society. The report is also available at the Society’s website: www.
biblicalarchaeology.org
77 André Lemaire, “A Re-examination of the Pomegranate: A Rejoinder,” Israel Exploration

Journal 56 (2006), p. 167.
78 Shmuel Ahituv, Aaron Demsky, Yuval Goren and André Lemaire, “The Inscribed
240
Pomegranate from the Israel Museum Examined Again,” Israel Exploration Journal 57 (2007),
p. 87.
79 Ibid., p. 91.
80 André Lemaire, “A Re-examination of the Pomegranate: A Rejoinder,” Israel Exploration

Journal 56 (2006), p. 167.
81 See Hershel Shanks, “The Paleographer: Demonstrably a Forgery,” Biblical Archaeology

Review, May/June 2003; Edward L. Greenstein, “Hebrew Philology Spells Fake,” Biblical
Archaeology Review, May/June 2003.
82 David Noel Friedman, “Don’t Rush to Judgment,” Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April
2004.
83 Shimon Ilani, Amnon Rosenfeld, H.R. Feldman, Wolfgang E. Krumbein and Joel Kronfeld,
“Archaeometric Analysis of the ‘Jehoash Inscription’ Tablet” Journal of Archaeological Science 35
(2008), pp. 2966–2972.
84 See Updates: Finds or Fakes, “Is the IAA Out to Shut Down the Legal Antiquities Market?”
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 2005.
85 Ann Byle, “Israel Antiquities Authority: Too Much Booze Nabs Golan as Forger,” Biblical
Archaeology Review, September/October 2004.
86 See Strata, “Leading Scholar Lambastes IAA Committee,” Biblical Archaeology Review,
November/December 2007, p. 16.
87 Lester L. Grabbe, “Some Recent Issues in the Study of the History of Israel,” in H.G.M.
Williamson, ed., Understanding the History of Ancient Israel (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2007), pp. 60–63.
88 “Losing Faith—Two Who Did and Two Who Didn’t,” Biblical Archaeology Review, March/
April 2007.
89 Hershel Shanks, ed., The Art and Craft of Judging, The Decisions of Judge Learned Hand (New
York: Macmillan, 1968).
90 Learned Hand, “Foreword to Williston’s Life and Law,” in Irving Dillard, ed., The Spirit of
Liberty, Papers and Addresses of Learned Hand (New York: Knopf, 1959), p. 108.
91 Learned Hand, “At the Harvard Tercentenary Observance,” in Irving Dillard, ed., The Spirit
of Liberty, Papers and Addresses of Learned Hand (New York: Knopf, 1959), p. 93.
92 Charles M. Blow, “Defecting to Faith,” The New York Times, May 2, 2009.
93 James L. Kugel, How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now (New York:
Free Press, 2007).
241
illustration credits
Biblical Archaeology Society 127
Brian Boyle/Royal Ontario Museum 189, 190
Werner Braun 73
Israel Finkelstein, Tel Aviv University 109 (bottom)
Geological Survey of Israel 194
Leah Gordon xii, 2, 5
Israel Museum, Jerusalem/Photo by Nahum Slapak 176
Ziv Koren/Polaris 205
Erich Lessing 105
Z. Radovan/BibleLandPictures.com 66, 69, 77
Hershel Shanks 70, 109 (top)
243
Index
Abegg, Martin 150–1, 152, 162 Archaeology’s Publication

Aharoni, Yohanan Problem 112, 113, 114
Land of the Bible 62 Ark of the Covenant 99
Ahituv, Shmuel 208, 215, 218, 219, artifact publication 135–6
220, 221, 222 Askew v. Hargrave 52
Albina, Najib 155 Associated Press 139, 141
Albright, William Foxwell 63, 64 Association for the Study of Marble
Alien Property Custodian 36 and Other Stones in Antiquity
Altman, Rochelle 199 (ASMOSIA) 211
Absent Voices: The Study of authenticity 176, 189, 190, 191, 203,
Writing Systems in the 208, 215, 217, 221, 225, 226
West 207 Avigad, Nahman 91–3, 180,
American Academy of Religion 188 216, 217
American Bar Association Discovering Jerusalem 93
Journal 122 Ayalon, Avner 210, 211
American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU) 45 B’nai B’rith Magazine 81, 118
American Museum of Natural Bahat, Dan 65, 67
History 225 Barkay, Gaby 202, 207, 209
American Schools of Oriental Barker, Irv 11
Research (ASOR) 97, 100, Bar-Matthews Miryam 215
101–2, 182, 188, 191 Bauman, Edward 62
Biblical Archaeologist 82, 98 Bechtel, Elizabeth Hay 157, 158
Amiram, Ruth 74–5 Bein, Amos 186
Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center Ben-Gurion, David 71–2, 74
(ABMC) 154, 157 Benoit, Père Pierre 88, 135, 138
Ancient Synagogues in Palestine and Ben-Tor, Amnon 67, 70
Greece 78 Bible and Archaeology Fest 116
Antiquities Department, Israel 138, Bible Discussion Group 63, 64
144 Bible Review 117–18, 119, 122
antiquities market and looted Biblical Archaeologist 82, 98, 101
antiquities 180–4 Biblical Archaeology Review
anti-Zionism 87–8 (BAR) 29, 51, 79, 122, 139,
Archaeological Institute of America 142, 224
(AIA) 182 ASOR and 98, 101–2
Archaeology Odyssey 122, 123 Backwards Subscription 115
Index
Biblical Archaeology Review (Cont’d) Cox, William 155

board members 88 Cross, Frank Moore 93, 100, 117,
on Crotser’s claim 99 119, 120, 131, 132, 224
dealing with controversies 84–6 Crotser, Tom 98–9
and dig scholarships 102
about Ebenezer 110–11 Dahari, Uzi 200, 201, 202, 213,
inception of 82–4 215, 229
opalim, article on 94–5 Damascus Document 128
Preservation Liaison 107, 110 David 93–4
Professor Avigad and 91–3 Davies, Philip 164
Queries & Comments 89 Davison, Edward 26, 27
structural changes in 97 Collected Poems 1917–1939 26
subscribers 88 Dayagi-Mendels, Michal 220, 224
travel/study program 116 Demsky, Aaron 215, 218, 220, 221,
Biblical Archaeology Society 79, 213 222, 223, 228
T-shirts 117 Deutsch, Robert 199, 204
Biran, Avraham 93, 94, 137 de Vaux, Père Roland 65, 130, 131,
Blum, Herb 39 132, 133, 135
Boaretto, Elisabetta 208, 224 Dever, William G. 64, 93, 103,
Boutin, Barnard L. 56 183, 184
Boyd v. Folsom, 257 F.2d 778 Discoveries in the Judaean
(1958) 38 Desert 138
Brennan, William 50 Dorfman, Shuka 188, 205, 206
Brill, J.J. 156 Dorner, Dahlia 168
British Museum 200 Doyle, Joe 25
Brookings Institution 50–1 Drinker, Biddle and Reath 34–5
Broshi, Magen 140, 144 Drinker, Henry 34
Brown, Rafi 204, 205 Driscoll, Charlie 46
Brown, Raymond 144 Drori, Amir 138, 139, 159,
160, 164
carbon-14 test 224 Dulac, Eddie 44–5
Cardo, discovery in Jerusalem 91 Dvorken, Leo 32
Cardozo, Justice 52
Case, Herbert 26, 27 Ebenezer 108, 110
Cave 4 fragments 132–4, 144 École biblique et archéologique
Charlesworth, James 127 Française 65, 88, 142, 157
City of David 68, 74, 75 Edwards, Mark 148
Cohen, Chaim 225 Ein Gedi synagogue 78
Cohen, Momi 205 Eisenman, Robert 141, 155, 156,
Cohen, Orna 208, 212 160, 161, 164
college years Eitan, Avi 138, 144, 145, 146
at Haveford college 27–30 Ellovich, Joe 15, 26
social life on campus 25–6 Equitable Life Assurance Society 49
at W & J college 25–7
Collins, Larry family
O Jerusalem! 62, 71–2 father 1, 2–4, 6, 11, 18, 19
Commentary 118 mother 2, 8–11, 13, 15, 16, 19
Cook, Gila 93 wife and children 69, 70, 71,
copyright problem 161–71 231–2
246
Index
family background 1–4, 6 Hammath Gader synagogue

Farrell 11 mosaic 77
Fayez el-Amleh 205 Hand, Learned 49
Fein, Leonard 118 Harding, G. Lankester 130, 131, 132
Fenyvesi Charlie 81 Harrell, James 211, 212
Finkelstein, Israel 108 Harvard Law Review 33
Fisher, Eugene 149, 150 Harvard Law School 31, 32–4
Fitzmyer, Joseph 144, 150, 186, Board of Student Advisers 33, 34
187, 208, 209, 229 Legal Aid 33
forgery 180, 187 moot courts 34
claim of 197–9 Hazor 67, 68, 69
conference 217–18, 223 Hebrew 76, 110, 194, 225
crisis 227–9 Hebrew Bible 62
frenzy 202 Helzer, Michael 199
modern 210, 217, 218 Hershel Shanks Clothing Trust 57
trial of the century 203 Herzog, Isaac 195
Former Soviet Union (FSU) 7 Hezekiah’s Tunnel 66, 67–8
Freedman, David Noel 8–9, 117, Higham, Tom 224
126, 225 Hodges, John 41–4
Friedman, Ted 25 Honors Program of the Department
Frohlich, Newton 59 of Justice, Washington 36
Hopkins David 101
Ganor, Amir 195, 196, 197, 198, 200 Huntington Library 157, 158, 160
Garber Stan 49, 50 Hurowitz, Victor (Avigdor) 208,
Gaster, Theodor Herzl 126 224
Gath 108
Geological Survey, of Israel 191, Ilan, Tal 208
195, 212, 217, 225 Ilani, Shimon 212, 217
Gezer Preservation Fund 105 Israel, life in
Gitin, Seymour 93 acquaintances with scholars
Glassie, Henry 39, 49, 50 64–5
Glassie, Pewett, Beebe and ancient synagogues 76–8
Shanks 51 attempt to write a novel 61–2
Glueck, Nelson 106 Bible course 62–3
Golan, Oded 185, 189, 190, 195–6, Bible Discussion Group 63–4
198–9, 201, 204, 205, 211, excavations and 67–71
214–15 Hezekiah’s Tunnel 66, 67
Good Morning America 144 with Yadin 67, 70, 72, 73, 74, 78
Goren, Yuval 201, 209–11, 212–13, Israel Antiquities Authority
215, 218, 221, 222 (IAA) 158, 159, 161, 163, 164,
Greenfield, Jonas 92, 143 188, 195, 196, 202, 204, 213,
Greenstein, Edward 225 227, 229
Grimm’s Fairy Tales 19 Israel Exploration Journal 71, 204,
guilt and law 41 217, 221, 222, 223
Israel, Herzog, Fox and
Ha’aretz 74, 146, 190, 195, Neeman 195
204, 205 Israel Museum 203, 204, 215,
habeas corpus 42, 43 218, 220
Hadassah Magazine 118 Istanbul Archaeology Museum 83
247
Index
ivory pomegranate Kishinev pogroms 3

inscription 176–84, 203, 204, Kister, Menachem 169
206, 216, 222, 228 Knibb, Michael 128
carbon-14 test and 224 Kochavi, Moshe 108, 110
forgery conference and 217–18 Kollek, Teddy 75
reexamination of 217 Krumbein, Wolfgang 212, 214
Izbet Sartah 107, 109 Kugel, James 235
Jacobovici, Simcha 187, 192 Laden, Susan 89, 90, 117

Jacoby, Lena 9, 10 Lapierre, Dominique
James ossuary inscription 184–92, O Jerusalem! 62, 71–2
195–6, 197, 198, 206, 209, Late Bronze Age 223
212, 229 law, practice of 39
forgery allegation of 201, 202, case of Eddie Dulac 44–5
204, 207, 208, 210, 215 case of Jerry Maiatico 53–6
Jebel ed-Deir 79 case of John Hodges 41–4
Jerusalem Post 74, 139, 143, 195 case of Russell Nesbitt 45–8
Jewish Telegraphic Agency 159 friction with Stanley
Joint Distribution Committee 7 Metzger 49–51
Jordan and biblical personal litigations 56–7
connections 98–9 in Supreme Court 52–3
Journal of Archaeological Lazarsfeld, Paul F. 32
Science 225, 226 Lemaire, André 177, 178, 180,
Judaism 162, 232 186, 187, 191, 199, 201,
Strugnell on 147 204, 206, 207, 214, 217,
Judaism in Stone—The Archaeology 221, 222, 223
of Ancient Synagogues 78, 79 Lemche, Niels Peter 98
Jurino, Monica 15–16 Lemm, George 53
justice 40–1 Levin, Nadav 215
Levy, Leon 100, 113, 114
Kahl, Patricia 16–17 Lipset, Seymour M 32
Kalodner, Harry 34 Livnat, Limor 195, 197
Kando 132 Lorre, Peter 165
Kant, Immanuel 28
Kapera, Zdzislaw J. 163, 164 Maarav 207
Kaplan, Mendel 75, 76 Macalister, R.A.S. 106
Katzman, Avi 146, 147 Maeir, Aren 94, 95, 108
Kaufmann, Yehezkel Maiatico, Jerry 53–6
The Religion of Israel 61 Majewski, Georg 110
Keel, Othmar 182 mandamus 55
Kenyon, Frederic Mann, Thomas
Our Bible and the Ancient Joseph and His Brothers 60
Manuscripts Marko 200
Kenyon, Kathleen 68, 86–8, 89 Martinez, Florentino Garcia 172,
Royal Cities of the Old 173
Testament 61 Matomic Building 53–4
Kershaw, Norma 88 Mazar, Amihai 112
Kiev 7 Mazar, Benjamin 75
King, Philip J. 112, 113, 114 McCarter, Kyle 219, 222, 223, 224
248
Index
McMullin, Elizabeth 19, 20 Oxford Radiocarbon

McPhail, Jimmy 46 Laboratory 224
Merhige, Robert 44–5 Oxtoby, Willard 144
Merton, Robert King 32 oxygen isotope analysis 210
Metzger, Stanley 49–51 Oz, Amos 120
Meyers, Carol 82
Meyers, Eric 82, 98, 191, 197, 202 paleography 216
Millard, Alan 182 Palestine Archaeological
Misgav, Haggai 208 Museum 132, 136, 137, 156
Mishnah 162 Pastore, John 56
MMT (Miqsat Ma’aseh Pearce, Frank 28
Ha-Torah) 126, 127, 128, 161, Pennsylvania bar 35
162–3 Phi Beta Kappa 29–30
reconstructions in 168, 170 Philadelphia bar 35
Moffett, William A. 157, 158, Philip J. King Professorship 115
159, 160 pogroms 3
Mogilany Resolution 163 Porten, Bezlel 209
Molcho, Yitzchak 165 A Preliminary Edition of the
Moment magazine 6, 118, 120–1, Unpublished Dead Sea
123 Scrolls 152
Montreal Convention 57 Present Tense 118
Moskowitz, Irving 155 Puech, Emile 157
Moussaieff, Shlomo 183, 199, 200–1 Pye, Ken 49
Murphy-O’Connor, Jerome 65
Qimron, Elisha 126, 128, 163, 164,
Nagel, Ernest 32 165, 167, 168–9, 171
Nag Hammadi codices 156 Qumran 131, 162
National Education Association 51
National Public Radio 138 Rabin, Yitzchak 120
Naveh, Joseph 195, 224 Reich, Ronny 106, 107, 202, 209,
Near Eastern Archaeology 101 228, 229
Nesbitt, Russell 45–8 Reid, Ira deAugustine 28, 29, 31
Netanyahu, Benjamin 165 Revue Biblique 178
Netzer, Ehud 107 Rezneck, Dan 50
New Orleans Baptist Seminary 107 Richards, Gerald 214
Newsweek 127 Robinson, James M. 156, 160,
New Testament 62, 63 161, 164
New Yorker 202 Rockefeller Museum 207
New York Times 94, 139, 140, Rose, David 37
150, 153, 154, 158, 159, 182, Rosenfeld, Amnon 212, 217
188, 234 Royal Ontario Museum 188,
Nimmer, David 170 191, 212
Nimmer, Melville 170
Nimmer on Copyright 170 Safire, William 159
Samuel, Mar Athanasius
Office of Alien Property 36 Yeshue 130
opalim 94 Sanders, James 154, 157
Oral Law 162 Sandmel, Samuel 81–2, 84
Ortiz, Steven 107 Sauer, James 100, 101
249
Index
Scalley, Judge 46–7 Sukenik, Eleazer Lipa 78, 129–30

Schaub, R. Thomas 99–100 supersessionism 149–50
Schiffman, Lawrence 232 Sushanka, journey to 7–8
Religious Studies News 154 synagogues, ancient 76–8
Schlosser, Robert 157 Syro-Hittite deity 69, 71
scroll monopoly, breaking
of 150–4 Talmud 162
Serabit al-Khadem 79 Teacher of Righteousness 161
Shanks, Leah 19 Tel Dan 93–4
Sharon, life in 13–14 Tell Gezer 103, 104–7
AZA and 18 The Art and Craft of Judging 48–9
dates 18–19 The City of David 74, 103
engagement with plays 21–2 The Enigma Press 163
in grade school 14–15 The Journal for the Study of
in grandparents’ Judaism 172
neighborhood 11–12 The Maltese Falcon 165
in high school 19–22 The Qumran Chronicle 163
in junior high school 16–18 The William F. Albright School of
Sharon Herald 19, 21 Archaeological Research 64
Sharon High Gazette 20 This Week in Israel 74
Sheehan, Toni 22 Tikkun 118
Shelby White–Leon Levy Program Toepfer, Louis 31
for Archaeological Toronto Globe 188
Publications 114 Tov, Emanuel 143, 152, 157, 158
Shiloh, Yigal 75, 88 Trible, Phyllis 119
Shrine of the Book 130, 140, 144
Singer, Max 90 Ulrich, Eugene 143, 154, 157, 158
Singer, Suzanne 6, 90, 120, 200 University of Pennsylvania Law
Sirica, John 55 Review 29
Small Claims Court 57 Urbach, Meir 179
Smith, Anna Grace 19, 20 Ussishkin, David 88, 107
Smith, Morton 127, 148, 231
Snyder, James 203, 216 Van Beek, Gus 65
social life 18–19, 21 Vaughn, Andrew 183
at W & J college 25 Vermes, Geza 127, 171
Social Security statute 38 Vester, Horatio 65
Society of Biblical Literature 82, Vester, Val 65
113, 152, 188, 191
Socratic teaching method 32–3 Wacholder, Ben Zion 125, 150,
Stager, Lawrence 113 151, 152
Standiford, Steve 45 Wall Street Journal 130
Stegemann, Hartmut 154 Warsaw Convention 56–7
Stern, Ephraim 112 Washington life
Stillings, Mr. 10, 11 in Department of Justice 36–8
Strugnell, John 125, 126, 128, 138, Washington Post 56, 139, 153, 213
139, 141, 142–3, 144, 146–8, Weaver, Hank 39, 48
149, 150, 161, 174 Weaver and Glassie 39
anti-Semitism of 147 Weizmann Institute 224
250
Index
White, Gilbert Fowler 27 Yale Law School 32

Wiesel, Elie 118, 119 Yardeni, Ada 185, 206, 207, 209,
Wolf, Block, Schorr and 214, 219
Solis-Cohen 35 Yediot Achronot 74
Wolf, Robert 35 Yehoash inscription 193–202, 224,
Wright, G. Earnest 84, 106 225–6, 228
Biblical Archaeology 61
Zeitlin, Solomon 63
Yadin, Yigael 67, 70, 72, 73, 74, 78, Zhitomir 7
104, 129, 130, 137 Zionism 87
251

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Freeing

The Dead Sea

Copyright © Hershel Shanks, 2010.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

First published 2010

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

II. The Sharon Years 13

III. My College Years 25

IV. Columbia, Harvard and the Department of Justice 31

VI. Our Year in Israel 59

VII. Starting BAR 81

VIII. Maturing BAR 97

IX. Freeing the Scrolls 125

X. Losing in Court 161

XI. Two Extraordinary Inscriptions—

XII. A Royal Israelite Inscription—

XIII. “The Forgery Trial of the Century” and Beyond 203

XIV. My Credo 231

Illustration Credits 243

have, ultimately awarding Qimron 100,000 shekels in damages (about

A FAMILY PORTRAIT taken when I was in high school. By then, my

The family name is written twice on the manifest, once in connec-

DRESSED FOR SUCCESS. An early photo of me with my sister Leah.

through the center of the village, but stopped us only momentarily. We

The Sharon Years

My mother would have to make her annual trip to school to discuss my

Even before my Bar Mitzvah, I was often in my father’s store sell-

oratory team. I wrote an editorial describing these trophies that stopped in

heard of them. Without their guidance, I would probably have ended up

my ﬁrst-semester grades. So Haverford’s decision might be different this

write stories, but not editorials. Apparently my reputation as a trouble

anniversary of the Haverford Phi Beta Kappa chapter. I began my talk by

Columbia, Harvard and

solve my dilemma—law or sociology—if I could just get him to say that

I had no idea how I had done. There was certainly no reason to

was an angle, something noteworthy. “Junior year?” he queried. “No”, I had

on counsel’s table, although they were rarely used. Government lawyers

that the worst imaginable defendant must have a competent lawyer to

had ordered the desegregation of Virginia’s public schools. I vividly remem-

But in a case involving this amount of money, it was worth try-

The case had a bittersweet ending, however. George wanted to do

Our Year in Israel

After writing nearly 300 pages of my novel, however, I began to have

government. We referred to ourselves jokingly as the Thursday Evening

GETTING MY FEET WET. During my 1972 sabbatical in Israel, I began to

I had already learned that the ridge through which Hezekiah’s

A LUCKY FIND. On a weekend trip to the mound of Hazor, my six-year-

FAIR TRADE. Elizabeth listens intently as Yigael Yadin shows her a

“OK,” I said, “but be careful. It could be valuable.”

site. Ben-Tor talked to Carmella and, in no time, it was arranged for me to

ISRAEL’S EQUIVALENT OF A MOVIE STAR. Unlike many scholars

unshaken determination. He quietly studied Yadin, then he gave him a

Yadin was proved right. They tried to take Latrun—three times

There followed a heated discussion about the feasibility of such a proj-

with” my book, he wrote, he was “shocked” at what had been allowed

THE CLAWS COME OUT. I was initially denied permission to publish

Gader, east of the Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee). The Hammath-Gader

the title Judaism in Stone—The Archaeology of Ancient Synagogues. Yigael

who taught at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati and had served

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS. The cover of the ﬁrst issue of “The” BAR,