Review: Bahn, Paul 2012 Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction, 2nd Edition

Bahn, Paul 

2012 Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction, 2nd Edition, Series: Very Short Introductions, Oxford University Press. 118 pages, list of Further Reading, Index. $12.95.

Review by Pastor Joseph Abrahamson

May 2018

Paul Bahn is a widely published archaeologist, a contributing editor to the Archaeological Institute of America’s Archaeology magazine. And co-author of a popular archaeology textbook Archaeology: Theories, Methods and Practice, with Colin Renfrew.

Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction is 118 pages.This consists of a Preface, Introduction, ten short chapters, and a list of recommended readings. There are 22 illustrations, fourteen of which are cartoons added for humor.

In his “Introduction” Bahn works through distinguishing what archaeology is actually from the popular conceptions brought to the public through the media. Here he highlights a problem within the academic field of archaeology.

“The basic problem that they face is that very little evidence survives of most of the things that ever happened in the past, and of this evidence only the tiniest fraction is ever recovered by archaeologists, and probably only a minute portion of what is recovered is correctly interpreted or identified. ... [This results in some researchers] drawing lines through gaps in the evidence to produce sequences of phases or types; others by simply ignoring how terrible and unrepresentative the data are,and using them regardless to produce stories about the past” (p. 4)

This is the central problem with reliance upon archaeology for the interpretation of the past. I have characterized this problem previously as the problem of sample size and overwhelming data. That is, the issue is twofold: only a tiny portion of the past is actually represented by the samples we have recovered; at the same time the amount of data from these samples is so overwhelming that it is impossible that one person could know enough to make an accurate and comprehensive report about what has been recovered. Bahn addresses the second issue of overwhelming data in his first chapter.

Bahn highlights both the camaraderie and the “territoriality, bitchiness, backstabbing, and vicious infighting [which] for some reason goes way beyond what is normally encountered in other disciplines.” (p. 6) From this he describes archaeology in religious terms as “the very broadest of churches with something for everyone.” “Archaeology is a perpetual search, never really a finding; it is an eternal journey, with no true arrival. Everything is tentative, nothing is final.” (p. 7)

In chapter 1 “The origins and development of archaeology” Bahn traces the combination of digging and antiquarian interest back to Nabonidus (6th c BC) who excavated the much older temple of Naram-Sin. From here he briefly highlights Roman, Greek, and medieval antiquarian efforts. This chapter moves to focus on some of the significant changes in the 19th and 20th centuries. Bahn notes two trends: First: “excavation has become far slower and more painstaking.” (p. 12) The result of this is a great increase in the amount of data recovered from the small sample size and the corresponding need to spend time and resources dealing with this data. Second: “thanks to the development of new techniques and scientific analyses - we can now learn far more from each object.” (p. 13) Thus, while being able to learn more about each object increases the amount of data with which the archaeologists need to wrestle, the data do not increase the sample size to create a more accurate bigger or historical picture.

“In other words, as archaeology develops, it is doing much more with far less. It is also, alas, producing far too much in every sense. There are ever-growing numbers of archaeologists all over the world, competing for positions, and all trying to produce information or new data.” (p. 13)

Conservation of the recovered artifacts is a problem. And the field of archaeology itself suffers from a divide in definition between the North American practice of defining the field as a subdiscipline of Anthropology where in the Old World archaeology is treated “as a field in its own right.” (p. 15)

The next two chapters (chapter 2 “Making a date”, and chapter 3 “Technology”) focus on the tools and methods used in the archaeological task. Bahn highlights the distinction between relative dating and absolute dating, their various techniques and some of their significant limitations. For example, in dealing with Carbon 14 Bahn writes:

“The basic assumption behind the Radiocarbon method— that the concentration of C14 in the atmosphere has always been constant— eventually proved to be false, and we now know that it has varied through time, largely due to changes in the Earth’s magnetic field.” (p. 21)

And a bit later:

“[A]rchaeologists do not really need to know much about them [radiological dating methods]— … they have a touching and often misplaced faith in the ability of the boffins, the ‘hard scientists’, to take the sample of material provided and produce a suitable set of dates. One’s confidence in the laboratories is not helped by the fact that, when submitting a sample for radiocarbon dating, one is usually asked to say, in advance, what kind of figure is expected!” (p. 23)

It is particularly these cautionary comments that make this little volume of value. Bahn includes these kinds of warnings on almost every topic he introduces within the field of archaeology. Bahn is not a skeptical uninformed outsider. He has long professional experience in archaeology. In the third chapter he defines experimental archaeology and ethnoarchaeology (attempts to reproduce the methods the ancients might have used to create the artifacts). And along with pointing out benefits of these methods he also highlights and the dangers and limits inherent in this kind of interpretation.

In the next three chapters Bahn addresses techniques that are mainly used to address the questions of (chapter 4) “How did people live?”, (chapter 5) “How did people think?” and the ways they may have structured their (chapter 6) “Settlement and society”. As an example of Bahn’s caution, when he introduces archaeoastronomy and cognitive archaeology he uses the example of the Megalithic structures like New Grange, Ireland.

“Many of these are thought to have astronomical alignments, though it is not always possible to be certain, since there are so many things in the heavens that the chances are high that a circle of regularly or irregularly placed stones will be aligned on something significant quite by chance.” (p. 52)

Here Bahn also deals with the problem of the “religious explanation” -- the tendency of archaeologists to explain things by claiming that an object was “religious” is one of the most common non-explanations given through the history of modern archaeology.

The rest of the volume focuses on the difficulties in interpretation between competing schools of thought, both historically and currently, in archaeology. There are some methods and techniques discussed in these chapters, but mostly Bahn focuses on where theoretical views and frameworks were developed, the philosophical origins of these interpretive frameworks, what has been proposed through their perspectives, and how these interpretations have been challenged.

Bahn’s short book could be considered a “‘haute vulgarisation’ or well-informed popularization, i.e. accessible and readable syntheses that will appeal to the layperson or beginner without loss of content or accuracy.”(p.97, italics original) No doubt this is what he intended. Evaluating a work like this can become rather complex. Throughout the pages the reader is confronted with the smug hipper-and-wittier-than-thou just as often as legitimate criticism. It is also hard to form a balanced criticism on a work that is on the one hand trying to introduce readers to an academic field while on the other hand telling the reader that most of the field is “deadly dull,” “consists of dry tomes, filled with jargon and hot air, and aimed at other scholars.” (p.97)

Bahn provides valuable general criticisms of various aspects of archaeology while introducing these aspects. This is, indeed, a very valuable feature of this work. But it is puzzling to me that the author seems to assume that his readership is clever enough to distinguish between snark and actual critical evaluation while at the same time asserting that his readership is too shallow to be bothered with reading things that might bore them.

Review: Cohen, Mark E. 2015 Festivals and Calendars of the Ancient Near East

Mark E. Cohen 2015 Festivals and Calendars of the Ancient Near East CDL Press, Bethesda, Maryland. 467 pages, indexes: Month Names; Deities; General Terms; Selected Subjects;

Available from Eisenbrauns $50 https://www.eisenbrauns.org/books/titles/978-1-934309-64-3.html 

Review by Pastor Joseph Abrahamson

Cohen’s book is a guide to the annual liturgical practices and religious holy days of cities and cultures in the ancient Near-east from the 3rd millennium BC down to the end of the 1st millennium BC. This volume is important for liturgical history, and for understanding the ways in which the reckoning of time was affected in Scripture by the cultures with whom the Israelites had contact. Knowledge of the languages is not necessary to understand the main arguments and data presented in this book, but it is necessary to evaluate the strengths of the Cohen’s etymological arguments. The reader also needs to have familiarity with the geography and history of the ancient Near-east to be able to grasp how these calendars fit into the current understanding of how these societies developed and interacted.

My interest in this volume stems from researching current claims that Christian practices and holy days were established by borrowing from or usurping particular pagan days and practices from the ancient Near-east. This particular kind of charge originated in the 19th century from protestant writers like Alexander Hislop (The Two Babylons 1853), anti-religion writers like T.S Doane (Bible Myths 1882), and schools in that century which adopted an evolutionary approach to the history of religion, for example: Religionsgeschichtliche Schule from the University of Göttingen, or the Tübingen School of F.C. Baur.

The questions these claims raised about origins for Biblical teaching, faith, and practice required actual data from the peoples and cultures to whom these various authors attributed their claims of origin. But in truth, none of those authors making the claims had any significant data. They had based their versions of history on their own various unverified presumptions of how history had to have developed.

Unfortunately the conclusions drawn by those writers have had incredible staying-power and influence. The majority of their opinions were published before there was any real data or any comparative survey of the actual texts from the periods and people.

In 1915 Benno Landsberger published the first comprehensive study of the Assyrian and Babylonian cultic calendars from the then available cuneiform texts.

• Der kultische Kalender der Babylonier und Assyrer: I. Die altbabylonischen Lokalkalender, Leipzig 1914 (Dissertation) (Leipziger semitistische Studien. Bd 6, H. 1. 1915) https://archive.org/details/in.gov.ignca.33809 

In 1935 Stephen Langdon published his lectures in which he had taken into account contemporary calendars from other cultures in the Levant and the Arabian peninsula.

• Babylonian Menologies and the Semitic Calendars , London Pub. For The British Academy By H. Milford Oxford University Press (1935)https://biblicalarchaeology.org.uk/pdf/schweich-lectures/1933_babylonian-menogies_langdon.pdf

A great supply of newly unearthed texts have been made available since then. Through the 1960s and 1970s several studies were made of calendars in several specific cities and time periods. But many of the relevant texts were still inaccessible even to specialists in the field.

In 1993 Mark Cohen published the first comprehensive examination of calendars in the Ancient Near East.

• 1993 The Cultic Calendars of the Ancient Near East CDL Press, Bethesda, Maryland, (504 pages). https://archive.org/details/TheCulticCalendarsOfTheAncientNearEast

22 years later and with the benefit of a great wealth of thousands more published texts available, with specialized studies by numerous researchers, as well as computer access and searching, Dr. Cohen has released a new comprehensive study that is 37 pages shorter than the previous! Festival Calendars of the Ancient Near East is not a revision or updating. The scope of the newly available data required a thorough analysis and a new work.

Festivals and Calendars basically replaces Cultic Calendars. There are but a small handful of references to the previous volume.

How the Book is Arranged

Cohen divides his survey by epoch and by location. Three main sections deal with the 3rd Millennium BC, the 2nd Millennium BC, and then the final section on the 2nd and 1st Millennium BC. Then follow indices of Month Names, Deities, General Terms, and Selected Subjects. Each of the three main sections is generally subdivided by location. Terms, months, and names of festivals and deities are presented in transcription and interpreted for the reader.

In his introduction “Festivals and Calendars” Cohen makes distinctions between

1. Parochial or Native Calendars “restricted to a city and its metropolitan area.”
2. Ethnic Calendars reflecting a usage of “traditional month names used by a population whose territory far exceeds the boundaries of the metropolitan city or kingdom in which it is used.” (1)
3. National Calendars are defined as “mandated for use in all cities, including those previously using a parochial or ethnic calendar, comprising a ruler’s kingdom.” (2)
4. Universal Calendars ar those “in use across major swaths of the ancient Near East that transcends the borders of cities, kingdoms, and ethnic areas, with minor differences in some locations.”

Each calendar is presented first with the dates during which the tablets testify to the calendar’s use, the location of calendar use, and a discussion of relevant texts from other locations which come to bear on this particular calendar’s development and use at this site or others.

Cohen discusses how the names of the months are known, whether or not and how we can know the arrangement of order of the months; what gaps there are, and if these months can be related to other calendars. This sometimes, but not always, gives us the order and sequence of months in the calendar year.

All the calendars of the ancient Near-east in this volume were lunar, that is, they were tied to the start of a new moon. The origins and arrangement of the Old Persian calendar (a solar calendar that lacks attestation before mid 1st millennium BC) do not come into this discussion except as a resource to help with particular month names or practices listed in other calendars. Cohen does not discuss how the new moon was spotted or defined. He does not address the issue of how National calendars were synchronized from city to city. Nor does Cohen address the issue of calendar tampering for political or religious purposes. (Sacha Stern takes up these topics in his 2012 Calendars in Antiquity)

Cohen does address whether the data in the texts show evidence of intercalation to make up for the difference between the lunar and the seasonal year. In some cases there is evidence of adding a month on at the end of the year. In others there is evidence of added days before the next new moon. In some cases the calendar runs twelve moons and begins to repeat, causing the months to take place earlier and earlier through successive years (e.g., possibly the Aššur calendar after Amorite rule, and the Nuzi/Gasur calendar). In many cases there is not enough evidence to say.

The question of intercalation is addressed by several means; for example, if a month name is tied to a particular seasonal activity, or if the name is possibly or consistently related to a similar month name from another calendar where the seasonal position of the month is known.

Cohen discusses whether and how the beginning month of the year is known, if it is. In these discussions Cohen explains previous views and their basis then lays out his own, his supporting data and his reasons. In general he has concluded that it is most likely the case that all of these lunar calendars began their year in the spring, though for many calendars there is insufficient data to establish this. He devotes space to particular cases where previous scholarship has concluded that calendars began the year in the fall (e.g., Ugarit, Emar, Pre-exilic Israel) or the winter solstice (e.g., Aššur).

Then he follows with discussions about each month, the rituals or gods celebrated during the month under discussion; what is known about the ritual and the sources for this information. Then follows a list with brief discussion of month names and festivals known from the tablets, but which cannot be attributed to a particular slot in the calendar.

For some calendars there is extensive information about some festivals. For example, Cohen is able to trace akītu festivals, and the kinūnum “Brazier” festivals through the two millennia.

Throughout each presentation Cohen gives references both to the tablets on which the data is found and to the scholars who have made the tablets available or done the research on the tablets and calendar systems.

Because the data are fragmentary or lacking in so many cases, the author points out both the uncertainty of his own conclusions and those of other researchers. This means that a great many reconstructions, positions, and conclusions advanced in this survey are tentative.

Particular Topics Related to Biblical Interpretation

Cohen’s approach of the data in the Hebrew Bible is historical critical. He does not specify which particular historical critical reconstruction he mainly espouses. When he discusses particular interpretations of the biblical text he expresses a view based in presuppositions that the text and the religion of Israel evolved through various stages of cross-cultural contact.

There are four topics that are directly related to biblical interpretation: 1) two calendars present possible evidence of the development of a seven day week, 2) a sacrifice of the first-born festival in the Emar Calendar which has been interpreted as culturally related to the Passover, 3) the Levantine calendars with a section on Pre-exilic Israel, and 4) the widespread adoption of the Standard Mesopotamian Calendar throughout the ancient Near-east at the end of the 2nd millennium and into the 1st millennium BC.

I will only respond to two of these issues: the week, and the Passover. My responses are critical and take up more space than the review above. I think that Cohen has produced a very valuable and useful work. And we are in his debt for this. His work is, I think, something of a very high standard and will be a main reference for years to come. As such it will, through citation, come to influence more popular level interpretations and histories of the ancient Near-east and of the Bible. For this last reason I wish to devote more space to these two issues in order to help readers understand the tentative nature of many of Cohen’s reconstructions.

The reader must pay attention to when Cohen is conjecturing and building on those conjectures versus when he is citing the data in the tablets and laying the data out in an orderly and usable way.

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The Week

The seven day work and worship cycle found in the Pentateuch is unique in all of the ancient Near-east. The Hebrew Bible makes this ritual/liturgical cycle the centerpoint of Israel’s confession of who God is.

The creation account (Genesis 1-2) and the Monotheism in which it is grounded stands in stark contrast to every other known cosmology from the ancient world. Within academia this is a point expounded upon at length by Yehezkel Kaufmann in his 1960 The Religion of Israel, and still not adequately addressed by the rest of Old Testament historical critical scholarship.

In Exodus the seven day Sabbath cycle is set at the heart of the liturgical confession of Yahweh as the one true God over against all others. The Exodus confession (20:8-11) is a weekly restatement of how the world was created and Who the creator is. According to biblical chronology this expression of the Sabbath law was made in about 1440 BC as the Israelites came out from a polytheistic culture whose religious calendar was subdivided into decans— a ten day period.

In Deuteronomy the retelling of the Sabbath Law (5:12-15) highlights the contrast between the polytheism and ritual of Egypt with what the Lord has now established for the Israelites as they enter the promised land.

Again, outside of Old Testament Israel, there is no known ancient Near-eastern calendrical system that expresses anything like the seven day Sabbath cycle.

But that has not prevented scholars from attempting to argue for a cultural evolution of the seven day Sabbath cycle from other sources that are thought to pre-date the events and motives for the Sabbath cycle in the Hebrew Bible.

One of the most influential of these historical critical reconstructions was published in 1942 by Hildegard and Julius Lewy. [“The Origin of the Week and the Oldest West Asiatic Calendar.” Hebrew Union College Annual Vol. 17 (1942-43), pp. 1-152c] The Lewys claimed that the original calendars in the Old Assyrian period were made up of a set of seven pentecontads (50 day units) which were maintained throughout history, and which originated among the Amorites. This proposal influenced a great many writings on the calendars of Israel and of the Dead Sea Scrolls. But the Lewy’s model has been abandoned by Assyriologists due to its extremely conjectural nature, lack of evidence, and mishandling of data. [See Jonathan Ben-Dov “The History of Pentecontad Time Units (I)”  in A Teacher for All Generations: Essays in Honor of James C. VanderKam (2 vol. set), Edited by Eric F. Mason, pp 93-111 Brill, 2011 https://www.academia.edu/1213350/The_History_of_Pentecontad_Time_Periods_I_ ]

In 1993 Cohen referred to the works by J. Lewy several times. But only twice did he refer to H. and J. Lewy’s “The Origin of the Week.” In both those citations the topic was the akītu festival, not the seven day week. And in those locations Cohen was pointing out that the data the Lewys had cited was actually irrelevant to the akītu festival. (Cultic Calendars pp. 245, 417). In this current volume references to the Lewys have disappeared, except in an oblique way: “There has been much speculation as to the origin of the association of seven with the non-human aspect of existence. Some have suggested that it is based on the count of heavenly bodies visible to the ancients….”(p. 428)

But there is still a drive in historical critical scholarship to formulate some kind of evolutionary developmental explanation for the seven day Sabbath cycle found in the Hebrew Bible.

In all the calendar data from the ancient Near-east there are only two examples of calendars that might have a time period of days that is regular and more brief than a month.

The first comes from the calendar established by Rim-Sîn I of Larsa (1822-1763 BC). In this calendar there is a unique notation for bureaucratic matters. It is called the ša šarrim “royal” system. Debate has centered around how to understand the dating system which does not use month names, and the format of which vary a bit from one city to the other. In the position where researchers expected the number to indicate which month there were problems with numbers over 30.  Cohen’s reconstruction is a tentative proposal that the “royal month” may have been a subset of the lunar month, and the “royal day” (the third numerical position in the system at Larsa) refers to a subdivision of a solar day. This, he proposes, would work better with an accounting system— though it does not answer all the issues raised by the data. Possibly the system is related to tabular notation as in the Old Babylonian style. Then, rather than being a dating system, the so-called “royal month” and “royal-day” would be a filing system for economic records. (pp. 238-242) Throughout these calendar texts there is no mention of a seven day system or cycle. Thus, a seven day cycle like that of Genesis is not supported by the evidence from these calendars.

The second possible example of a dating system using a group of days shorter than a month is from the Old Assyrian period calendar (1950-1710 BC texts from Kültepe Level 2 and Level 1b). This calendar used the term hamuštum, possibly to denote a regular period of days shorter than a month. The word has been much debated. Cohen summarizes the research very briefly and points to texts that equate this period with a lunar month. Cohen has made deliberate efforts to leave the previously influential theory and research of the Leyers unacknowledged— especially with reference to the fourth section of their thesis where they expounded on the term hamuštum as evidence of their pentacontad. Another term involved is šapattum, which some have tried to relate to Sabbath. However, in Assyrian šapattum refers to the full moon. (pp. 309-310)

These two examples help demonstrate an irony: The less historical critical scholars know about a cultural feature from history the more likely they are to conjecture that it is a source for something in the Bible. And what the scholars state as conjecture is taken up as historical fact by others.

The irony is not lost to this reviewer. So it is with no small sense of caution that readers should consider Cohen’s own speculation on the origin of the week starting at the bottom of page 425 through page 431.

Cohen’s Speculation on the Number Seven and the Origin of the Week

In his reading of the calendar texts the number 7 is the number of badness, unfavorableness. “The 7th day of the 7th month: this was a highly unfavorable day and, as another text notes, was a time when men cleansed themselves.” Cohen then immediately associates a mid 7th month harvest festival in this particular tablet which is “unattested elsewhere in cuneiform sources” with the Israelite fruit harvest in the middle of the seventh month. (p. 425)

The text to which he refers is Assyrian Astrolabe B. Two important points on this text: First, this text dates from the Middle Assyrian period (1400-1000 BC), so by biblical chronology this text is at best contemporary with the Mosaic Covenant, but could be later. Second, Cohen writes: “the interpretation of sections of this text must be tentative. Our understanding of the significance of these lines differs from that of Tsukimoto….” (p 425n 158). Looking at Cohen’s translation one should note he translates the relevant line: “(3) the first (-fruits?) of the year are sanctified;” meaning that the word “fruits” is in doubt.

The point of this linkage is to associate the fear of the number 7 with the Israelites. And for the next few paragraphs he brings in comparative data from other calendars discussing other features of this particular tablet. He resumes discussing the association of the number 7 on p. 427.

He restates: “The seventh day of the seventh month, more than any other day of the year was fraught with peril.” From this point his conjecture runs in this way:

1. “Throughout the Ancient Near East, the number seven was associated with the divine.” (427)
2. At this point he introduces the term “Other” in scare-quotes marks do denote the fearful presence of “the divine.” (427)
3. “[C]ontact with the ‘Other’ was considered life threatening.” (427)
4. And so the number 7 must have been considered fearful. (427)

Immediately following this Cohen returns to making his conjectural association with ancient Israel.

1. “Since human contact with the ‘Other’ was considered life-threatening, as depicted, for instance, in the Bible, when the Israelites were afraid to hear God’s voice from Mt. Sinai lest they die, or Moses’ facial disfigurement [sic!] after meeting with God, or Uzzah’s death upon touching the Ark of the Covenant upon its entry into Jerusalem.” (427)
2. And since there are lots of sevens in ancient Near-eastern literature associated with evil, scary ‘Other’ things. (427)
3. People back then were uneducated and prone to fall for superstitions. (428)
4. “We suggest that this ancient wariness of the number seven was a by-product of the numbers 3 and 10.” (428)
5. Because everyone had 10 fingers. (428)
6. “Psychological research has shown” the numbers 1-3 are processed differently than are the other numbers. (428)
7. Chaos theory shows the number 3 to be important to the Universe (as does Charles Dodgson in The Hunting of the Snark). (428 and n 167) [Dodgson was no-doubt added for humor, but the Chaos theory reference is meant as evidence.]
8. “Therefore, just perhaps, when ancients looked at their ten fingers…. Their brains subconsciously divided reality into 3 and 7. … [S]even, therefore was the non-human number, the number of the ‘Other,’ of the divine.” (428)

It is from this line of reasoning that Cohen goes on to assert “The association of seven with the divine aspect of existence manifested itself in the ancient festival calendars.” (428) Here he enlists ancient Near-east calendar data. But note his language:

1. “A festival of Narua...in the Ur III period occurred around the 7th of the 7th month.” (428f, emphasis mine)
   [“around”, ironically, the footnote at this point n169 refers to the previous page where the only mention of this festival is the sentence to which the footnote is attached. The reference should be to p. 227 where the author conjectures “Since this observance involved wailing and occurred on the 7th day of the 7th month, it raises the possibility that this observance was related to the later-attested solemn observance on that day, the sebût sebim.” (227, emphasis mine) However in his listing of textual data the festivities run at least from the 3rd of the month through the 7th.]
2. The 2nd millenium Emar “zurku festival, may have been based upon cycles of seven (though six is possible).” (429, emphasis mine)
3. “And, of course, for the Israelites every seventh day, the Sabbath, was a time to confront the ‘Other.’” (429)
4. Like the rest of the ancient Near-east “so too for the Israelites every seventh day held the same dangers, and thus they refrained from working, lest things go astray.” (429)

An obvious problem with this line of conjecture is that the Sabbath is never described in this manner at all in the Hebrew Bible. So Cohen follows immediately stating his proposed evolution of the Israelite view:

“For the Israelites, this ‘negative’ view of the seventh day eventually became ‘positive,’ so that the reason for refraining from working became one of remembrance, in one case remembering YHWH’s creation of the world and elsewhere the Exodus from Egypt.”(429)

And from here Cohen enlists the Feast of Weeks, Passover, Sukkot and the Jubilee as supporting evidence because they all revolve around periods divided by sevens. (429)

This is the line of speculation that led Cohen to conclude:

“Thus the number seven was associated with and marked the divine, the other numbers the profane, and therefore, the 7th day of the 7th month was the ultimate marker of divine time.” (429)

Cohen writes this as speculative thought. He knows he is speculating and he makes the reader aware of this through his language. I have no doubt, however, that some readers will take this up as historical truth, repeating this argument without Cohen’s speculative language.

After reviewing the data, the speculation, and the arguments based on the speculation we can still say that there is nothing like the seven day Sabbath cycle in all of the known ancient Near-eastern literature. And there are no demonstrable links with the Sabbath of the Hebrew Bible with any of the surrounding liturgical cycles, calendars, myths, or law systems.

The biblical Sabbath is unique. It is described in the Hebrew Bible as confession of the unique origins of the universe and of the nature of the God who created it, a confession that distinguishes this faith from all others in the way even the days are counted.

Passover

Here we wish to consider Cohen’s evaluation of the 1200s BC Emar calendar. In this calendar there is a reference to a zukru festival in the first month of that calendar. Cohen makes some conjectural remarks relating this zukru festival to the Passover. It is necessary to understand the highly conjectural state of the reconstruction of the Emar calendar and of this city festival.

First, note that the dating of the calendar text is from two centuries after the date of the Exodus according to biblical chronology.

Second, the name of the first month is not firmly known, “The zukru ritual texts Emar 373 and 375 seem to indicate… that Zaratu/Zeratu … were … names for the first month.” (329)

Third, reconstructing the full calendar to know in which order the months occurred in the year is tentative. (330-331)

Fourth, the season in which the first month in the year took place is debated. Cohen suggests a spring season orientation, others an autumn.

Fifth, “[t]here is no evidence of intercalation at Emar.” (333) This means that Assyriologists do not really know if the same 12(?) months were repeated without reference to season or solar year. This would be similar to the Islamic calendar shifting months through the solar year.

Cohen states that his highly conjectural reconstruction “has the positive effect of aligning the zukru festival with the Israelite spring festival of the pesaḥ-offering, which we discuss below. (332)

There are two tablets which record the instructions for the zukru festival. These are Emar 373 and Emar 375. Assyriologists do not agree as to whether this festival was annual or took place once every seven years. The month named in Emar 375 is Zaratu. (333)

Cohen writes: “The observance appears to have been related to the cattle and sheep herds.” (333, emphasis mine) His caution is due to differences in how Assyriologists interpret the name of the god Dagan bēl buqāri. The word buqāri  is interpreted as “bovines” or as “offspring.” Cohen opts for the first, which in turn depends upon the tentative interpretation of another term Šaggar which usually means “full moon” but in this case, based on other evidence, might mean “the cattle pen, where a sacrifice is performed.” (334 n 12)

The meaning of the name of the festival, zukru, is debated. Cohen makes his case for “male animal.” “We suggest that the zukru festival at Emar was the occasion for the offering of male animals, presumably newborn males from the herds, to the god of the herds.” (334, emphasis mine) Note that what Cohen is suggesting is a presumption based on many levels of hypothetical reconstruction. An addition to his conjectures, there is nothing in the texts which he cites that indicates “newborn.”

One of the locations specified in the ritual for this city festival is the city gates. Dagan bēl buqāri was driven there in a chariot, animals were sacrificed, “oil and the blood from the animals was smeared on the stones.” (334)

It is here where Cohen begins to lay out his speculation how this Emar festival might have influenced Passover. I would submit, rather, that Cohen’s framing of the data has been shaped by the presupposition of just such a relationship.

Cohen writes;

“Because of the geographical proximity of the later Israelites to Emar, it seems natural to speculate as to whether the later Israelite ritual may have been influenced by its earlier neighbor to the north….”(335, emphasis mine)

And then on p. 338 in footnote 18:

“Based on our interpretation of the ritual of the zukru festival, we can attempt to reconstruct the underlying narrative that was reshaped into the Exodus story of the tenth plague, the slaying of the firstborn.” (emphasis mine)

Cohen has been very clear throughout the exposition that what he is putting forward is a hypothetical reconstruction. His interpretation does not relate the mere facts of what is known and what is not known, it adds, deletes, rearranges, and nuances. What he has created is a fiction about what this zukru festival might have been. He has also rejected the biblical chronology of the Exodus in favor of a different scheme based in the historical critical schools.

It is necessary to emphasize by repetition what was said above: The less historical critical scholars know about a cultural feature from history the more likely they are to conjecture that it is a source for something in the Bible. And what the scholars state as conjecture is taken up as historical fact by others.

Cohen’s book is very well done and should be in seminary libraries as a resource. This is a great tool for understanding what can be known of the calendar systems of Israel’s Mesopotamian neighbors and how their calendars come into the biblical text and use through the Babylonian Captivity. It is filled with good and solid data, well arranged, and highly readable. Cohen’s transcriptions of the original languages are accompanied by translations. It may take some work for those who are not familiar with the original languages. His book is also filled with a great deal of conjecture. In part the conjecture is warranted because of either a lack of sufficient data, or because of unclear or contradictory data. The reader should be aware that Cohen does not accept the Hebrew Bible as historical record. He reconstructs the biblical text in accordance with his own views to fit how he thinks events unfolded. Where he comments on biblical traditions should be read with this in mind.

Review: Kitchen, Kenneth and Paul Lawrence 2013 Treaty, Law and Covenant in the Ancient Near East

Kitchen, Kenneth and Paul Lawrence

2013 Treaty, Law and Covenant in the Ancient Near East, 3 Volumes, Harrassowitz Verlag. Hardcover: 1641 pages, 8.5 x 11.5 inches, $386

https://www.amazon.com/Treaty-Covenant-Ancient-Near-East/dp/3447067268/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1522673032&sr=8-2&keywords=kenneth+kitchen


Review by Joseph Abrahamson

Treaty, Law and Covenant in the Ancient Near East is a three volume set that is the culmination of work occupying the last half of the 20th century and the first decade of this century. Throughout this long period of research Kenneth Kitchen had published some of the results of his ongoing study previously in three other more popular style books. These older publications are:

• 1966 Ancient Orient and Old Testament. London: Tyndale Press. Chicago: InterVarsity Press (touched on throughout but focused on in pp. 147-170).
• 1977 The Bible In Its World. Exeter: Paternoster. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press 1978. (throughout the work, but particularly pp. 79-86)
• 2003 On the Reliability of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company (particular focus on covenants in pp. 241-245, 274-307)

In Treaty, Law and Covenant in the Ancient Near East Kitchen and Lawrence have gathered together a comprehensive collection of 106 Ancient Near Eastern texts from 10 languages, presented them fully in romanized transcription and English translation (Volume I), “to which notes, maps and key-charts are added (Volume II), and a historical overall survey of the development and interrelations of these data in their societies (Voume III).” (Preface)

The texts under study are collections of “laws that govern life in a given community…, treaties that govern relations between such communities, and covenant used by or between individuals or them and groups or in dealings with deity.”(Preface)

Part 1: The Texts, 2 Excurses, 1086 pages
This volume consists of 106 separate textual records. There are 102 numbered entries of texts in transcription and translation organized chronologically. These items are collections of laws, treaties, and covenants from the Ancient Near East. Where collections of related texts exist or where copies of treaties exist in more than one language, these texts are included with their number but transcribed and translated separately as separate entries with alphabetical notion or bis. There are 13 of these texts noted.

Thus three different tablets in a collection of Sumerian Exercise law are included under

• 11A-C Annexe 1: Laws in Exercise Tablets, A-C 

And two different language versions of a treaty are included under the same number:

• 55A Suppiluliuma I, Hatti/Shattiwaza, Mitanni (Akkadian) 
• 55B Suppiluliuma I, Hatti/Shattiwaza, Mitanni (Hittite)

Some texts are presented in English only. These texts are listed with the rest in the contents by order of their chronological context but are included in square brackets. These translations are included in Excursus I. The authors state that these “transliterations have been omitted, because they are superfluous (Demotic only useful for demotists; Greek, because well presented already) or for other reasons.” (Introduction p. IXX).

Some texts are not included either in transliteration or translation. These are also listed in the contents in order of their chronological context and marked by square brackets. These texts are discussed in Excursus II. They are placed there “either because they (i) do not belong within this work, or else (ii) they are not readily (or at all) available at present.” (ibid.)

The works in this volume are organized by era:

• Texts from the 3rd Millennium BC
• Early 2nd Millennium BC
• Mid. 2nd Millennium BC
• Late 2nd Millennium BC
• Late 2nd/Early 1st Millennium BC
• Early 1st Millennium BC
• Excursus I Supplementary Repertoire of Texts in Translation
• Late Second Millennium BC 
• Mid.-Late 1st Millennium BC; 
• Excursus II Notices of texts not belonging/reproduced within these Series.

Each item begins with a brief indication of its epoch. geographical location, date, description of the language, and a short bibliographical introduction. Each text is presented fully, with a transcription of the original text on the left-hand page and English translation on the facing right hand page. Notes on textual issues, context, and descriptions of the state of the tablets and text are found in volume 2. After the text and translations the authors present a diagrammatic summary of the form and contents of each item “as a textual key to the color-chart (‘Chromogram’) in Volume II, Part 3.” (Introduction IXX)

The authors have analyzed the texts “in terms of 15 possible components under 13 numeric heads” (Introduction XXII). These components are the explicit literary features evident in the texts. These literary features are clearly defined with demonstration of how they are understood from the texts. The literary features are defined and evaluated in the same way for all texts. The authors explain any difficulties in their notes. These literary features are represented in the textual keys at the end of each textual entry and also in the chromograms of Volume II, Part 3. This is an effort to make the literary features quickly visible and explicitly demonstrate structuring through the use of color.

What one will notice immediately is that law codes, treaties, and covenants in the Hebrew Bible are included as items within the data set for comparison and evaluation. The authors explain their method and historical justifications for transcribing the consonantal Hebrew Biblical texts (Introduction XXVf). For example, Genesis 21:29 is transcribed:

w-y’mr ’b(y)mlk ’l-’brhm:
m(h) hn(h) šb‘ kbśt (h)-’l(h), ’šr hṣbt l-bdn(h).

Thus, along with texts from the Early 2nd Millennium BC Kitchen and Lawrence include formal analysis of three treaties and two covenants in Genesis.

• No. 30: Genesis 21:22-24 Treaty: Abraham with Abimelek a Gerar: Beersheba I
• No. 31: Genesis 21:25-33 Treaty: Abraham with Abimelek at Gerar: Beersheba II
• No. 32: Genesis 26:26-31 Treaty: Isaac with Abimelek at Gerar
• No. 33: Genesis 31:44-54 Treaty: Jacob with Laban at Harran
• No. 34: Genesis 9:8-17 Personal Covenant: YHWH with Noah 
• No. 35: Genesis 15: 7-21 Personal Covenant: YHWH with Abraham.

These treaties are mostly dated according to biblical chronology, however the Noahic covenant is described as “traditionally c. *pre-19th” century. (p. 245)

In the group of Late 2nd/Early 1st Millennium texts the authors also include several covenants and one issue of trial law from the Hebrew Bible. These include:

• No. 82, I: Exodus 20 - 25:9; 34:8-28; 35:1-19; Leviticus 11-15, 18-20, 24-27
  Covenant, I. YHWH and Israel (Moses at Mt. Sinai)
• No. 82, II: Numbers 5:11-31 Trial of alleged marital infidelity by Ordeal
• No. 83: Deuteronomy 1-32:47 Covenant, YHWH and Israel, II: Moses in Moab
• No. 84: Joshua 24:1-28 Covenant, YHWH and Israel, III: Joshua at Shechem
• No. 85, I: 1 Samuel 18:2-4 Personal Covenant: Jonathan and David
• No. 85, II: 2 samuel 7:1-17 and parallel 1 Chronicles 17:1-15 
• Personal Covenant: YHWH and David

Readers familiar with Kitchen’s other works will be aware that Kitchen dates the Exodus to the mid 13th century BC rather than following a biblical chronology placement at mid 15th century BC. Thus Nos. 82 to 84 are placed according to Kitchen’s late chronology.

Part 2: Text, Notes and Chromograms, 268 pages.
This volume is subdivided into three parts. Part 1 of this volume consists of the first eight chapters. These are the authors’ notes on the transcriptions and translations of the texts in volume one.

Part 2 of this volume is Chapter 9. This chapter includes a variety of indexes to the three volumes. These indexes include “Topics appearing in the Laws and Stipulations” a Statistical List of prices, fines, tribute, and etcs. An index to the statistical list by value, Near-Eastern currency/values and Graeco-Roman monetary notation. There is an index of deities named as witnesses and in the curses and blessings; a list of Blessings and Curses in Documents 1-106. This chapter closes with notes on the terminology used in Treaties, Laws and Covenants.

The final part of this volume consists of Maps and Chromograms. There are four maps. 1: Syro-Mesopotamian Place-names in the 3rd Millennium BC, 2: The Ancient Near East in the Early 2nd Millennium BC, 3: the Late 2nd Millennium BC, and 4: Near East and N. Araia End of 2nd and Early 1st Millennia BC.

The Chromograms make up the closing section of Part 3. These use color to indicate textual content of the various documents. Each document is represented by a vertical bar broken up into colored parts of size proportional to the amount of content each textual part takes of the particular document. Gray is used for Titles/Preambles, orange for Historical Prologue, royal blue for Stipulations, lemon for Depositions, purple for Witnesses, green for Blessings, crimson for Curses, golden-yellow for Oaths and Solemn Ceremonies, brown for Epilogue, white for Irregular Features and for Sanctions, and for Historical Report and/or Archaeological Flashback. An example is given at the beginning with explanations to aid the reader.

These Chromograms are indeed very helpful for visually representing the semantic structure of the documents. The Chromograms are presented in two groupings.

The first group of Chromograms present synchronic snapshots of treaty forms. A single page demonstrates each historical phase. For example, Phase I covers treaties from the 3rd Millennium BC. The page displays Eastern treaties on the left hand and Western Treaties on the right hand. This allows the reader to visualize the semantic organization of the treaties presented and to see the differences between regions. This first grouping covers each epochal phase from volume 1.

The second group of Chromograms present a diachronic view of treaty forms. The section is titled: “Summary Table of the Main Phases, c. 2500-40 BC.” On these two pages (which are, unfortunately, back-to-back, rather than facing each other) one can see the structural differences between document forms through the ages.

One notable observation here is that these Chromograms allow one to see how the structures of the Covenants and Treaties recorded in the Hebrew Bible compare both synchronically with their neighbors and diachronically through the Ancient Near East. I wish to give three examples of this usefulness.

First example: The formal structure of the Patriarchal Covenants (Nos 30-33) closely parallel closely parallel treaties from Mari, N. Syria, and Assur (Nos 20-29) from the early 2nd Millennium. This historical parallel fits with the chronology reported in the Hebrew Bible itself. The structures of these documents is also markedly different from those of other periods before and after.

Second example: There is only one close parallel in the Ancient Near East to the form of the Noahic Covenant (No 34) and that is an Old Babylonian tablet Sumu-numhim of Shadlash and Ammi-dushur of Nerebtum (No 18). The Babylonian text dates from c. 1800 BC. The structure is very simple, and there is one difference between them. The next time this form is used is by the Romans in 46 B.C (No 106).

Third example: The covenants and treaties in the Hebrew Bible which in biblical chronology would be placed at the beginning of the Exodus down to Joshua’s death (Biblical Chronology dates c. 1450-1390) are dated by Kitchen to the mid 13th century and later (1260-1210 BC). However, their Chromograms shows close structural affinity with two Hittite treaties from the end of the 15th century down to the early 14th century. The first is from Kizzuwatna and believed to be from Tudhaliya II and Sunassura (c. 1400 BC/1380 BC; No. 51). The second is a treaty between Suppiluliuma I of Hatti and Shattiwaza of Mitanni (mid 14th century; No 55A). This general Hittite treaty format stays in use through Hattusili III (d. 1237; No 71A). This would mean that by literary form Kitchen’s dates fall within the range of the data, but so also does the biblical chronology. Even though the biblical chronology is at the beginning of the range for the data, it is still within the range.

But the Chromograms show something more. The Chromogram for the Sinai Covenant and the Moab Covenant (p. 263) also shows structural affinity with the Laws of Lipit-Ishtar (c. 1930 BC; No 10) and the Laws of Hammurabi (c. 1800/1700 BC; No 14).

In terms of biblical chronology these earlier documents date from the time of Abraham down to when the Children of Israel went to live in Egypt under Joseph. The basic legal structure in these documents was adopted by the Hittites and kept in use until the close of the 13th century. But we never see this structure again in the Ancient Near East. 

Part 3: Overall Historical Survey, 288 pages
The third volume consists of seven chapters and one excursus. The volume has an index and three maps. In the first six chapters the authors present a survey, analysis, and summary of the documents pertaining to each period as defined in volume 1. The studies are comprehensive, but I will focus on just a couple of aspects where the Ancient Near Eastern Documentation relates to the texts in the Hebrew Bible.

In their discussion of the Patriarchal Narratives the authors bring together the context of society as portrayed in Ancient Near Eastern documents. The authors focus on the evidence for “transhumant animal husbandry (as independent social units)”(p. 70) With respect to the societal organization of the Patriarchs in their narratives they find that the “transmitted picture in Genesis of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob practicing transhumant animal husbandry … is faithful to what we find in Canaan and far beyond, in the early 2nd millennium BC - and never again, in any later epoch.” (ibid) After listing the later period social contexts they state, “Thus, after c. 1550 BC, there was no later model from which our ‘patriarchal’ narratives could have been derived; they reflect well the typical ‘patchwork quilt’ phenomena of the first half of the 2nd millennium.”

This is also the case with the historical forms of their treaties transmitted down to us in the Hebrew Bible. The authors work through the treaties (Nos. 30-32) stating that examining the host “of other early-2nd-millennium features that clearly occur in the narratives of Genesis 11-50, then it can hardly be surprising to find that the patriarchs’ treaties also fit well into what is transparently their particular epoch on virtually all other grounds of legitimate comparison.” (p. 74)

The authors spend quite a bit of space with respect to the forms of covenant, treaty and law coming from the periods of Moses and Joshua (particularly Nos. 82-83). A principle question is who could have known these forms and transmitted them to the Israelites. “The only realistic conduit from court politics to a slave-group would be a rebel courtier in the Egyptian foreign office who cast his lot with them…[bringing with them] the cohesion and the binding covenant - of contemporary type!” (p. 136) The Biblical text names a person who fits these qualifications: Moses. Thus the “event and format must therefore have originated during the 13th century at the latest.” (ibid.) After analyzing the arrangement of the Sinai and Deuteronomic covenants (Nos. 82-83) the authors observe that significant relationships are also found with Lipit-Ishtar (No. 10), a text dating to the early 2nd millennium. Particularly with respect to two examples of case law “these two problems and their solutions in Numbers both find close and early precedents long before the Late Bronze age, never mind any later epoch.” (p. 142)

The authors also discuss the development of historical criticism and the theories of textual development and history these schools promoted (pp. 154-181). Here the authors go through many particulars claimed by historical critics as historical evidence for their theories of textual development. The authors show where these features of the Biblical Text are also found in both older and contemporary documents from the Ancient Near East. In this section the authors demonstrate that the Pentateuchal texts reflect the social and legal usages available to them in their time.

Thus, with regard to the issue of the date of the Exodus, while Kitchen and Lawrence place the date at 1260 BC for the latest possible date, the evidence they provide shows also that the early biblical chronology (c. 1450) fits well within the available data.

Summary

Back in 1977 Kitchen wrote “In order to prop up the old 19th-century view of the patriarchs as late fictions dreamt up 1000 years after the ‘patriarchal age’, they [historical critics] are driven to produce arguments at times so tortuous and convoluted as to stand almost self-condemned as spurious and far from even remotely proving their case.” (The Bible in Its World: The Bible & Archaeology Today, p. 58)

It is indeed difficult to accept the historical critics urgings to believe that their hypothetical editors in the 4th century BC were able to recreate faithfully the social customs as well as the legal, treaty, and covenant forms which were current in the periods of the Patriarchs and Moses. Especially through such convoluted processes as those the historical critics propose, particularly since there is no evidence that these particular forms were ever used again after the times of the Patriarchs and of Moses.

Back in 1966 Kitchen wrote about the historical critics, that their “approaches … rest much too heavily on preconceived theories imposed upon the Old Testament, instead of proceeding from an inductive and exhaustive survey of actual Ancient Oriental evidence for literary forms, methods and usages in the biblical East. For this fundamental reason, the results of these schools are suspect to a very large extent, and ultimately must be discarded in favor of new and properly based results securely founded on the maximum relevant comparative data with a more intelligent treatment of the Hebrew text in light of that material. We advocate not its [historical biblical interpretation] abolition, but its radical reconstruction, conditioned by the context of the biblical world instead of by Western philosophical schemes, medieval and Western literary categories, particularly of the eighteenth to twentieth centuries AD.” (Ancient Orient and the Old Testament, 137-138)

Kitchen and Lawrence have delivered. And they have delivered well.

Holford-Strevens, Leofranck 2005 The History Of Time

A short Review of:
Leofranc Holford-Strevens 2005 The History of Time: A Very Short Introduction  Oxford University Press, 2005.

Link: http://amzn.com/0192804995

Holford-Strevens' discussion is kept at an introductory level, the glossary is necessary. The study of time keeping, days, and calendars requires learning a little specialized vocabulary. And while Holford-Strevens does a good job explaining terms, once they are explained the terms are used.

The book is an introduction. This means that there are no large discussions over controverted issues, no detailed footnotes. But, the discussion and presentation is based on very sound scholarship. The brief discussion in the text does make reference to primary sources where it is beneficial. And Holford-Strevens includes an annotated list of works for further reading.

Seven chapters are followed by two appendixes, a list for further reading, a glossary, and an index.

The chapters follow on the main themes of time keeping:

• The day
• Months and years
• Prehistory and history of the modern calendar
• Easter
• Weeks and seasons
• Other calendars
• Marking the year

The introductions to these topics are very helpful in demonstrating not only where certain concepts and structures came from, but also how they were discussed historically.

For example, subdividing the month into 7-day weeks was not a common idea in ancient times. The Romans, from whom our main system of months derive, actually used an 8-day market cycle. It is called nundial (nine-day).

The Romans (and to some extent other cultures too) used an inclusive count for days. Thus a "nine-day" was a Roman market "week" consisting of eight days, starting over again on the ninth day. In the Gospel of John when the disciples are gathered on the "eighth-day" that means a week later, the same day of the week as before. "The third day" is today, tomorrow, and the third.

All in all, the introduction is very helpful for western and near eastern calendars. Holford-Strevens also discusses Chinese, Japanese, and Mesoamerican calendars. While these latter calendars fall a bit outside my research interest, I would still say that this volume's introductions to those calenders were, perhaps, too brief to be helpful.

It is "very short"--only 142 pages in a 4.5x6.75 inch volume, just over 1/4" thick. There are 26 illustrations, mainly of ancient calendars. The format of the book and the size of the page makes many of these illustrations hard to see. For example, the first illustration "Detail of Egyptian diagonal calendar" is photo reduced to fit 5 3/4 x 1 1/2 inch space. This makes any features noted of the calendar in the text very difficult to see because of the small size. Illustration 12, a photo of a sixth century mosaic of Dionysius Exiguus's tables for calculating Easter is printed inverted.

Leofranc Holford-Strevens is also co-editor/author of The Oxford Book of Days (2000), and The Oxford Companion to the Year (1999).

Review: Stern, Sacha. Calendars in Antiquity: Empires, States, and Societies.

A Review of

Stern, Sacha. Calendars in Antiquity: Empires, States, and Societies. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Link: http://amzn.com/0199589445

From the biography page at University College London:

Sacha Stern is Professor of Rabbinic Judaism and Head of Department at the UCL Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies. He holds a BA in Ancient History from Oxford (1986), an MA in Social Anthropology from UCL (1988), and a D.Phil in Jewish Studies from Oxford (1992). He has also studied in Yeshivot in Israel. Before joining UCL in 2005, he was Lecturer in Jewish Studies at Jews' College, London and then Reader in Jewish Studies at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies). [link]

Review by Joseph Abrahamson

Stern has done extensive academic research and publication on the reckoning of time in the ancient world, especially as those relate to the peoples and cultures of the Bible.

Calendars in Antiquity is 430 pages, 20 page bibliography, and index.

Stern's focus is to counter the generally held theories concerning the development of calendars which he belives are flawed. Two main issues addressed are:

1.  that the development of the calendar "cannot be simply explained as the result of Egyptian influence" (p. 427)
2.  that the calendar is not "the inevitable outcome of some deterministic progression from 'primitive' to 'advanced'; indeed, the evolution of calendars had little to do with what we would call scientific progress.' (ibid.)

In this review I will focus on just a few of Stern's arguments with some detail and then summarize. My hope is to help draw out some examples of the benefits of this work to the Biblical exegete.

Stern's methodology is to focus on the historical cultural aspects of how calendars functioned in their societies and the societal influences that can be shown or reasonably understood to have influenced the changes. Since those influences can be very broad, Stern focuses particularly on the political aspects of cultural forces. Stern limits his calendrical focus chiefly to units of time as they affect annual reckoning. Thus he does not go into detail on how each of the different societies reckoned the hours of the day except as it relates to how the begining of a month or year was fixed. He also limited his study to societies of Classical Antiquity and their interactions leading to the development of the Julian Calendar in late antiquity. Stern does not include calendar traditions from the Far East, ancient America, or later developments like the Islamic calendar.

The study is divided into two main parts: 

• Part I: From City States to Great Empires: The Rise of the Fixed Calendar.
• Part II: The Empires Challenged and Dissolved: Calendar Diversity and Fragmentation.

The first part looks at how the various societies that participated in Classical Antiquity reckoned time.

In ancient Greece and Babylon (Chaptes 1 and 2) the calendars were lunar, as was the calendar of Republican Rome. The evidence from Europe also leads us to conclude that the Celtic/Gaulic and German calendars were also lunar.

And there was, for example: among the Greeks and Babylonians, great variety in naming and reckoning months, festivals, and when the new year was to be counted. Individual city-states kept their own month-names and methods of intercalation. This is shown by multiple dating on inscriptions of treaties and contracts.

Intercalation and calendar "tampering" were essentially political tools which not only helped keep the lunar reckoning of time in line with the yearly seasons, but also allowed rulers to do things like: avoid missing a religious festival because a battle was taking place; extend the days to allow tribute and taxes to be brought in before a deadline; and extend their term of office. In the case of the Babylonian  city states and the rise of the neo-Assyrian (8th-7th cent. BC) it was the king who declared the first of the month.

The process of unifying calendars between these groups took place when city-states formed alliances or were made part of a larger regional political power.

Stern argues that these lunar calendars were not less rational, less scientific, or less emperical than our current Gregorian/Julian Calendar. These calendars were actually very much emperical as they depended upon the actual observation of the new moon to establish the beginning of a month. The intercalations were based on both natural and societal realities (agricultural, political, and religious). And, being tied to the moon, they were solidly based in a method of reckoning that was available to and understood by most members of their societies. 

They were not origninally solar nor were they originally stellar calendars. Thus the first month (moon) of a year would not begin on the same day of the solar year as we reckon time. Religious festivals, which also varied from one city-state to another, could be delayed with intercalation (the adding of a month) or hastened by suppression (ignoring or eliminating days from the count). But they were not at first tied to solar events (equinox, solstice, etc.) nor to the direct timing of stellar events (the heliacal rising of Pliedes). 

The development of astronomical calendars in Ancient Greece from the late 5th century BC (Meton) and early 4th century BC (Callippus) is a feature limited mainly to Athens. Stern uses inscriptional and historical writings from the period to demonstrate that the astronomical calendars were not used for civic dating. For example, astronomical dates based on these reckonings are ignored by Herotodus and Thucidides. Medical works from the Classical period reference astronomical phenomena, but not as a chronological dating tool. It is only in later with writers [like Diodorus and Geminus (mid to late 1st cent. BC)] who project the Callipic Cycle or Metonic Cycle back upon historical events as an absolute chronological dating scheme. Other lines of evidence include the later (3rd cent. BC) introduction of the parapegmata (a calendar peg-board set up in public) which mentioned astronomical and weather events as part of the count of days.

For the early Babylonians the calenders consisted of months of either 29 or 30 days. This calendar length of the month determined by the sighting of the next new moon. The unification of calendars in Mesopotamia began in the 2nd millenium BC and is tied together with the unification of the city-states under the Assyrian kingdom in 1100 BC. From the influence of this kingdom the month names it chose as standard were spread throughout its region of influence. 

These month names and calendar practice influenced also the names of the months and how they were reckoned by the people of Israel as they settled in Canaan and were impacted by Assyria and neo-Babylonia.

While literature of astronomy/astrology began earlier in Mesopotamia than in Greece (Astrological Omen Lists, letters of astrologers to kings), the chief calendrical function of the astrologer was to site the new moon and report to the king. These documents demonstrate that they had the astronomical knowledge to predict when the new moon should occur. However the calendar still depended upon emperical sighting and political authority. The king would choose to declare the new month. The year consisted of 12 or 13 months, depending upon choice of intercalation.

Reports of new moon sightings from the astrologers to the king become very rare from the 6th-1st cent. BC. However, a group of documents called the Astronomical Diaries yield a great deal of information that allow for reasonably precise dates for this period when the modern calendar is retrojected upon the Babylonian lunar calendar. Stern points out that even though there is a very high degree of astronomical knowledge, this did not effect a change from a lunar to a solar calendar. The basic change in the calendar from the older to the newer is in a greater reliance upon predictions of new moons. This reduced dependency upon the limits of a courier to relay the proclamation of new moons, allowing political administration of wider territories.

It is not until the Achaemenid period (5th cent. BC) that evidence of a fixed calendrical cycle to regulate the lunar year. Firm evidence exists from Cyrus' conquest of Babylon in 539 BC. The main evidence comes from the astronomical texts called MUL.APIN and the Saros Cannon texts.

By the Selucid period (312-63 BC) a method of calculating the vernal Equinox was developed. This method differs from modern methods and yields different, usually later, dates than the actual equinox. But this calculation seems to have had no clearly evident affect on the method of intercalation used for the Babylonian calendar.

Data of regular intercalations for the Parthian period from AD 224 and following is unclear.

The Babylonian Calendar remained lunar, but became more fixed through time. The method of regularizing the calendar remained true to its emperical use with the lunar month through better and more reliable predictability of the new moon. This reliability of prediction allowed for the calendar's use over a much wider area of political control. The Babylonian Calendar influenced many regional and local calendars. Both its naming conventions and its methods were incorporated by subject peoples. The calendars of the Old Testament Israelites were strongly influenced.

The Egyptian Calendar (Chapter 3) represents the only fixed (and ideally solar) calendar in Classical Antiquity. But as the Egyptian Calendar was fixed at 365 days the first day of the year drifted forward through the actual solar year by 1 day every four years. This method of reckoning the number of days in the year was adopted by many peoples.

The Persian Zoroastrian Calendar, for example, used the same 365 day scheme with the first day of the year moving one solar day earlier every four years. There is no evidence of the Zoroastrian Calendar before the 6th century BC. Also, the only period at which the Persian Zoroastrian Calendar year actually began on or near the vernal equinox was the years 481-479 BC. The source of Egyptian influence most probably came after the Achaemenid empire conquered Egypt under Cambysus in 525 BC. 

Likewise, the Egyptian Calendar's soar length year became the basis for the Julian reforms of the Republican Roman Calendar. Julius Caesar included an extra day every fourth year. This was to prevent the solar drift that occured in the Egyptian and Persian Zoroastrian Calendars. 

The use of a fixed, predictable calendar was a tool of empire that allowed the Romans to manage a much larger region of influence more conveniently than under the previous lunar calendar of the Republic. 

However, the Julian Calendar reforms were not carried out well at first. The use of inclusive counting by Romans appears to have lead to an over intercalation of leap years in the early period so that Augustus had to revise the leap year schedule temporarily in 8 BC.  Also, while the calendar reforms spread very quickly and widely in the western provinces of the empire, the eastern provinces retained a great deal of calendar independence. 

The calendars of Antioch, Gaza, Ashkelon, Jerusalem, and many other cities individualistic. Often they adopted the form of the Julian calendar but retained regional cultural names for the months; maintained a different new year's date; or --as in the case of Jerusalem-- kept a parallel lunar civic calendar that was important to the culture and religion of the local people. The adoption of the Julian reforms in these regions also was not immediate, in some cases not being adopted until the end of the 1st or mid 2nd cent. AD.

In his second part, Stern describes various examples and ways in which local cultures expressed a kind of dissidence to political authority or subversion by modification of the Julian reforms. 

The data and study of the evidence in the above mentioned examples are more than sufficient to recommend this work to the Biblical exegete. The research presented on the Gallic and Jewish Calendars in the sixth chapter stand out as especially useful.

But the closing chapter is extremely valuable. "Secterianism and heresy: From Qumran Calendars to the Christian Easter Controversies."

In this chapter Stern describes, among other things, some of the formative issues for the Rabbinic Calendar as a distinct expression differing from the Judaean/Palestinian Calendar that preceeded it. And in his discussion of the development of the Christian Calendar Stern brings out some very good arguments about how the Christian Calendar began be a confession of Orthodoxy. Highlighted in this discussion are groups which diverged from this calendrical confession for the purpose of expressing their distinction from the Orthodox Catholic Church, such as the Nestorians, Novations, and the Arians when they were opposing the reinstatement of Athanasius.

While Stern's focus is mainly on the political aspects of these divisions, combining his research with a reading of doctrinal and liturgical history is very helpful and enlightening. 

The book is expensive.  $180. Perhaps one can find it for less than that somewhere online. But I would highly recommend this book for seminary libraries, college libraries, and for those interested in chronology, chronography, ancient history, doctrinal history, and the history of the liturgical year.