"Bible Hunters" With Dr Jeffrey Rose

I'd rather be writing about a TV series having to do with the manuscripts of Livy, but, of course, there are no such TV series. I suppose I will have to make that series myself. So spread the word about me and talk me up so that I can win that Nobel Prize and have the clout to host TV series on previously-obscure topics which deserve broader audiences, k thnx.

This series is okay, not nearly as dumb as some other TV shows covering the same ground, namely, the discovery of early (6th century and older) manuscripts of the Bible, and of manuscripts of New Testament apocrypha. The host and narrator, Dr Jeffrey Rose, is an archaeologist, and his approach is to follow in the footsteps of some of the 19th and 20th century scholars who made major discoveries of manuscripts -- on one occasion going so far to pay homage to his predecessors and re-create their experience as to ride on a camel with Bedouin guides from Cairo to St Catherine's monastery at the foot of Mt Sinai, where the famous 4th century Codex Sinaiticus was found by the scholar Constantin von Tischendorf in 1844, and where many other significant Biblical manuscripts have been found since. Besides the camel ride, Dr Rose's journey's to various Egyptian locations are mostly portrayed by shots of him riding various motorcycles. Larry Hurtado has written 2 excellent blog posts about this series, and in his post on Part 1 he asks the very good question:

Quite why the presenter was filmed motorcycling around places in Egypt, I can’t say. Couldn’t he have simply ridden in the car with the camera-guy . . . who was filming him riding a motorcycle??

I can only hope that it was, as Dr Hurtado surmises, a guy in a car, if not an entire film crew in a van, and not something dangerous like a cameraman filming from the back seat of a 2nd motorcycle, or something even more dangerous, like a cameraman riding a motorcycle solo and filming at the same time. Most likely, of course, it was a cameraman in a car or a whole crew in a van.

And who filmed Dr Rose and his Bedouin guides on their camels -- a lone cameraman on a camel? I'm picturing something much more like a van with a film crew and a well-stocked fridge, just in case Dr Rose -- or the Bedouins, for that matter -- preferred a sandwich or a TV dinner to the bread which the Bedouins cooked on hot rocks and which Rose exclaimed was delicious and "cooked to perfection!" I know that I'm old and out of touch and that technological development keeps racing along, but the images and sound on the road trips were impressive. If a lone camera did that, then I want a camera like that.

Why so many documentaries continue to cling to the practice of presenting the illusion of the intrepid host exploring the world all alone, and cut out any interaction with the camera person and/or crew, I don't know. They should stop. It's as corny as laugh tracks on sitcoms. Wake up and smell the 21st century, documentarians: we're on to you!

Other than that run-of-the-mill technical documentary stuff, "Bible Hunters" is refreshingly free of the huge wince-inducing historical and technical errors of which the typical shows on these texts from the so-called "History Channel" are jam-packed, and of which even most shows from PBS or the BBC or the Smithsonian Channel have a few. ("Bible Hunters" first appeared on the BBC a few years ago, and now it's appearing in the US on the Smithsonian Channel -- in the same form in which it appeared on the BBC, with nothing cut out or added? Good question. I have no idea.)

[PS, 6 June 2016: There is one fairly serious error repeatedly committed by Rose on this show: he often says "text" when he should be saying "manuscript." A text is a series of words, whatever form they are recorded in. For example, "Mary had a little lamb" is exactly the same text whether it is spoken aloud, written on paper or carved into stone. Dr Rose refers to people discovering texts when they discovered manuscripts. If it's a manuscript of the Gospel of Matthew, then the text is already known. A discovery of a text occurs when some previously-unknown collection of words is discovered. And the date of the text is when it was first composed, which, in the case of Biblical and apocryphal texts, has always been different than the date of the manuscript. So for example Rose makes the mistake of referring to "a six-century text" when he should have said " six-century manuscript of a second-century text," if the manuscript is a copy of something first written in the 2nd century. Other than "text' and "manuscript, I didn't notice any technical errors in the show.]

In his post on Part 2 of the series (as it appeared on the BBC), Dr Hurtado says:

I have to say that I found it strange that some really crucial (arguably more important) manuscripts finds were totally ignored.

I agree that it's arguable that Rose left some of the most important manuscripts out of the program. But the series is only a few hours long, and with a series like that, choices have to be made about which finds to include and how long to dwell upon each one. Clearly, Rose loves Egypt. "Bible Hunters" confines itself to Biblical manuscript discoveries made in Egypt (which are huge in the scheme of all such discoveries, to be fair to Rose). If you're curious about the important manuscripts which were left out by the show, by all means follow the link to Dr Hurtado's blog, he gives you a very good overview.

And of course, once again -- if you're into non-Christian ancient literature, you're left totally out in the cold by this series, just as you're left out in the cold by every other series on the great finds of Biblical manuscripts. Dr Rose's show covers Oxyrhynchus, both by commenting on Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt and the huge amount of papyrus fragments they found there,



and also with footage of Rose interviewing Dr Dirk Obbink, the current head of the Oxyrhynchus Papyrus Project, and Obbink showing Rose around the still-active Oxyrhynchus dig sites -- but the show doesn't contain as much as a half-dozen words about the non-Biblical texts found at Oxyrhychus, which have turned the world of Classical Greek studies upside down, and also had a not inconsiderable impact on the world of Classical Latin, and also included priceless treasures for those interested in everyday life in Ptolomaic and Roman Egypt: personal letters, legal documents, shopping lists and so forth -- things which had been almost entirely lacking from the sources available to historians before Grenfell and Hunt thought to look through the ancient trash heaps at Oxyrhynchus. Rose shows the libraries of Egyptian monasteries, but doesn't mention any of the Classical texts in those libraries -- and most of the Classical Greek and Latin literature we have today comes from manuscripts made in Christian monasteries.

And this show says almost exactly squat about all of the Old Testament manuscripts in all of the places Rose goes. Again, that's pretty typical about TV shows about ancient manuscripts: it's pretty much all about Jeebus.

Another Archaeological Find In Israel, Another Round Of Mind-Numbingly Stupid Comments

The dig is at Abel Beth Maacah. The stupidity, as usual when anything old is found in or near Israel, comes not just from fundamentalists shouting Hallelujah! this proves the Bible is accurate, but also from a lot of atheists, and that's what annoys me, because you'd hope the atheists would know better. Well, that is, maybe you'd have some hope if you weren't very familiar with them thar New Atheists, and their propensity to think that a sharp comment about archaeology is something like

"I hope to find that building that spiderman climbed in issue 127."

Oh. Ha. Haha. Yeah, that really added to the discussion. Sadly, I quoted that Spiderman comment, I didn't make it up, didn't have to.

What is rare and precious in discussions of old things found in or near Israel, and of old religious manuscripts, are comments which are actually about the archaeological discoveries, comments which evince an actual interest in the objects themselves and the light they shed upon history. As opposed to what? As opposed to saying, for the 45,763rd time, something which amounts to: "Fundamentalists are stupid." Which is all that the comment quoted above is saying. Now, I don't disagree with them about fundamentalists, but the thing is, I heard them the first 45,762 times, and I had figured that out about fundamentalists before I ever met them, all on my own, and there's an interesting discovery here, giving the opportunity for an interesting discussion, and it looks like it might be drowned out, as have so many other potentially interesting discussions, by this neverending Itchy & Scratchy show put on by the fundies and them. If only they could actually either learn something about this actual discovery, and talk about that, or shut the fuck up for once, and give those of us who want to discuss archaeology a fucking chance to do so for once in their fucking life.

I don't expect they will.

These discussions aren't really about archaeology, they're about Christian fundamentalists and New Atheists calling each other names. Just lately, geomorphologists have been comparing what Livy and Polybius wrote about the 2nd Punic War with what they've found on the ground in Spain, France and Italy, and they may have actually discovered some ancient battlefields with the help of those ancient authors. Always keep in mind, I'm only a layman, but if I understand what's going on here, then, it seems to me, the possible implications of these finds for archaeology, ancient history, ancient literature and other academic fields are whatcha call huge, potentially big, big stuff for people who are actually interested in archaeology. But it doesn't have anything to do with the Bible, and so most of the idiots yapping back and forth about that find in Abel Beth Maacah, and about the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi library and the Gospel of Jesus' Wife and the Tel Dan Stele and so forth -- or, I should actually say, ostensibly yapping about such things, while actually knowing practically nothing about them -- these people probably will never hear anything about it. Which, from my point of view, in some ways, is actually a good thing.

New Atheists Need To Learn A Lot About Biblical Archaeology, And In The Meantime They Need To STFU About It

Whenever there's a story about Biblical archaeology a bunch of nimwits come out of the woodwork, attacking things with which the story has nothing to do: "Just because Jerusalem exists doesn't mean Jesus existed, any more than the existence of London means that Harry Potterexists." "Manhattan is real, but that doesn't mean that Spider-Manis." "There's no more evidence for the existence of Moses or Jesus or Nazareth than there is for Fred Flintstoneor Bedrock."

For one thing, it's always Harry Potter and Spider-Man and the Flintstones with these guys. This should give you a great big honkin' clue about these New Atheists' cultural reference-points, and their level of intellectual sophistication. You never hear them say something like "Ancient artifacts don't mean Jesus existed, any more than the V-2 rocket means that Tyrone Slothropreally caught a glimpse of Pirate Prentice" or "The existence of Paris doesn't mean that Bernardspent a night with Olivier." It seems that they're grown-ups reading novels written for children and comic books -- if, that is, I'm not giving them entirely too much credit as readers, and they actually only know Harry and Spidey from the movies. You're not going to catch these guys quoting Ovidin Latin or Dantein either Italian or Latin, or even Popein English, cause they've kinda got their heads up their asses.

More to the point in this particular case, you'll never hear them quote Finkelsteinor Dever,because they've never read them, although they will often drop Finkelstein's name, because they've heard, contrary to the truth, that Finkelstein is in sympathy with their positions concerning history and the Bible, and is as bitterly opposed to Biblical archaeology as they are. That's right: they go on and on about how horrible and reactionary and superstitious Biblical archaeology is, and they claim that Finkelstein is on their side in this matter, and they don't have a blessed clue that Israel Finkelstein is actually The. Most. Prominent. Biblical. Archaeologist. In. The. World.

They rail against Biblical archaeology without having any idea what it is. A century ago most educated people still assumed that Moses was an historical figure and that there was an Exodus and that centuries before Moses, there really had been an Abraham. Today no educated person assumes that Abraham is historical, and rather few still assume that Moses is. What brought about this change, what was it which educated people about these things? Why, it was the discoveries of Biblical archaeology, of course.

Biblical Archaeology, And Several Ways To Do It Wrong

Two recent stories in HP give examples of what I would call poorly-done Biblical archaeology, and a third, a poor response to soundly-done archaeology. The problem in all three cases is a premature assumption of the accuracy of Biblical texts. In one story, Dina Avshalom-GorniIn says she may have found the place where Jesus met Mary Magdalen She assumes that the New Testament story of Jesus meeting Mary Magdalen is accurate, and then speculates about a find based on that assumption.

Then there's this story about a recent find by James Tabor. Tabor is speculating that the find may have belonged to Sadducees. That speculation is based in part on the assumption that the Sadducees were enemies of Jesus and conspired to bring about his death, just as described in the New Testament. I think that all that the NT tells us for certain about the Sadducees is that its authors were hostile to them.

In the third case, archaeologist Ken Dark's speculation that he may have found the town of Dalmanutha, mentioned in the Gospel of Mark and no other known text of the era of Jesus, who's rushing to conclusions: Dark, or Joel L Watts, who insists that Dalmanutha never existed, based in large part upon his conviction that every single deviation from literal geographical accuracy in Mark has been corrected by the author of the Gospel of Matthew? I'd say it's Watts. Not that Watts even distrusts Mark's accuracy, strictly speaking: he speculates that Mark is not so much making mistakes as taking artistic license, and that making up the place-name Dalmanutha is an example of this license. It seems much less farfetched to me that Dalmanutha may have existed, regardless of whether Mark was right that Jesus traveled there, or, as Watts says, Matthew was right in saying that journey was to Magdala, or neither of the above.

In any case, between Dina Avshalom-GorniIn, James Tabor, Joel L Watts and Ken Dark, Dark is the only one not making speculations based upon the assumption of the accuracy of Biblical texts.

Foreign Archaeologists Return To A Site Near Ur

It's the first major excavation in the area in over a half-century.

Now, because Ur is mentioned in Genesis as the original home of Abraham, there have been all sorts of headlines about the dig hinting that the archaeologists are looking for or have even found artifacts directly related to Abraham. And these misleading headlines have in turn led to a brouhaha, with fundamentalists arguing with New Atheists and others chiming in about the Bible, religion, science and such. There's been relatively little discussion about the actual excavation and what's been found and what it means. I wonder how many editors have known that such headlines were misleading, but put them out anyway because they're bound to generate more interest, more clicks and ad impressions, than something like Foreign Archaeologists Return To A Site Near Ur -- because fundamentalists and New Atheists a feudin' on yr website with other chiming in equals ka-CHINNG! and ka-CHINNG! is more important to them than their outlets' reputations for solid journalism and editing. I wonder how many journalists wrote solid articles about the excavation and then were somewhere between annoyed and outraged to see them published under sensationalistic yellow-journalism headlines about Abraham.

I wonder what the actual archaeologists involved think of the brouhaha. I'm sure that for most of them it's at least not a surprise, that such brouhahas have accompanied their entire careers.

I myself have gotten used to such manufactured sensations and welcome the opportunity to chat with people about history, archaeology and such. I must confess that my outrage over the sensationalism is wearing thin. Perhaps I'm growing cynical. Or perhaps I'm just getting accustomed to how certain topics are treated by the media.

In the course of this brouhaha I happened to chat with someone who remarked that the very mention of "Biblical archaeology" makes him cross. I jumped to the profession's defense and mentioned a prominent Biblical archaeologist whose findings are impeccably stringent even when they have upset traditional notions of the history of the Old Testament era. My discussion partner, a staunch secularist, replied that he wanted nothing to do with this archaeologist's work, because the archaeologist celebrates a certain holiday of religious origin. We went back and forth for a while, I was unable to persuade the other person that this archaeologist's work, or Biblical archaeology in general, was worthwhile.

Which is quite ironic. Because, for one thing, this particular archaeologist is much more secular than many of his colleagues. It seems clear to me that he celebrates the holiday in question in a secular way. But even if he didn't, even if he were a religious believer: if we were to discount the work of, not even all scientists with religious faith, but only those who were unusually religious for their time, we would have to disregard the work of Charles Darwin,who came close to being a degree-wielding theologian and Protestant minister, and Isaac Newton,whose secret writings on the Apocalypse were weird even by the standards of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, to name only two. But of course we judge scientists' work on its own merits and not according to what they do in their spare time, nor according to careers their considered when they were young.

But of course, the main cause of the increase of general knowledge whereby a few centuries ago educated people, whether they believed in God or not, whether they believed that people lived longer several thousand years ago or not, whatever they thought of the stories of Adam and Eve and Noah and the Flood and so forth, all assumed that some sort of Abraham had actually existed, and that a perfectly real Moses had led the Israelites out of Egyptian bondage, although not necessarily by means of prophesied plagues and so forth, and that King David's realm extended from the edges of Egypt to the edges of Syria, whereas educated people today consider David to have been no more a king than Arthur, and assume that Moses is a mythological character and that no such Exodus anything like that described in the Bible ever took place, and that there is no evidence whatsoever to corroborate the Bible concerning Abraham's existence -- the main cause of this increase of knowledge has been Biblical archaeology. People looking for Abraham and the Exodus, and finding quite other people and things, and forthrightly saying so. So that it is downright strange to reject the entire field of study due to the knowledge one owes to that field of study.

But of course, that's obvious. So obvious that my discussion partner must be a very rare bird. Or so one hopes.

By the way, in case you haven't noticed, the headline of this blog post is completely misleading, because the post contains no information about the excavation other than that contained in the title and the first sentence of the post. That's because that's all I know about the dig. Because for several days, the brouhaha caused by the misleading headlines mentioning Abraham has kept me busy.