Do You Read Journals?

Last night I had guard duty and between letting guests in for the bar mitzvah, I read through several articles in the latest issue of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (Sept 2005, 48/3). Many of the readers of this blog are currently students and thus don’t have time for extra reading, but this is a prod for you to periodically swing through the library and glance through the latest journals. Such a trip was a “reward” I gave myself during years of schooling; it is enjoyable once in a while to read something that you want to and that is not assigned.

If you like things related to the primary subjects of IBEX, you would like this journal of JETS. Three articles are interesting and I thought I’d give you a sample from each to perhaps stir your interest. The journal also includes a review of the famous Pictorial Library of Bible Lands, which I may comment on in a separate post.

Bryant Wood, The Rise and Fall of the 13th-Century Exodus-Conquest Theory.
This article comes from a lecture that I heard many times in my early years at IBEX. Back in the mid- to late-90s, Wood brought his team of excavators for two weeks each September to dig at Khirbet el-Maqatir (Ai?), and in the evenings he and others would give related lectures. I took notes on that lecture time and again, and so much was not new to me, but there were a number of new insights. In all, I could see how finely honed this article was after years of thought, research, and presentation. One quote:

“Jericho has been intensely excavated by four major expeditions over the last century and on evidence has been found, in tombs or on the tell for occupation in the 13th century BC. Even in the case of erosion, pottery does not disappear; it is simply washed to the base of the tell where it can be recovered and dated by archaeologists. No 13th-century pottery has been found at Jericho” (Wood 2005: 487).

In other words, if Joshua conquered Jericho in the 13th century, there was no Jericho to conquer, and thus there was no conquest. [The same could be said for the 15th century apart from Wood’s analysis which shows the inhabitation of the city 150 years longer than Kenyon believed.]

Andrew E. Steinmann, The Mysterious Numbers of the Book of Judges.
The article title is a play on the book by Edwin Thiele which solved most of the problems of the kings. I didn’t take pencil and paper out and work through his conclusions, but on the face of it it seems reasonable. I wrote this down in my notes:

Following Josephus, 1 Sam 13:1b can be reconstructed as “He reigned over Israel eighteen years while Samuel was alive and after his death twenty-two years” (Steinmann 2005: 498). Josephus also says that Samuel was over the people alone for 12 years after Eli’s death and 18 years while Saul was king. Assuming that Josephus had an older (and accurate) source, Samuel continued to live for many years after the elders thought he was near death.

Ken M. Campbell, What Was Jesus’s Occupation?
The other two articles were rather brief, while this was a bit longer and so I skimmed large parts of it. But it concerns a question I think about every time I go to Galilee: was Jesus a carpenter or a stone mason? Campbell’s answer is the latter, and he gives a ton of evidence to support it (as well as reasons for why it historically has been translated as carpenter). One quote:

“The popular perception that Jesus’s teaching is drawn primarily from agriculture needs to be corrected: his allusions to finance and construction together are more numerous (and significant) than his allusions to agriculture” (Campbell 2005: 519).

If you don’t already, I encourage you to read journals, at least occasionally. If nothing else, they ‘ll make you feel small with how much you don’t know. For me, they also make me feel small for how little I know and produce in comparison to my peers.