I`d had enough of presidential politics-of C-Span, media consultants, impressive storm-the-beach coverage by The Washington Post (eight stories the morning after Super Tuesday), even a hotel chambermaid starting a conversation on Pat Buchanan.
There had to be someone who didn`t care, someone not employing a single brain cell on whether Paul Tsongas must win Illinois or Michigan, or on Bill Clinton`s character.
”You`ve come to the right place,” said Hershel Shanks.
I had ambled into the three-story brick house in a leafy neighborhood in this city`s upper northwest section and had left current obsessions several thousand years behind.
Shanks, 62, is founder-editor of both Biblical Archaeology Review and Bible Review-179,000- and 40,000-circulation bimonthly magazines respectively- and a high-profile provocateur in a low-profile world.
”We explore our roots-humanity`s aspirations. We`re dealing with who we are in the deepest sense,” he said.
He spoke during a tour of a house in which, now that his kids are grown and gone, six rooms are used as offices, including a ”winter office” (second floor), ”summer office” (renovated garage with skylights and ceiling fan)
and a just-completed ”spring-autumn office” (a second garage but with central heating).
Shanks is a Pennsylvania native and Harvard Law School graduate who was an appeals specialist with the Justice Department and then practiced private civil and commercial litigation for 30 years here. Early on, he got interested in archeology and Bible studies and, during a 1973 sabbatical, took his wife and two kids to Israel and became immersed in archeology.
Upon his return, he continued as a private attorney but, in his spare time, started the then-quarterly Biblical Archaeology Review. It aimed to make accessible to lay people insights of big-time archeologists as they related to the Bible.
He made a name for himself, which also meant eliciting condescension from those who harped on his not being a bona fide, card-carrying scholar. Not only did he produce quality editorial work but he was also a firebrand.
He rankled the Establishment by claiming that anti-Zionist views of a prominent British archeologist affected her work; picked a fight with the Israeli government on its refusal to publicly release a photo of a major pottery find; derided a hotshot society of archeologists because it mandated that members believe in the literal truth of the Bible; and called for governments to sell any duplicates of major finds, to financially help archeologists (”they find priceless things and are often poor as church mice”) and to put a crimp in the market in stolen antiquities.
Then came the Big Fight, a tussle that would have been fit for promotion by boxing`s bombastic Don King: access to the greatest archeological discovery of the century, the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Shanks had long argued in his pages that it was an outrage that a small band of scholars had a virtual monopoly over access to the scrolls. Matters came to a head when he announced that he had obtained, and would publish, a computer reconstruction of the scrolls.
That move prompted the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif., one of four institutions worldwide with photocopies of the scrolls, to announce last fall that it would break ranks with the others and make available its copies to any bona fide scholar.
Shanks may have been on the side of the angels on this issue, but an uproar ensued. A hint of the passions: In the current issue of Biblical Archaeological Review, Shanks discloses that at a recent convention of three related scholarly groups, Eugene Ulrich, a University of Notre Dame theology professor who is editor in chief of the official scroll-editing team, refused to shake his hand.
Throughout, ”people in the field called me an ignoramus and even a thief,” said Shanks, who became so accustomed to publishing harsh letters to him and his magazines (many from fundamentalist Christians) that he will shortly republish a large batch in a book titled ”Cancel My Subscription.”
Shanks, who left the law practice five years ago when his avocation just got too big, oversees a full-time staff of 25. They labor in the corporate headquarters 2 1/2 miles away and run related enterprises that include book publishing, production of a board game (Exodus: Getting to the Promised Land), lectures, archeological tours, and Moment, a small bimonthly on Jewish culture that was founded 15 years ago by philosopher Elie Weisel.
Shanks` prime role is as an editor who does major surgery on his contributors` submissions to the Bible-related magazines because the vast majority of archeologists ”just can`t write.” He may not be a ranking scholar but, archeologists know, he`s a decidedly serious-minded conduit to a much larger audience.
That audience, which is broad-based (perhaps just 5 percent are Jewish, with Protestants, Catholics, agnostics and atheists among the loyalists), has come to understand the development of the Bible far better through him. For example, the unearthing of different types of altars led to a better knowledge of the origins of the Israelites and of which sayings can and can`t truly be attributed to Jesus Christ.
The magazines, which have become glossier and better designed over the years, are engaging. It`s hard picking up the latest issue of Bible Review and not being instantly intrigued by an article titled ”Did Sarah Have a Seminal Emission?”
It`s about Abraham`s wife who, legend had it, gave birth to Isaac when she was 90. It explores how, in ancient times, it was widely believed that women ”were the vessels and men planted the seed,” Shanks explained.
”Then they started noticing that the kids had obvious characteristics of the mother. How could that happen if a woman was only a vessel?
”In the New Testament, it talks of Sarah having a seminal emission. That`s the way they came to understand birth. This article discusses that and, in the process, gives insights into the biblical world.”
And you thought Bible studies was dry as parchment? Biblical Archaeology Review and Bible Review are available for $24 a year via Shanks` non-profit Biblical Archaeology Society, 3000 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 300, Washington, D.C. 20008.
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Washington radio station WJFK-FM each morning simulcasts New York shock jock Howard Stern`s popular show, as do stations in New York and Philadelphia. (Later each day, WJFK offers a talk show hosted by G. Gordon Liddy, the celebrity crook of Watergate notoriety.)
You don`t know the term ”shock jock”?
Well, Thursday Stern, who is somewhat short of reverent about the work of TV`s Arsenio Hall, declared, ”It would be a better world if Arsenio Hall got the AIDS virus.
”I wish he`d drop dead,” said Stern, whose syndicated radio show may be bought by a Chicago station and whose TV show can be seen in the Chicago area Saturdays at 10 p.m. on WGBO-Ch. 66 and at 10:30 p.m. on superstation WOR.
A Stern-related, softball presidential quiz question: Who`s the one candidate to occasionally submit to on-air interrogations from him? (Answer at end of column.)
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A fax machine brings word of the apparent Toyota-ization of American newspapers. The team spirit has arrived, at least rhetorically.
At the Knight-Ridder-owned Gary Post-Tribune in Indiana, Managing Editor William Sutton Jr. just announced that, as of March 20, he`ll be calling himself the ”newsroom manager.”
The change, he says in a memo to staff, ”shows my greater commitment to the company and Knight-Ridder. Managing Editors manage `editors` while constantly working toward a quality newspaper with high standards. A Newsroom Manager works with a `newsroom of news people` while constantly working toward a quality newspaper with high standards.”
Sutton, who came from the Philadelphia Inquirer, is similarly changing other editor titles (the chief photographer will be the ”photo image manager”).
One reporter finds a perverse candor in this. ”Most of those people don`t know how to edit to begin with,” the reporter said. ”So they might as well call them managers.”
My problem involves image. Maybe it`s because of Hollywood, but
”managing editor” conjures up an image of rolled-up sleeves and ”Stop the presses!” decisiveness.
”Newsroom manager” sounds like a guy in charge of paperclips and Xerox paper.
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Quiz answer: Jerry Brown, your toll-free candidate for president.
