Exhausted by constant chatter about Newt Gingrich, GATT, Jesse Helms, capital gains, welfare reform and, most of all, beleaguered Bill Clinton, I assumed relief was certain to be found in a call to Hershel Shanks.
Shanks, 64, is a lawyer turned founder and editor of two publications assuredly set apart from obsession with the present: the 225,000-circulation Biblical Archaeology Review and the 55,000-circulation Bible Review.
It seemed all the better that Shanks had just returned Tuesday from a convention in Chicago at which 7,000 Bible and religion scholars from around the world discussed everything from the price of slaves during Roman times to access to the Dead Sea Scrolls and whether the Old and New Testaments castigate homosexuality.
But, alas, Shanks said that “many people at the convention were talking about the disappointment of Clinton, how he’s declined in popularity.”
And unlike, say, “The McLaughlin Group,” these discussions mentioning Clinton triggered others not about the 1996 presidential campaign but on topics such as the nature of Israel’s King Saul and “whether he was a bungler from the beginning or a tragic figure who was finally pronounced a failure.”
In assessing Saul, one confronts a topic seemingly unavoidable in discussion of Clinton, namely sex.
That’s because Saul’s selection as king is traced to a civil war in which the tribe of Benjamin was virtually wiped out. The war was inspired by the fatal gang rape by the Benjaminites of the concubine from another tribe of Iraelites.
The priest who ran that other tribe made sure to cut off parts of the concubine’s body and send them to other tribes, in the hope they would avenge her death, which they did.
To continue the tribe of Benjamin after it was bashed, other tribes later agreed to provide daughters to the few remaining males.
When people asked for a king a generation or two later, the charismatic head honcho, the prophet-priest Samuel, reluctantly agreed. But he chose Saul, a descendant of the despised tribe of Benjamin.
“Do we really get the type of ruler we deserve? You can see parallels with what’s going on today,” said Shanks.
Similarly, our interest in how politics is altered by changing demographics, such as the shift of power to the suburbs, can resonate among biblical scholars.
“In the New Testament, for example, we used to think of Jesus as living in a very small village, a rural atmosphere, away from the cities,” said Shanks.
There’s been the implicit belief that he was a country hick because he was raised in Nazareth, well removed from influences of the sophisticated, Hellenized urban centers.
“But new excavations call that into question,” said Shanks.
“Within sight of Nazareth was a major urban city of Sepphoris. But what was Sepphoris really like at the time? Certainly later, it was a great urban center.
“And back then, what was the relationship between the city and the country? Were they in a symbiotic relationship? So did Jesus have contact with Hellenized gentiles and know of the trade of the city?
“Or were farmers even a few miles outside the city living isolated lives? What is really the background of his ministry? They call this all ethnarcheology, when you look at modern societies to see what relationship there is between rural areas and cities.”
If any of the above stirs strong debate, Shanks would feel at home.
A Harvard Law School graduate and former appeals lawyer at the Justice Department, Shanks made a name for himself by often infuriating the academic establishment after turning a lifelong interest in archeology and the Bible into the Biblical Archaeology Review, which tried to make accessible to lay readers the insights of big-time archeologists as they involved the Bible.
He claimed that the work of a famous British archeologist was tarnished by her anti-Zionist views; angered the Israeli government by bad-mouthing its refusal to release to the public a photo of a major pottery find; chided a society of archeologists for requiring members to buy into the literal truth of the Bible; and urged governments to sell duplicates of major finds to assist archeologists financially and lessen the market in stolen antiquities.
All those paled, however, beside his incessant, high-profile arguing that a small band of scholars unfairly had what amounted to a monopoly over access to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the century’s great archeological discovery.
He then forced the issue by announcing that he had come into possession of a computer reconstruction of the scrolls and would make them available to any and all true-blue scholars. That forced the hand of the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif., one of four institutions worldwide with photocopies of the scrolls, to announce in 1991 that it would break ranks with the other three and make its copies available.
The last year elicited emotion as Bible Review broached the topic of the proper interpretation of the supposed biblical prohibition against homosexuality.
An early article suggested that an Old Testament curb applied only to Jews in Israel. The current issue argues that the ban on homosexual behavior in the New Testament is imbedded in an ancient legal code that is no longer in force for Christians and that certainly was never meant to be applied beyond Israel.
Letters poured in from readers, unhappy in some cases that the subject was even broached.
The articles are “wrong on every point,” said one. “Homosexuality is counter to the divine image,” said another. Others wrote that homosexuality is a “behavioral trait that can be controlled,” that Shanks was merely “making the gays happy” and, finally, that in the Bible, “It’s not Adam and Steven.”
“It’s not musty, old,” Shanks says about biblical studies. “It’s energizing and exciting. These people (scholars) are fascinated by the similarities in people. You do have ancient texts and artifacts, yet they reflect a society and individuals struggling in the same ways we are, in social, individual and political ways.”
Chagrined in Hawaii
It’s not easy flying overseas with the White House press corps.
You ride in first-class comfort in 747 charters, with continual access to food, booze, movies and a solicitous staff (your employer tends to be charged 1 1/2 times regular first-class airfare). You get clouted past immigration authorities, are whisked to each stop on a bus, have phone banks awaiting, and your hotel room is ready as soon as you amble into the lobby.
Though it’s somewhat removed from covering, say, a coal-mine strike, life apparently can still be onerous for those hard-laboring souls sending their dispatches back to the masses.
It happened last week in Honolulu, at the tail end of President Clinton’s Asian trip (history must record that in-flight flicks for his broadcast, cable and print chroniclers included “Forrest Gump,” “The Mask,” “The Flintstones,” “The Crow” and “The Paper”).
Some of the newsies were chagrined at the crowded nature of, and accommodations at, their 36-floor hotel. Sure, there were nifty restaurants and a pool. But there were all those Japanese tourists clogging up the elevators, forcing waits of five and six minutes before one could get to one’s room!
Further, as one bureau chief groused, it was a pain to have to walk through a shopping center parking lot and four blocks to the nearest beach.
Ken Walsh, a fine reporter for U.S. News & World Report who heads the White House Correspondents Association, was not on the trip but confirmed last week that there had been complaints about the hotel, partly involving some senior presidential staff not being nearby, and that, yes, there was chagrin over proximity to the beach.
He said that Carl Leubsdorf, bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News who was on the trip and found some aspects nettlesome, would send the group’s post-trip assessment to the White House.
No word on whether it will mention the adequacy of the sun block sold in the hotel gift shop.
