He Puts Biblical Archaeology on 100,000 Coffee Tables

Lawyer-editor Hershel Shanks built a successful magazine with a good idea and a lot of hard work.

Ask Hershel Shanks to name a significant find in biblical archaeology. His demeanor quickens like a boy choosing ice cream flavors. Peter’s house in Capernaum, he says, or the synagogue where Jesus preached, or perhaps the original site of the Jerusalem temple. Maybe that broken ivory scepter, the only artifact to be positively identified as coming from Solomon’s temple.

For Shanks, a Washington, D.C., lawyer and editor of Biblical Archaeology Review, Israel’s past throbs with life. Ten years ago, after sifting through dusty Middle Eastern digs himself, he decided to make scholarly discoveries accessible to the average American. Not long afterward, his publication was born.

Shanks approached the endeavor with nearly total naïveté. He asked a friend how to go about starting a magazine, and was advised to send a memorandum to people who would be likely to offer their support. “I sent a memo to 25 people and got one reply that wished me luck,” Shanks recalls. “So I drafted a second memo and said, ‘Thank you for your heart-warming response.… We’re going ahead with the first issue.’ ”

Volume one, number one, rolled off the press in March 1975. It was a 16-page booklet with a single photograph and a statement of purpose emphasizing a commitment to scientific, not sacred, truth. “One view of the parameters of faith is that they do not infringe upon, nor are they threatened by, a search for scientific truth,” wrote Shanks, who is Jewish. “Conversely, even the broadest search for scientific truth leaves plenty of room for faith. The rest is up to each reader.”

Biblical Archaeology Review has blossomed through the decade into a lengthy, luxuriously illustrated bimonthly with 100,000 subscribers. “If I had known what was involved, I never would have done it,” the editor says. “My ignorance really paid off. I had to learn how to solicit subscribers, everything.”

Half the magazine’s readers are evangelical and fundamentalist Christians who are well educated and tend to live in small towns. His advertisers are overwhelmingly evangelical, including publishers and Holy Land tour group sponsors.

Engaging articles draw readers into the thick of scholarly debate. When it reported on Peter’s house, the journal presented detailed evidence for and against the structure’s authenticity, leaving conclusions to the reader. Sketches showed original floor plans and indicated how various rooms probably were used. Exquisite color photographs contrasted the black basalt boulders used for homes and the scrubbed limestone of synagogue ruins.

The magazine also explores everyday life in ancient times, describing how the wealthy lived in Jerusalem and how iron technology gave Philistine warriors a military edge over their opponents.

Controversies crop up when scholarly articles call Scripture into question, making the letters-to-the-editor column a lively forum for dissent and discussion. One author examined the exodus, saying biblical writers “kneaded the raw material of historical facts into the message they were trying to convey.” The author also cast doubt on a literal 40 years in the wilderness.

A troubled reader responded with a letter asking, “Why is there a BAR (Biblical Archaeology Review)? Is it just to dig up contradictions and fallacies in the Bible?” Shanks encourages dialogue between readers who believe in miracles and scholars who strive to explain extraordinary circumstances in human terms.

He is frequently asked whether archaeology confirms or refutes the Bible. The editor says neither intent is really at issue. “God is mysterious,” he says. “We struggle to understand him better.

I would do a disservice to people’s honest, heartfelt effort to comprehend this mystery if I were to tell them archaeology has the key, because it doesn’t.”

Archaeology’s role, he says, is to assess the facts without bias and let the evidence fall where it may. He closely guards his personal beliefs. But he says his informal study of the Scriptures brings him to this conclusion: “To me it is a wonderful evocation of man’s striving to understand the world around him and the universe beyond. In this sense it’s certainly inspired. Where you go beyond this, I’m not very certain. I’m willing to live with uncertainty and even contradictions.”

The more mundane mystery surrounding the magazine is how Shanks manages to juggle two full-time occupations. “That’s the one question I don’t answer and don’t even ask myself,” he says. “I do have wonderful people helping me in both lives,” including two assistants named Sue. “Appropriate for a lawyer,” he jokes.

Spin-offs from the magazine include Holy Land tours sponsored by the Biblical Archaeology Society, which publishes Biblical Archaeology Review, a gift collection ranging from Hittite T-shirts to ceramic reproductions of ancient Israeli art; and essay contests for students who can win a fellowship to Jerusalem.

All his endeavors share an overriding compulsion to polish and put on display discoveries that otherwise would remain hidden from view. In the magazine’s tenth anniversary issue, Shanks allowed himself a moment of self-congratulation: “There has never before been such public interest in biblical archaeology,” he wrote. “We like to think we are part of the reason for it.”

Salvation Army Loses City Funds Over A Gay Rights Disagreement

For more than 40 years the Salvation Army has provided services under contract with the City of New York. But that relationship will end June 30 when current contracts expire.

The Army will lose $4.1 million in city funds that pay for services ranging from day-care centers to programs for the aged. Funds will be cut off because the Army refused to sign Executive Order 50. The order bans discrimination based on “sexual orientation or affectional preference” in the hiring practices of city contractors.

New York Mayor Edward Koch issued the 80-page order last year. The Salvation Army signed it, not noticing the objectionable provision. When the Army later noticed the stipulation, it asked for an exemption. A series of meetings followed, but Koch ultimately rejected the request.

Wallace Conrath, who heads the Salvation Army’s Greater New York division, says the organization normally does not ask job applicants about their sexual orientation. But he said it wanted to “reserve the right to make decisions on employment” in positions “where there is a transmission of certain principles that the Salvation Army holds important.”

The Catholic Archdiocese of New York, which receives $60 million from the city each year, signed the order despite a statement that it questions the requirement’s “widsom and legality.”

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