In his First Person editorial in the most recent edition of BAR, now posted online, Hershel Shanks puts me front and center as a prime example of a scholar who has been critical of Eilat Mazar’s work without having discussed the evidence or her qualifications and accuses me of casting aspersions simply “because she had made two important Biblical identifications.” This came as quite a shock to me because, to my knowledge, I have never commented negatively on Eilat Mazar or her work anywhere – not in a paper presented at a meeting, not in a published article or book, and certainly not on the Internet. However, as evidence, he cites a National Geographic blog on which I am quoted as saying, “Be wary of anyone with a Web site or multiple publications who claims to have been able to ‘solve’ more than one Biblical mystery or locate more than one of the missing Biblical objects or places.”
Had Hershel bothered to do any research whatsoever, or to see beyond what he wanted to see, he would have noticed that my comment about being wary of anyone claiming on a website or in multiple publications to have found more than one thing from the Bible was not made in connection with Eilat Mazar and her discoveries, but in connection with the various amateur enthusiasts who have claimed to find Noah’s Ark, the Ark of the Covenant, Sodom and Gomorrah, etc. That is one of the major points of my book, From Eden to Exile: Unraveling Mysteries of the Bible (National Geographic, 2007).
In fact, my comment appeared on the National Geographic blog as part of an invited response on the Shroud of Turin (see http://ngm.typepad.com/stones_bones_things/2007/11/the-shroud-of-t.html). I did not mention Eilat Mazar in my response, since there was no reason to do so. That is why there was “No discussion of the evidence” and “No consideration of Mazar’s qualifications” — because my comment had nothing to do with Eilat Mazar.
It was only in a completely different blog entry (http://ngm.typepad.com/stones_bones_things/2007/11/nehemiahs-tower.html) that the editor of the blog, Chris Sloan, quoted me when wondering — for the purposes of discussion — whether my comment about enthusiastic amateurs should or could be applied to Professor Mazar as well. And, he eventually concluded that, “It is just by coincidence that Dr. Mazar’s claim fit two criteria suggested by Eric Cline and Philip Davies.”
While I am actively campaigning against the misdeeds of certain amateur enthusiasts (see http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/fauxark/), I have not cast stones at any of my colleagues – at least not yet. I know that Hershel wants to sell magazines, but sowing discord and creating dissension between professional colleagues is not the way to do it.
I have demanded a retraction and a public apology from Hershel for misrepresenting my comments. I hope that it was an honest mistake and not a deliberately-malicious misrepresentation.
Eric H. Cline
The George Washington University
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