Walking the Bible by Bruce Feiler Page A

a pioneer. An archaeologist by training, he was also the first postwar governor of Jerusalem, a consul general to the United States, head of the Israeli Department of Antiquities, and, after retirement, one of the most productive excavators of his era. He was a compact man who favored a mathematician’s clothes—short-sleeved shirts and polyester pants—but also managed to be effortlessly urbane. He reminded me of Burgess Meredith as the avuncular trainer in Rocky.
    “I never liked the name Avraham,” he said. “But I like the name Abe even less. I went to Los Angeles and they asked me my name. ‘Avraham,’ I said. They had to think about it, but after a while they said, ‘Oh! Ab raham. We’ll just call you ‘Abe.’ And I said, ‘Oh, no you won’t.’ ”
    Despite this ambivalence, Professor Biran had a deep affinity with his namesake. Abraham, he noted proudly, was a man of breadth—a shepherd, a warrior, a diplomat, a husband, a father, an uncle, a judge—the world’s first Renaissance man. Based on contemporaneous images, he would likely have worn a knee-length pleated wool skirt, probably brown, with a long felt shawl draped over one shoulder. To this he would have added a bronze belt and sandals. His shoulder-length hair was likely parted in the middle, and he probably had a pointed beard and no mustache. As for skills, carpentry was popular, as was minstrel music and storytelling. With Abraham in particular, we know that he was wealthy, with large herds and enough status for pharaohs and kings to negotiate with him. The fact that he came from Ur of the Chaldeans is intriguing. In antiquity, Chaldea was famous for one thing: astronomy. This explains why some suggested Abraham used his knowledge of the stars to divine that there was only one God. Josephus went further, suggesting that Abraham taught astrology to the Egyptians, who then taught it to the Greeks, whichwould make Abraham the father of not just western religion but also western science.
    Abraham was also a frequent traveler, meaning he probably touched countless sites in the Promised Land, including Dan. After more than three hours we neared the site, a sprawling, tree-shrouded mound of about fifty acres within shouting distance of the Lebanese mountains. These sites, called tels, are the staple of Near Eastern archaeology, layer cakes of history in which each generation built on top of the previous one. Tels are particularly common in this region, because with no rivers, cities were constructed in the few places with reliable water, in this case a spring. Originally called Laish, this site was later renamed Dan, after one of the twelve tribes, and lent its name to the vivid expression of Israelite unity, “from Dan to Beer-sheba.”
    Professor Biran explored his excavation for a while, checking to see what his graduate students had recently uncovered, while Honey showed me around the ruins, which mostly date from the first millennium B.C.E. Around noon he met us and announced he had something to show me. We hiked uphill, until the dense canopy of eucalyptus and avocado trees unfolded, revealing a brilliant blue sky. Biran was using a cane, which attracted the attention of a flock of white butterflies.
    “Now I have a question for you, my friend,” he said. “Who invented the arch?”
    I thought for a second, a series of images flickering through my mind: stones, columns, keystones, slaves. “The Egyptians?” I said.
    He looked at me, disappointed. “The Romans,” he corrected. “You learned in school that it was the Romans. That’s why I didn’t believe what I saw when I first came here. We were working two thousand years earlier than the Romans—at the time of the patriarchs.”
    We rounded a corner and from out of the trees a large mound of rubble interrupted the path. Instead of thick underbrush, the area was clear, dominated by piles of dirt and stones.
    “One thing about digging for the Bible,” Biran said. “You have to