In 1972, a serendipitous encounter between the American Jewish lawyer Hershel Shanks and the famed Israeli general-turned-archaeologist Yigael Yadin launched Shanks’s career as an amateur expert on biblical archaeology. Shanks went on to found Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR), a magazine aimed at disseminating and popularized the latest discoveries in the field; he has only recently retired from his position as its chief editor. Thanks to Shanks’s efforts, and bravado, the Dead Sea Scrolls were published after decades of delay and made available for study by a variety of experts. The archaeologist William Dever recollects the important role Shanks played in another controversy in the field:

[An] infamous controversy began . . . in the 1980s and 1990s with several attempts by biblical scholars to write new histories of ancient Israel. Some such scholarly works virtually dismissed the patriarchal narratives [of the book of Genesis] as legendary. Others adopted a sociological approach that seemed to ignore the theological importance of the Hebrew Bible. A few works dabbled with the archaeological evidence then available. But none appreciated its real significance or the fact that archaeology had become an independent and professional discipline with enormous potential. . . .

This controversy, first spreading among European biblical scholars and involving a few American scholars, came to a head with the appearance of a book by Sheffield University’s Philip R. Davies in 1992, In Search of “Ancient Israel.” Note that “ancient Israel” is in quotes. That’s because Davies didn’t find it; in fact, according to him, it wasn’t there. . . . Another [scholar soon] demonized archaeologists—especially Americans and Israelis—and declared all histories [of ancient Israel] “bogus.” Two other works of the same era may be cited without further explanation, since their titles give them away: The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History (1996) . . . and The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel (1999). . . .

Already in 1998 and 1999 I had published several sharp critiques of what was being called “revisionism.” . . . I saw much of the revisionist attacks on the Hebrew Bible as dangerously ideological. In particular, the onslaught was influenced by postmodernist notions that “there are no facts, only interpretations”; that “all claims to knowledge are only social constructs” (thus the tactic of “deconstruction”); and that “texts lead only to other texts.”

[But even] in 1995 [or] 1996, [before most scholars had done so], Hershel grasped the significance of these issues, not only for Jewish and Christian readers but also for secularists and all who value the Judeo-Christian or Western cultural tradition. . . . One thing is clear to me and, I suspect, to nearly all of BAR’s readers—a realistic, believable history of ancient Israel still matters. And many are coming to understand that archaeology is a crucial source of new and relevant information. From BAR’s early days, Hershel Shanks understood that relationship, and he strove mightily to educate the public to the issues in a way that no other publication did. That will be his legacy.

This week, there have been numerous unconfirmed reports about the fate of Esmail Qaani, who is the head of the Quds Force, the expeditionary arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Benny Avni writes:

On Thursday, Sky News Arabic reported that Mr. Qaani was rushed to a hospital after suffering a heart attack. He became [the Quds Force] commander in 2020, after an American drone strike killed his predecessor, Qassem Suleimani. The unit oversees the Islamic Republic’s various Mideast proxies, as well as the exporting of the Iranian revolution to the region and beyond.

The Sky News report attempts to put to rest earlier claims that Mr. Qaani was killed at Beirut. It follows several reports asserting he has been arrested and interrogated at Tehran over suspicion that he, or a top lieutenant, leaked information to Israel. Five days ago, the Arabic-language al-Arabiya network reported that Mr. Qaani “is under surveillance and isolation, following the Israeli assassinations of prominent Iranian leaders.”

Iranians are desperately scrambling to plug possible leaks that gave Israel precise intelligence to conduct pinpoint strikes against Hizballah commanders. . . . “I find it hard to believe that Qaani was compromised,” an Iran watcher at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, Beni Sabti, tells the Sun. Perhaps one or more of [Qaani’s] top aides have been recruited by Israel, he says, adding that “psychological warfare” could well be stoking the rumor mill.

If so, prominent Iranians seem to be exacerbating the internal turmoil by alleging that the country’s security apparatus has been infiltrated.