Letters to the Editor

We are always pleased to have letters to the editor because this shows that people are reading our Journal seriously. However, due to space limitations, we ask that letters be kept under 500 words.

To the Editor

I found the essay by Tami Davis Biddle on Dresden 1945 (JMH, April 2008) to be a masterful and insightful piece of work. With a full command of the sources, she navigated surely between moral considerations and contextual appreciation leaving us with a reasonable sense of tragedy. I don't know that I will need to read any further to guide my understanding of this event. Thank you for publishing it.

Alex T. Gafford
Midland, Georgia

To the Editor

I wish to thank Yoaz Hendel for his review of my book Spies of the Bible [Vol. 72, #2, April 2008]. I am pleased that he acknowledged that the book was original in its scope, and that he enjoyed chapter 7. Where we disagree is on the book’s intent and audience.

My preface stated that the book was intended for intelligence professionals and military historians as well as general readers. This means that at any given time, two out of those three groups will be disappointed. The background information that Hendel found so annoying was necessary for readers not as well versed in biblical history and criticism as most Israeli readers. One has to set the background. Greenhill Books wanted an even more “popular” work so I was lucky to have been allowed to include the material I did. A common error made by both military and intelligence specialists of later periods is cherry picking examples of clever ancient tricks by ripping them right out of their historical context and not taking into account the reliability of the source from which they are taken.

Hendel has astutely realized that one cannot tell the entire story of espionage over so long a period of time. As I stated in my Preface, Spies of the Bible was neither an attempt to narrate a military history of the Jews nor an attempt to show every instance where intelligence was used. What I tried to do was to telescope some important conflicts and show how intelligence played a part in the actions of each side. There was also an attempt to show the development of the military establishment and its changing use of intelligence. I tried to compare the military accounts from the Hebrew Bible with those described by later Jewish, Greek, or Roman sources. This is a huge undertaking and hard to summarize in under ten chapters. But the book was never more than an attempt at a summary.

In my opening chapter I chose to include the polarized views of numerous schools that currently exist among biblical scholars for several reasons. First, because most British and American readers are unfamiliar with them; secondly, because as Hendel pointed out, it is a still unresolved debate and I wanted to make quite clear which camp I belonged to; and thirdly, the readership must be apprised of the methodological biases involved in choosing the traditional Conquest Narrative. This may seem old hat to Hendel, but it is a sore topic still in America. Never far from my mind were pitfalls that come with writing a book on a Christian subject. I was hoping the initial chapter would be a teaching moment for those who might consider a truly historical approach to the subject rather than a theological one.

All too often, modern reviewers want to see more discussion of a topic than the ancient evidence will support. It is frighteningly difficult to supply enough information on HUMINT in a war like those fought between the Jews and the Romans when we have only one narrative source, Josephus, or in the Bar Kokhba war, none at all. I tried to include guerrilla warfare, surprise attack, collection and analysis, counterintelligence, and any other form of military activity that relied on intelligence gathering. If I have missed some examples, I would be thrilled to have readers point them out to me.

The only goal in all my writing on intelligence has been to give...