Was Mary Magdalene a prostitute? Photo: Private Collection/Bridgeman Art Library/Courtesy of IAP Fine Art.

Was Mary Magdalene a Prostitute?

Was Mary Magdalene a prostitute who repented or simply an influential female follower of Jesus? Mary from Magdala has popularly been saddled with an unfavorable reputation, but how did this notion come about? In From Saint to Sinner, Birger A. Pearson examines how Mary Magdalene’s notoriety emerged in the early Christian tradition. Pearson writes that later interpreters of the Gospels attempted to diminish her “by identifying her with other women mentioned in the Gospels, most notably the unnamed sinful woman who anoints Jesus’ feet with ointment and whose sins he forgives (Luke 7:36–50) and the unnamed woman taken in adultery (John 7:53–8:11).”

Read From Saint to Sinner by Birger A. Pearson as it originally appeared in Bible Review.

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Who was Jezebel? Image: Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth, UK/Bridgeman Art Library.

Who Was Jezebel? How Bad Was She?

Who was Jezebel? For over 2,000 years, Jezebel, Israel’s most accursed queen, has been condemned as a murderer, a temptress and an enemy of God. Who was Jezebel, really? Was she really that bad? In How Bad Was Jezebel? Janet Howe Gaines rereads the Biblical narrative from the vantage point of the Phoenician wife of King Ahab. As Gaines writes, “To attain a more positive assessment of Jezebel’s troubled reign and a deeper understanding of her role, we must evaluate the motives of the Biblical authors who condemn the queen.”

Read Janet Howe Gaines’s article How Bad Was Jezebel? as it originally appeared in Bible Review.

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Rahab the Harlot or just the inkeeper? Image: CCI/The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.

Rahab the Harlot?

As described in the Book of Joshua, Rahab (a heroine nonetheless known as “Rahab the Harlot”) assisted two Israelite spies in escaping down the city wall of Jericho. Was Rahab a Biblical prostitute? While the Biblical text identifies her as a zônāh, a prostitute (Joshua 2:1), Josephus reports that she kept an inn. Anthony J. Frendo critically examines the textual evidence.

Read about Anthony J. Frendo’s conclusions on Rahab the Harlot.

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Who is Lilith? Courtesy of Richard Callner, Latham, NY.

Who Is Lilith?

Fertile mother, wilderness demon, sly seductress—the resilient character Lilith has been recast in many roles. Who is Lilith? As Janet Howe Gaines writes, “In most manifestations of her myth, Lilith represents chaos, seduction and ungodliness. Yet, in her every guise, Lilith has cast a spell on humankind.” Follow Lilith’s journey from Babylonian mythology, through the Bible, to medieval lore and modern literature in Lilith by Janet Howe Gaines.

Read Lilith by Janet Howe Gaines as the article originally appeared in Bible Review.

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At Carthage, child sacrifice is believed to have been practiced. Teeth and skeletal analysis of the remains at the Carthage Tophet demonstrates that infants of a specific age-range—under three months old—were most commonly cremated. Photo: ASOR, Punic Project/James Whitred.

The Bible speaks of Judahites who sacrificed their children to Molech in Jerusalem’s Ben Hinnom Valley; the practice was forbidden and considered abominable (Jeremiah 32:35; Leviticus 18:21; 2 Chronicles 28:3). While no evidence of child sacrifice has been uncovered in the Hinnom Valley, scholars today debate whether child sacrifice was practiced at Phoenician sites in the western Mediterranean. The debate is centered on the Carthage Tophet, or open-air enclosure containing the burials of infants, in modern-day Tunisia.

Was child sacrifice really practiced at ancient Carthage? In “Infants Sacrificed? The Tale Teeth Tell” in the July/August 2014 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Patricia Smith discusses the research she and her team conducted on the cremated remains from the Carthage Tophet.

Several sources attest to the practice of child sacrifice at Carthage. Lawrence E. Stager and Joseph A. Greene describe the evidence in the November/December 2000 issue of Archaeology Odyssey:

Classical authors and Biblical prophets charge the Phoenicians with the practice. Stelae associated with burial urns found at Carthage bear decorations alluding to sacrifice and inscriptions expressing vows to Phoenician deities. Urns buried beneath these stelae contain remains of children (and sometimes of animals) who were cremated as described in the sources or implied by the inscriptions.

Despite the evidence suggesting that the Carthaginians really did practice child sacrifice, some researchers have contended that such rituals did not occur at Carthage—or at any other Phoenician site. The Carthage Tophet, according to one study, was merely an infant cemetery.

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BAR author Patricia Smith and her research team studied the incinerated remains in 342 urns from the Carthage Tophet. The majority of the remains belonged to infants, though some contained young animals, mostly sheep and goats. An analysis of the teeth and skeletal remains from these urns revealed that most of the infants were one to two months old, a result that does not correspond to the expected pattern of mortality rates in antiquity. The findings demonstrate that a specific age range—under three months old—of infant death was over-represented at Carthage, suggesting that children under the age of three months did not die from natural causes but from something else. That something else, as the literary and epigraphic evidence indicate, is likely the practice of child sacrifice at Carthage.

To learn more about the scientific analysis conducted by Patricia Smith and her research team, read the full article “Infants Sacrificed? The Tale Teeth Tell” by Patricia Smith in the July/August 2014 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Subscribers: Read “Infants Sacrificed? The Tale Teeth Tell” by Patricia Smith as it appeared in the July/August 2014 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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This Bible History Daily article was originally published on July 25, 2014.

Related reading in Bible History Daily

Did the Carthaginians Really Practice Infant Sacrifice?

Did the Ancient Israelites Think Children Were People?

What Does the Bible Say About Children—and What Does Archaeology Say?

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library

Were living Children Sacrificed to the Gods? Yes

Were living Children Sacrificed to the Gods? No

Child Sacrifice: Returning God’s Gift

The post At Carthage, Child Sacrifice? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Here are 10 of the most notable examples (in no specific order):

• Gold Powder
  When Moses sees the Israelites worshiping the golden calf he grinds the idol into a fine powder, mixes it with water and forces the people to drink (Exodus 32:19–20).
• Scroll of Lamentations
  God gives Ezekiel a two-sided scroll of Lamentations to eat. Ezekiel fills his stomach and finds the scroll to be “as sweet as honey” (Ezekiel 2:8–3:3).
• Bread and Excrement
  God tells Ezekiel to eat bread baked upon human excrement but Ezekiel gets away with bread baked upon animal excrement. Unlike the scroll, we aren’t told how it tastes (Ezekiel 4:10-17).
• The Manna
  The Israelites survive for forty years in the desert on daily provisions of manna (Exodus 16:35). The name manna reportedly comes from the question the Israelites asked, man hu⁾, “What is it?” (Exodus 16:15). Although some commentators prefer a naturalistic answer to this question, e.g., manna is the gum resin of desert shrubs, the Biblical text presents the manna as a miracle food. It falls six days a week but not on the Sabbath, disintegrates when it is stored and stops falling when the Israelites enter the land of Canaan. Manna is even called “the grain of heaven,” “the bread of heaven” or “the bread of angels” in a number of Hebrew Bible, New Testament and apocryphal texts (Psalms 78:24, 105:40; John 6:31; 2 Esdras 1:19).

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• Animal Fodder for a King
  In accordance with Daniel’s prophecy, Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon lives in the wilderness for seven years eating grass like an ox (Dan 4:33). A similar story appears in 2 Esdras (9:23-27, 12:51) where Ezra sustains himself on a diet of flowers for seven days. Interestingly, a number of scholars suggest that the story of Nebuchadnezzar is actually based on Nabonidus, the king of Babylon who spent a decade of his life at an oasis in the Arabian wilderness.
• 40-Day Superfoods
  An angel gives Elijah a cake and some water and it is enough to sustain him for a forty-day journey from Beersheba to Mount Horeb/Sinai, where he encounters God in a cave (1 Kings 19:3–9).

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• The Fantastic Fruits of Eden
  There were two supernatural trees in the Garden of Eden, each with its own fruit. The tree of knowledge bestowed a divine knowledge of good and bad, making one like the gods. The tree of life granted immortality (Genesis 3:22).
• Food from Nowhere
  A number of Biblical figures are saved from thirst and starvation in the barrenness of the desert. For example, Hagar and Ishmael are shown a hidden well by God (Genesis 21:14–19), Moses finds water in a desert rock (Numbers 20:11), and Elijah is given bread and meat twice a day by ravens in the desert (1 Kings 17:1–6).
• Human Flesh
  Cannibalism on account of hunger is perhaps the most extreme punishment in the Hebrew Bible. It is at times described in vivid detail, e.g., in the threat of Deuteronomy 28 that fathers and mothers will eat their own children in secrecy so that they do not have to share the meat (Deuteronomy 28:53–57).
• Free Refills
  There are a number of stories about the miracles performed by the prophets Elijah and Elisha. According to the Book of Kings, a hungry woman’s jar of flour and jug of oil refilled themselves until a famine subsided (1 Kings 17:10-16), a poor woman’s single jug of oil was able to fill the many vessels of her neighbors (2 Kings 4:1–7), and a man’s twenty loaves of bread were miraculously able to feed one hundred hungry men with some left over (2 Kings 4:42–44). A similar story appears in John 6, where Jesus feeds five thousand men with five barley loaves and two small fish. Again, there is still food left over.

This Bible History Daily article, “The 10 Strangest Foods in the Bible,” was originally published on May 6, 2014.

David Z. Moster, PhD, is a Research Fellow in Hebrew Bible at Brooklyn College and a Lecturer in Rabbinics at Nyack College. He is the author of the upcoming book Etrog: How a Chinese Fruit Became a Jewish Symbol (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). He wrote The 10 Strangest Foods in the Bible in 2014.  His websites are www.929chapters.com and brooklyn-cuny.academia.edu/DavidMoster.

More by David Moster in Bible History Daily

Fruit in the Bible

You Are What You Eat: The Israelite Diet and Archaeology

10 Great Biblical Artifacts at the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem

More on food and dining in the biblical world in Bible History Daily

Biblical Bread: Baking Like the Ancient Israelites

What Did People Eat and Drink in Roman Palestine?

Ancient Bread: 14,400-Year-Old Flatbreads Unearthed in Jordan

BAR Test Kitchen

Making Sense of Kosher Laws

A Feast for the Senses … and the Soul

Was Jesus’ Last Supper a Seder?

A Biblical Spice Rack

Feeding the Pyramid Builders

The post The 10 Strangest Foods in the Bible appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Do the blue tzitzit strings of this traditional Jewish prayer shawl reflect the shade of blue in the Bible, called tekhelet in Hebrew? Evidence suggests the tekhelet that colored ancient blue tzitzit was sky-blue and derived from murex dye.

In the Bible, a shade of blue called tekhelet was God’s chosen color for the ancient Israelites. Tekhelet drapes adorned Solomon’s Temple, and tekhelet robes were worn by Israel’s high priests. According to Baruch and Judy Taubes Sterman in “The Great Tekhelet Debate—Blue or Purple?” in the September/October 2013 issue of BAR, even ordinary Israelites “were commanded to tie one string of tekhelet to the corner fringes (Hebrew, tzitzit) of their garments as a constant reminder of their special relationship with God” (Numbers 15:38–39). The tradition of blue tzitzit still exists today.

But what was the actual color of ancient tekhelet and blue tzitzit? Was it a shade of blue or was it closer to purple? Blue tzitzit and tekhelet-colored fabrics were widely worn and traded throughout the ancient Mediterranean, but by the Roman period, only the emperor could wear tekhelet. By the seventh century C.E., with the Islamic conquest of the Levant, the tekhelet’s source and method of manufacture were lost.

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A century ago, Isaac Herzog, who would later become Israel’s first chief rabbi, researched tekhelet for his dissertation. He concluded that blue in the Bible was a bright sky-blue derived from the secretions of a sea snail, Murex trunculus.* This species was known to produce a murex dye the color of dark purple. Decades after Herzog’s death, chemist Otto Elsner proved that murex dye could in fact produce a sky-blue color by exposing the snail secretions to ultraviolet rays during the dyeing process. Sky-blue tzitzit, then, could be made with murex dye.

Despite Elsner’s discovery, the debate around the color of tekhelet continued. Dissenters argued that the ancient dyers, who created dyes in covered vats, likely didn’t know how to adjust the dye colors using the sun’s ultraviolet rays. Eleventh-century Biblical exegete Rashi described tekhelet as a deep blue or dark violet. A violet swatch of wool discovered during excavations at the first-century Herodian fortress of Masada was proven to have been colored by murex dye.

In a letter to BAR, Professor Zvi C. Koren, director of the Edelstein Center for the Analysis of Ancient Artifacts at the Shenker College of Engineering and Design in Ramat Gan, Israel, criticizes the Stermans’ analysis, to which the Stermans have replied. Visit the BAS Scholar’s Study: The Great Tekhelet Debate page today.

However, important evidence persuasively suggest that Biblical tekhelet was in fact sky-blue. Assyriologist Wayne Horowitz explains that the Sumerian word uqnu, the word for the gem lapis lazuli, was used for the color blue and its shades. The term was applied to the sky and to blue wool (uqnatu). When the foreign word takiltu, Hebrew tekhelet, was adopted into Akkadian, the same cuneiform signs as uqnatu were used. To the ancient Mesopotamians, therefore, the color of lapis lazuli and the sky were equivalent to the color of tekhelet.

So what was the color of Biblical tekhelet? The Jerusalem-based Ptil Tekhelet Foundation believes it was sky-blue derived from the murex dye. For over 25 years, this foundation has produced hundreds of thousands of blue tzitzit strings colored with murex dye. The blue tzitzit on Jewish prayer shawls remind worshipers of the sea, the sky and God’s holy throne.

BAS Library Members: Read the full article on ancient tekhelet by Baruch and Judy Taubes Sterman in Archaeological Views, “The Great Tekhelet Debate—Blue or Purple?” as it appears in the September/October 2013 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Not a BAS Library or All-Access Member yet? Join today.

Notes

* See Ari Greenspan, “The Search for Biblical Blue,” Bible Review, February 2003.

Related reading in Bible History Daily

Regarding the Color of Tekhelet

Baruch and Judy Taubes Sterman Respond

Zvi C. Koren’s Reply to the Stermans’ Response

Ancient Fabric Dyed Biblical Blue?

Earliest Example of “Biblical Scarlet” Discovered

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library

Archaeological Views: The Great Tekhelet Debate—Blue or Purple?

The Search for Biblical Blue

Arch-Tech: Purple Threads from the Days of David and Solomon

Deities and Dogs—Their Sacred Rites

Jeremiah’s Polemic Against Idols

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published in 2013.

The post What Color Was Tekhelet? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

According to author Robert D. Miller, archaeological surveys and excavations of the central hill country have provided a much clearer picture of daily life in ancient Israel during the time of the Biblical Judges and the early Israelite settlers of Canaan.

What was life like for the tribes of Israel in the time of the Biblical Judges, the period archaeologists call Iron Age I (1200–1000 B.C.E.)?

The evidence for the early Israelite settlers of Canaan comes from two sources: archaeological survey and excavations. Much of the area of the central highlands, where most of the settlers of Canaan established their villages, was archaeologically surveyed in the 1980s and 1990s.

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These surveys provided much useful information about daily life in ancient Israel during the period of the Biblical Judges, including the arrangement and size of tribal villages and even the nature of early Israelite economic and political systems. Excavation data, both from recent excavations (Shiloh, for example) and from digs long past (such as Bethel), also provide evidence of daily life in ancient Israel, including the society’s wealth, warfare and housing.

From this evidence, the following portrait emerges of daily life in ancient Israel during the time of the Biblical Judges.

The Israelite villages built by the settlers of Canaan were on hilltops. They were quite small, possibly 400 people in the largest of these—Shiloh or Gibeon, for instance. These towns were mostly unwalled, though they were part of larger political units or regional chiefdoms that provided security. The Israelite villages within a given region were subjects of the major town of the area, some of which, like Shechem, were very large and controlled considerable territory.

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At that time of the Biblical Judges, the hills were densely overgrown, covered with a thick scrub of pine, oak and terebinth trees. And it was often too rocky for the sheep, so raising animals never stood at the forefront of the economy. Instead, the early Israelite settlers of Canaan would burn off some of the brush, terrace the hillsides within an hour’s walk of the village, and plant grain, primarily wheat. Other lesser crops included lentils, garbanzo beans, barley and millet. They had orchards on these terraces as well.

BAS Library Members, read more about daily life in ancient Israel during the time of the Biblical Judges in Robert D. Miller, Archaeological Views, “Israelite Life Before the Kings,” Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 2013.

Not a BAS Library or All-Access Member yet? Join today.

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published in March 2013.

Related reading in Bible History Daily

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The post Daily Life in Ancient Israel appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Dogs in the Bible were not well loved. To be called a dog was to be associated with evil and low status. Therefore it is surprising that Caleb, one of the great Hebrew spies, means “dog” in Hebrew. Pictured is a stone relief created in 1958 by sculptor Ferdinand Heseding. The relief, which appears on a fountain in Dusseldorf, Germany, depicts the Biblical spies Joshua and Caleb carrying a cluster of grapes back from the Promised Land (Numbers 13:1-33).

Everyone loves dogs—don’t they? Dogs—or celeb in Hebrew—are humanity’s best friends. We welcome them into our homes, we walk them, feed them, clean up after them and excuse their bad behavior. But in ancient Israel, people had an entirely different view of dogs.

Of the more than 400 breeds of dogs around today, all came from the same ancestor—ancient wolves. Dogs were first domesticated perhaps as far back as 12,000 years ago. Because dogs are the only animals with the ability to bark, they became useful for hunting and herding. Dogs in the Bible were used for these purposes (Isaiah 56:11; Job 30:1).

There is evidence in the Bible that physical violence toward dogs was considered acceptable (1 Samuel 17:43; Proverbs 26:17). To compare a human to a dog or to call them a dog was to imply that they were of very low status (2 Kings 8:13; Exodus 22:31; Deuteronomy 23:18; 2 Samuel 3:8; Proverbs 26:11; Ecclesiastes 9:4; 2 Samuel 9:8; 1 Samuel 24:14). In the New Testament, calling a human a dog meant that the person was considered evil (Philemon 3:2; Revelation 22:15).

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Some scholars hypothesize that the negative feelings expressed in the ancient Near East toward dogs was because in those days, dogs often ran wild and usually in packs. Dogs in the Bible exhibited predatory behavior in their quest for survival, which included the eating of dead bodies (1 Kings 14:11; 16:4; 21:19, 23-24; 22:38; 2 Kings 9:10, 36; 1 Kings 21:23).

There is archaeological evidence, such as figurines, pictures and even collars, that demonstrates that Israel’s neighbors kept dogs as pets, but from the skeletal remains found within the Levant, the domestication of dogs did not happen until the Persian and Hellenistic periods within Israel.

The word for dog in Hebrew is celeb, from which the name Caleb derives. Due to the negative attribution of dogs for the ancient Israelites, it is surprising that one of the great Hebrew spies bears this name. As the Israelites were preparing to enter the land of Canaan, Moses called a chieftain from each tribe to go before them and scout the land. Caleb was the representative of the tribe of Judah. When these spies returned, they reported that the land surpassed expectation but that the people who live there would be mighty foes. The Israelites did not want to go and face the peoples of Canaan, but Caleb stepped forward and urged them to proceed. After more exhortation from Moses, Aaron and Joshua, the people relented. Caleb was rewarded for his faith: Joshua gave him Hebron as an inheritance (Numbers 14:24; Joshua 14:14).

Ellen White, Ph.D. (Hebrew Bible, University of St. Michael’s College), was the senior editor at the Biblical Archaeology Society. She has taught at five universities across the U.S. and Canada and spent research leaves in Germany and Romania. She has also been actively involved in digs at various sites in Israel.

Related reading in Bible History Daily

What Does the Bible Say About Dogs?

Bible Animals: From Hyenas to Hippos

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Camel Domestication History Challenges Biblical Narrative

Cats in Ancient Egypt

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library

From Pets to Physicians: Dogs in the Biblical World

Caleb the Dog

Why Were Hundreds of Dogs Buried at Ashkelon?

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on January 26, 2015.

The post No, No, Bad Dog: Dogs in the Bible appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Painting from the tomb of Nebamun showing a cat catching birds. Courtesy of the British Museum.

Despite their stereotypically aloof attitude, cats are so popular today that they have been photographed the world over, are the stars of YouTube videos and have even been provided sanctuary at an archaeological site. When were cats domesticated? According to a 2014 study led by Wim Van Neer of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, cats may have been domesticated in ancient Egypt much earlier than previously thought.

Cats are traditionally believed to have been domesticated in Egypt during the Middle Kingdom (c. 1950 B.C.E.). Famously devoted to these furry creatures—calling them miw onomatopoetically—the Egyptians mummified deceased cats and depicted them in paintings and sculptures. Cats were associated with a number of Egyptian deities, including Bastet, the goddess of fertility and protector of women in childbirth.

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Excavations conducted at Hierakonpolis, the capital of Upper Egypt during the Predynastic period, yielded evidence suggesting that cats were tamed as early as the fourth millennium B.C.E. The skeleton of a jungle cat discovered in an elite cemetery dated to c. 3700 B.C.E. showed signs of a healed leg fracture, indicating that the animal was held in captivity and cared for for several weeks before its sacrifice. In another burial, the skeletons of six cats—two adults and four kittens—were uncovered next to contemporaneous burials of baboon and dog skeletons. Using comparative studies of wild and domestic cat skeletons, the researchers propose that the six cats buried together were domestic.

While Van Neer and his colleagues caution that the conclusions from Hierakonpolis are tentative until further comparative studies are conducted, the researchers believe that it is nevertheless evident a “close relationship” existed between cats and humans in Egypt almost two millennia earlier than previously thought.

Read more in The Journal of Archaeological Science.

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Related reading in Bible History Daily

Saqqara Tombs Reveal More Animal Mummies

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What Does the Bible Say About Dogs?

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library

Ancient Life: Cats

Animals of the Bible: Living Links to Antiquity

From Pets to Physicians: Dogs in the Biblical World

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Carbonized raisins from Iron Age I (12th to 11th centuries B.C.) Shiloh were published by Israel Finkelstein in BAR in 1986.

Seeds and fruit remains are exciting discoveries for archaeologists. Not only do they provide clues about ancient agriculture and diets, they can also provide radiocarbon data to help date buried strata.

Fruit also plays an important role in the Biblical narrative. If Eve had not eaten the fruit in Genesis 3, the story of Eden would have looked drastically different. What do we know about the creative ways the Israelites used fruit in their writings and everyday culture?

The Hebrew Bible mentions six types of tree fruit, many of which appear dozens of times:

1. Grape (גפן)
2. Fig (תאנה)
3. Olive (זית)
4. Pomegranate (רמון)
5. Date (תמר)
6. Apple (תפוח)

In my view, these six fruits are used in eight different ways in the Bible. First, many people are named after fruit, e.g., Tamar in Genesis 38:6, which means “date,” Tappuah in 1 Chronicles 2:43, which means “apple,” and Rimmon in 2 Samuel 4:2, which means “pomegranate.”

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In this this anonymous 18th-century icon from the National Art Museum in Kiev, Ukraine, Joshua and Caleb carry grapes back from the Promised Land.

Second, fruits are the namesake for a number of cities and towns, e.g., Anab in Joshua 11:21, which means “grape,” Rimmon (pomegranate) in Joshua 15:32 and Tappuah (apple) in Joshua 12:17.

Third, images of fruit are used as decorations, e.g., the blue, purple, and crimson pomegranates on Aaron’s priestly garments (Exodus 28:33-34) and the engraved date palm trees in Solomon’s Temple (1 Kings 6:29).

Fourth, fruits are the subjects of laws, e.g., the law in Numbers 6:3 that a Nazirite may not eat or drink grape products or the law in Deuteronomy 24:20 that one may only beat an olive tree once (the remaining olives are for the poor).

Fifth, fruits are used in a number of metaphors and similes such as, “Your breath is like the fragrance of apples” in Song of Songs 7:9 and “I found Israel [as pleasing] as grapes in the wilderness” in Hosea 9:10.

Sixth, fruits appear in curses and blessings such as “Your olives shall drop off [the tree]” in Deuteronomy 28:40 and “[Israel is a blessed] land of wheat and barley, of vines, figs and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey” in Deuteronomy 8:8.

A team from the Tell Halif archaeological excavation made their own tannur, a traditional oven referenced in the Hebrew Bible, and baked bread in it. Read all about the experiment in “Biblical Bread: Baking Like the Ancient Israelites.”

Seventh, fruits are used pedagogically in proverbs such as “He who tends to a fig tree will enjoy its fruit” in Proverbs 27:18 and “Parents eat sour grapes and their children’s teeth are blunted” in Ezekiel 18:2.

Eighth, and perhaps most obvious, fruits appear as objects in narratives, such as in Numbers 13:23, where the spies of Moses examine the grapes, pomegranates and figs of the land, and in Genesis 3, where Eve eats the forbidden fruit and is cast from Eden.

While these eight categories are neither rigid nor mutually exclusive, they illustrate the diverse treatment of fruit in the Hebrew Bible. Fruit was much more than a food for the ancient Israelites. It was a symbol that appeared prominently in the culture’s names, laws, proverbs and traditions.

When archaeologists uncover seeds, they find much more than radiocarbon data. The Biblical narrative provides a social and symbolic significance for these important foodstuffs, reminding archaeologists that there is much more to these seeds than meets the eye.

Fruit-producing gardens were some of the most luxurious parts of ancient palaces, yet there is no archaeological evidence of the most famous example–the Hanging Gardens–at Babylon. Discover why archaeologists believe this World Wonder was actually located at Assyrian Nineveh.

David Z. Moster, PhD, is a Research Fellow in Hebrew Bible at Brooklyn College and a Lecturer in Rabbinics at Nyack College. He is the author of the upcoming book Etrog: How a Chinese Fruit Became a Jewish Symbol (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). His websites are www.929chapters.com and brooklyn-cuny.academia.edu/DavidMoster.

This Bible History Daily article was originally published on January 27, 2014.

Related reading in Bible History Daily

The 10 Strangest Foods in the Bible

10 Great Biblical Artifacts at the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem

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“One last unending night for the world.” Overcome by the fumes and falling ash, the famed Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder and his companion collapse in view of the 79 C.E. eruption of Mt. Vesuvius while buildings crumble nearby, as depicted in this 1813 painting Vesuvius Erupting by Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes. First-century accounts of the eruption by his nephew Pliny the Younger and Dio Cassius describe the terror and confusion as the affluent cities of the Bay of Naples, including Pompeii and Herculaneum, were destroyed by the violent volcano. Was this disaster, which occurred almost exactly nine years after Roman troops destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, seen as God’s revenge on the conquerors of the holy city? Photo: AKG-Images

Nine years, almost to the day, after Roman legionaries destroyed God’s house in Jerusalem, God destroyed the luxurious watering holes of the Roman elite.

Was this God’s revenge?

That’s not exactly the question I want to raise, however. Rather, did anyone at the time see it that way? Did anyone connect the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 C.E. with the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70?

First the dates: The Romans destroyed the Second Temple (Herod’s Temple) on the same date that the Babylonians had destroyed the First Temple (Solomon’s Temple) in 586 B.C.E. But the exact date of the Babylonian destruction is uncertain. Two different dates are given in the Hebrew Bible for the destruction of the First Temple. In 2 Kings 25:8 the date is the 7th of the Hebrew month of Av; Jeremiah 52:12 says it occurred on the 10th of Av. The rabbis compromised and chose the 9th of Av (Tisha b’Av). That is the date on which observant Jews, sitting on the floor of their synagogues, still mourn the destruction of the First Temple, Solomon’s Temple, in 586 B.C.E. and the Second Temple, Herod’s Temple, in 70 C.E.

The exact corresponding date in the Gregorian calendar is also a bit uncertain. According to the translator of the authoritative translation of Josephus, the ancient historian who gives us our most detailed (if sometimes unreliable; see sidebar) account of the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E., it occurred on August 29 or 30.¹ Others place it earlier in the month.

The earliest existing picture of a scene from the Bible–portraying the judgment of King Solomon–comes from Pompeii. The oldest Biblical painting includes some surprising onlookers. Read the full article “Solomon, Socrates and Aristotle” by Theodore Feder online for free.

The eruption of Mt. Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii, Herculaneum, Stabia and other nearby sites occurred, according to most commentators, on August 24 or 25 in 79 C.E. According to Seneca, the quakes lasted for several days.

But the dates are close enough to raise the question: Were these two catastrophic events connected, at least in the mind of some observers?

Buried by burning hot ash, Pompeii was completely destroyed in a matter of hours by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius (seen in the background of this photo of Pompeii’s ruins). The manner of its demise also protected it, however. The city remained amazingly preserved for almost two millennia. When it began to be excavated in the late 19th century, the archaeologists revealed a first-century Roman city frozen in time—from the vivid frescoes on the walls of spacious villas to the loaves of bread left baking in the oven. Photo: © istockphoto.com/dhuss.

The volcanic eruption of Vesuvius has been graphically described by Dio Cassius in his Roman History:

The whole plain round about [Vesuvius] seethed and the summits leaped into the air. There were frequent rumblings, some of them subterranean, that resembled thunder, and some on the surface, that sounded like bellowings; the sea also joined in the roar and the sky re-echoed it. Then suddenly a portentous crash was heard, as if the mountains were tumbling in ruins; and first huge stones were hurled aloft, rising as high as the very summits, then came a great quantity of fire and endless smoke, so that the whole atmosphere was obscured and the sun was entirely hidden, as if eclipsed. Thus day was turned into night and light into darkness … [Some] believed that the whole universe was being resolved into chaos or fire .… While this was going on, an inconceivable quantity of ashes was blown out, which covered both sea and land and filled all the air … It buried two entire cities, Herculaneum and Pompeii … Indeed, the amount of dust, taken all together was so great that some of it reached Africa and Syria and Egypt, and it also reached Rome, filling the air overhead and darkening the sun. There, too, no little fear was occasioned, that lasted for several days, since the people did not know and could not imagine what had happened, but, like those close at hand, believed that the whole world was being turned upside down, that the sun was disappearing into the earth and that the earth was being lifted to the sky.²

The tone is plainly apocalyptic. And indeed Dio seems to have had this in mind. In the next paragraph he notes that the eruption consumed the temples of Serapis and Isis and Neptune and Jupiter Capitolinus, among others. It is almost as if some supreme God was at work.

Seventeen-year-old Pliny the Younger was an eyewitness to the eruption and described it in terms similar to Dio’s. In two surviving letters to Tacitus, Pliny also gives an account of the death of his famous uncle Pliny the Elder, author of the renowned Historia Naturalis. Pliny the Elder was at Misenum in his capacity as commander of the Roman fleet when the eruption began. He set sail to save some boatloads of people nearer Vesuvius and headed toward Stabia—to no avail. All perished, including Pliny, as his nephew recounts:

Ash was falling onto the ships, darker and denser the closer they went. Now it rains bits of pumice, and rocks that were burned and shattered by the fire … Broad sheets of flame were lighting up many parts of Vesuvius; their light and brightness were the more vivid for the darkness of the night … Buildings were being rocked by a series of strong tremors and appeared to have come loose from their foundations and to be sliding this way and that. Outside, however, there was danger from the rocks that were coming down …

It was daylight now elsewhere in the world, but there the darkness was darker and thicker than any night … Then came the smell of sulfur, announcing the flames, and the flames themselves …onto the ships, darker and denser the closer they went. Now it rains bits of pumice, and rocks that were burned and shattered by the fire … Broad sheets of flame were lighting up many parts of Vesuvius; their light and brightness were the more vivid for the darkness of the night … Buildings were being rocked by a series of strong tremors and appeared to have come loose from their foundations and to be sliding this way and that. Outside, however, there was danger from the rocks that were coming down …

[Then] came the dust, though still lightly. I looked back [from his flight from Misenum] … We had scarcely sat down when a darkness came that was not like a moonless or cloudy night, but more like the black of closed and unlighted rooms. You could hear women lamenting, children crying, men shouting.³

Then comes the same apocalyptic tone that we saw in Dio:

There were some so afraid of death that they prayed for death. Many raised their hands to the gods, and even more believed that there were no gods any longer and that this was the one last unending night for the world … I believed that I was perishing with the world, and the world with me, which was a great consolation for death.⁴

Did anyone connect all this to the Jewish God? To the Roman destruction of the Jerusalem Temple?

In a conversation with Harvard’s Shaye Cohen about something else, I offhandedly asked him if he knew of any ancient source that made the connection between the Vesuvius eruption and the destruction of the Temple. I had already asked this of several other scholars, but none had any sources for me, although they said there must be some. Shaye, however, immediately replied, “Try Book 4 of the Sibylline Oracles.” He was right on.

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Book 4 of the Sibylline Oracles is thought to be mostly Jewish oracles by a so-called sibyl (in Greek legend an aged woman who uttered ecstatic prophecies) that were composed shortly after the eruption of Vesuvius in 79. The oracles were preserved by Christians who believed they gave pagan testimony to the true religion and to Christ.⁵

Although composed after the event, it is written as a prediction:

An evil storm of war will also come upon Jerusalem
from Italy, and it will sack the great Temple of God …
A leader of Rome [Titus] will come … who will burn
the Temple of Jerusalem with fire [and] at the same time slaughter
many men and destroy the great land of the Jews.
…
When a firebrand, turned away from a cleft in the earth [Vesuvius]
in the land of Italy, reaches to broad heaven
it will burn many cities and destroy men.
Much smoking ashes will fill the great sky
and showers will fall from heaven like red earth.
Know then the wrath of the heavenly God.⁶

There is more—from Pompeii itself:

After the destruction, the site was subject to looting. And people who had managed to flee came back to see whether they could retrieve some of their possessions.

House 26 of Pompeii’s Region 9 Insula 1 seemed like all the other houses on the city block. Photo: Hershel Shanks.

One enters House 26 through a brick doorway near the insula’s elegant columned central courtyard. Photo: Hershel Shanks.

One such person came back to a house in an area of Pompeii designated today as Region 9, Insula 1, House 26. After having walked through the desolation of the city, he (unlikely to be a “she”) looked about and saw nothing but destruction where once there had been buildings and beautifully frescoed walls.

Disconsolate and aghast, he picked up a piece of charcoal and scratched on the wall in large black Latin letters:

SODOM GOMOR[RAH].⁷

As he saw it, the divine punishment of these two cursed Biblical cities was echoed in the rain of fire on Pompeii.⁸

On the wall of House 26, an ancient observer, viewing the aftermath of the eruption, scratched the words “Sodom and Gomor rah”—a poignant Biblical reference to God’s vengeance on the two sinful cities of Genesis 19. The barely visible inscription, which is now in the Naples Archaeological Museum, is also evidence that there were probably Jews living in Pompeii at the time. Photo: Luxus und Dekadenz, (Verlag Philipp Von Zabern, 2007).

The “Sodom and Gomorrah” inscription. Photo: Giordano and Kahn, The Jews in Pompeii, Herculaneum, Stabiae and in the Cities of Campania Felix (Bardi Editore, 2001).

The inscription was found in a 19th-century excavation at the site. I went to Pompeii to see the place where it was discovered. (The inscription itself is in the stores of the Naples Archaeological Museum; it is nearly illegible at this time.) In the center of the insula (a kind of city block) where it was found is a beautifully preserved columned atrium. House 26 is like the others in the insula—dark, destroyed, with vestiges of paintings on the walls, but mostly nothing.

The insula’s elegant columned central courtyard. Photo: Hershel Shanks.

It would seem that this inscriptional reference to Sodom and Gomorrah was the work of a Jew, which leads to the question whether there were Jews living in Pompeii. An indication that the answer is yes is a painting found in excellent condition on the walls of another, more elegant house. It is a painting of the Judgment of Solomon, deciding which of two women is the mother of the baby (1 Kings 3:16–28). The painting is the earliest known depiction of a Biblical scene and was the subject of a BAR article a couple of years ago.^a

House 26 opened into a smaller courtyard that led back to the private rooms of the domus. Photo: Hershel Shanks.

But there may also be other evidence that a community of Jews lived at Pompeii.

Garum was a very popular Roman delicacy, a fish sauce variously composed of different kinds of often-decomposed or fermented marine life and herbs and spices. Indeed, Pompeii was famous for its garum. According to Pliny the Elder, Pompeii “has a good reputation for its garum.”⁹ As if in confirmation of this observation, at least one store selling garum has been excavated in Pompeii. On the floor of the owner’s house (one Aulus Umbricius Scaurus) is a mosaic featuring labeled jars containing different kinds of garum.

Garum presented a problem for Jews, however—at least for those who kept the laws of kashrut (kosher laws). These Jews could not use garum that was made from fish without scales or from shellfish (see Deuteronomy 14:10 and Leviticus 11:10). Garum made from these products would not be kosher. Was there special kosher garum—garum made only from fish with scales?

A mosaic floor in the home of a man named Aulus Umbricius Scaurus depicts jars of garum ready for sale (Scaurus owned a store that sold garum). Because garum was made from all kinds of fish (including shellfish and fish without scales), kosher law prevented Jews from consuming most garum. Evidence of kosher garum (called garum castum or garum muria) suggests that there were enough Jews living in Pompeii to create a market for the special variety of kosher garum. Photo: Claus Ableiter.

The answer is yes, according to Pliny the Elder, who tells us that “another kind [of garum] is devoted to … Jewish rites, and is made from fish without scales.” Pliny obviously made a slip of the tongue here; he meant to say “fish with scales.” But it is clear that special garum, kosher garum, was indeed available to Jews.

And jars of kosher garum appear to have been found at Pompeii, although the matter is not without controversy. Among the garum amphorae from Pompeii several bear a label said to be kosher garum. The painted inscription on these jars consists of two Latin words, both incomplete:

GAR [or MUR]
CAST.

The first word could be completed as GAR[um] or MUR[ia]. Muria is also a kind of fish sauce, so it really doesn’t matter which it is.

The second word could be completed CAST[um] or CAST[imoniale]. Castum means “pure” or “chaste” or “innocent” or “spotless.” It could well refer to the purity of garum prepared for observant Jews. Castimoniale refers to bodily purity.¹⁰ But the inscription is on a jar of garum, so even if this is the correct reconstruction, it would seem to refer to a kind of special or pure garum.

In a recent, highly praised book on Pompeii, Cambridge University scholar Mary Beard concludes without qualification that this inscription was a designation for kosher garum. Beard refers to “a painted label advertising its contents as ‘Kosher Garum.’”¹¹ There are some doubters, however.

The chief doubter is Hannah Cotton, a prominent scholar at the Hebrew University. In her publication of a garum jar excavated at Masada in Israel, she cites supposedly “grave arguments” against the notion that garum castum was intended for Jews.¹² Pure garum, which is all that garum castum means, could be intended for other religious groups with food restrictions as well—the worshipers of Apis, Isis and Magna Mater, for instance. In this connection she cites an article by another distinguished scholar, Robert I. Curtis, professor of classics, now retired, at the University of Georgia and an authority both on Pompeii and garum.

Pompeii was well known for its production and trade of garum, a fish sauce considered a delicacy of the ancient Roman diet. Whole amphorae made for garum were also recovered from the site. Photo: Claus Ableiter.

I wondered about this. Did these pagan groups really have food laws similar to the Jews’? I contacted Professor Curtis, who wrote me: “[Professor Cotton] apparently misinterpreted what I had written. Perhaps I wasn’t very clear.”

Curtis continued: “The ancient sources on the cult practices of these pagan mystery cults are not very forthcoming, and the information that we do have is primarily from authors hostile to them. So, 100% certainty on matters regarding fasting and abstinence is impossible … I am not aware that followers of Isis, Magna Mater, etc. exercised restrictions of this kind [i.e., similar to the Jews]. They did, however, have abstinences of particular foods for limited periods of time, usually during recurring festivals … Recognizing a sauce as castum, therefore takes on more importance for [Jews]. Fish sauce producers, if they cared at all about catering to a specific clientele, even a small one, could, I think, have directed a specific product to them …”

Ever the careful scholar, however, Curtis nevertheless concludes that “I am still not able to state unequivocally that the expression garum castum was meant exclusively for Jews.”¹³ So the matter is not free from all doubt,¹⁴ but the presence of kosher garum at Pompeii is highly likely.

In any event, if there were Jews at Pompeii—and it seems there were—they may well have made the connection between the events of 70 and 79: God was indeed taking revenge against the Romans for destroying his Temple.

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Josephus: A Reliable Witness of the Temple’s Destruction?

Terrified Jews run for their lives as their fellows are trampled by Roman horses and smoke pours out of the Temple in this 1638 painting The Destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by Titus by Nicolas Poussin. The violent and fiery destruction of the Temple in August 70 C.E. by Roman general Titus’s troops was graphically recounted by the first-century historian Flavius Josephus and is mourned by Jews every year on Tisha b’Av. Photo: Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna, Austria/The Bridgeman Art Library.

Writing in Rome under the auspices of the Romans after the Jewish revolt, Josephus makes Vespasian and Titus look like humanitarians: In destroying the Temple, the Romans were really doing God’s will. Titus would have spared the Temple. As the Roman soldiers were trying to extinguish the fire in the Temple, a stray Roman soldier, “moved by some supernatural impulse,” threw a firebrand through the golden door of the Temple. Even then Titus wanted to extinguish the conflagration. But his troops, moved only by their passion, could not hear him (Jewish War, 6.249–258). “Thus against Caesar’s wishes was the Temple set on fire” (Jewish War, 6.266).

Josephus says that God had given “all kinds of premonitory signs to [show] his people the way to salvation, while they owe their destruction to folly and calamities of their own choosing … Some of these portents they [the Jews] treated with contempt, until the ruin of their country and their own destruction convicted them of their folly” (Jewish War, 6.310, 315).

Thus Josephus—undoubtedly a highly biased interpretation of what happened.

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Notes

a. Theodore H. Feder, “Solomon, Socrates and Aristotle,” BAR, September/October 2008.

1. Jewish War, 6.244, 250, notes, tr. H. St. J. Thackeray.

2. Dio Cassius, Roman History, 66.22.3–23.5.

3. Pliny the Younger, Letters, 6.16, 6.20.

4. Pliny the Younger, Letters, 6.20.

5. See John J. Collins, “Sibylline Oracles,” Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992).

6. [vv. 115–116, 125–127, 130–135] John J. Collins, “Sibylline Oracles—A New Translation and Introduction,” in James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (New York: Doubleday, 1983), p. 387. Collins makes explicit in a footnote the clearly implied connection between the two events.

7. See Carlo Giordano and Isidoro Kahn, The Jews in Pompeii Heculaneum, Stabiae and in the Cities of Campania Felix 3rd ed., Wilhelmina F. Jashemski, trans. (Rome: Bardi Editore, 2003), pp. 75–76.

8. Another more ambiguous inscription was also found in the destruction of Pompeii, in Region 9, Insula 11, House 14, reading in Latin letters “Poinium Cherem.” Cherem could mean “excommunication” or “destruction” if the first letter is a het in Hebrew. But even cherem with a het could also mean consecrated to God, or holy. If the first meaning of cherem with a het was intended, this inscription, too, could refer to the destruction of Pompeii as God’s absolute condemnation of Pompeii for the prior Roman destruction of his Temple. The preceding Poinium presents a problem, however. Poinium could be the Latin form of a Greek noun ending in -nion, that is, poimnion, meaning “flock.” And the ch in cherem could also be a Latin transcription of Hebrew chaf as well as het, in which case cherem would mean “vineyard.” The writer of the inscription may have been using the imagery of the prophet Isaiah: Israel is “the flock of the Lord” (Isaiah 40:11); similarly, “the vineyard (cherem) of the Lord of Hosts is the House of Israel” (Isaiah 5:7). “In this sense the cherem of the inscription could be understood as the name of the Jewish community at Pompeii …” (Giordano and Kahn, The Jews in Pompeii, Herculaneum, Stabiae and in the Cities of Campania Felix, p. 99). On the other hand, poinium could also be understood as Greek poine, similar in meaning to the Latin poena; that is, punishment, which would fit nicely with the meaning of cherem as “destruction” or “excommunication.” See Giordano and Kahn, pp. 89–103, for an extended discussion of these issues.

9. Natural History, Book XXXI, pp. 931ff.

10. I am indebted to Philip King for these translations from the Latin.

11. Mary Beard, The Fires of Vesuvius (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2008), p. 24. See also p. 302.

12. Masada II, The Latin and Greek Documents, (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1989), p. 166.

13. We have posted the full text of Professor Curtis’s response to me online at www.biblicalarchaeology.org/e-features.

14. Professor Cotton also cites in support of her contention J.B. Frey, “Les Juifs a Pompei,” Revue Biblique 32 (1933), p. 365. Frey makes similar arguments to that of Curtis. Moreover, he is unwilling even to admit that there were Jews in Pompeii or even that the quotation from Pliny demonstrates that the Jews had a special kosher garum. His argument decisif is that “aucune garantie donee par des paiens n’aurait suffi a des Juifs, car en pareille matiere la parole des Gentils ne pouvait faire foi” (at p. 373).

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on February 20, 2014.

The post The Destruction of Pompeii—God’s Revenge? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

π, or pi, has a value of 3.14159265…

How do you find the holy grail of mathematics?

You start with a circle, which is the easiest geometric shape to draw (just fix one end of a string in place and swing the other end around it, inscribing a circle). Then measure the circle’s perimeter (also known as the circumference) and the distance across its widest point (the diameter). Divide the circumference by the diameter—and you have that well-known but eternally daunting number, π, or pi, which has a value of 3.14159265…

That is part of the mystique of pi: Whatever the size of the circle, the value remains the same (what mathematicians call a “constant”). Unfortunately, pi is also “irrational,” meaning that it is impossible to calculate its value completely; the decimals go on forever without regular repetition.

Calculating the value of pi has been a puzzle for millennia. One of the earliest implied values is given in a Biblical passage describing the construction of a huge basin for Solomon’s Temple: “Then [Hiram of Tyre] made the molten sea; it was round, ten cubits from brim to brim, and five cubits high. A line of thirty cubits would encircle it completely” (1 Kings 7:23). In other words, pi = 30÷10 or 3.

The Temple craftsmen obviously obtained these numbers through direct measurement—perhaps using a rope—and they came up with a simple approximation of pi. More than a thousand years earlier, the Sumerians had developed a mathematical method for measuring the dimensions of circles, that of inscribed equilateral polygons (a geometric shape with three or more straight sides). The ancient Sumerians realized that the perimeter of a polygon inscribed in a circle would always be slightly smaller than the circle’s circumference. This allowed them to make a fairly accurate measurement of a curved line, which is almost impossible to do with ordinary measuring devices.

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According to a 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablet discovered in 1936, the Sumerians found the ratio of the perimeter of an inscribed hexagon to that of the circle to be 3456/3600, which factors out to 216/225. The Sumerians could thus measure any circle (by measuring an inscribed polygon and making the adjustment). Then they could measure the circle’s diameter—a simple straight line—and divide it into the circumference, producing an approximation of pi. In this way, the Sumerians found pi to be 3 23/216 (3.1065), a much better calculation of pi than the Biblical value. Why wasn’t this known to the Israelites at the time of Solomon? We’ll never know.

In an ancient Egyptian mathematical treatise known as the Rhind Papyrus (c. 1650 B.C.E.), a scribe named Ahmes states that a certain circular field 9 units across (that is, with a diameter of 9) had an area of 64 units. Today, we know the relations between the diameter, circumference and area of a circle: Area equals pi multiplied by the square of the radius (half the diameter), or a = πr². Changing this equation around, we find that pi equals the area divided by the square of the radius. The field’s radius is 4.5 (half of nine); the square of 4.5 is 20.25; and 64 divided by 20.25 equals 3.16. Therefore, π = 3.16. Thus some modern commentators have given Ahmes credit for a close approximation of pi. But was our ancient Egyptian scribe aware of this formula? Almost certainly not. He didn’t know he was approximating pi, and I should not like to give him credit for it.

Our next significant player is the Greek philosopher Antiphon. In the late fifth century B.C.E., he realized that if successive polygons were inscribed within a circle, doubling the number of sides each time, the difference between the polygon’s perimeter and the circle’s circumference would diminish toward zero (think of a circle as a polygon with an infinite number of sides). While Antiphon didn’t calculate pi using his method (as far as we know), his idea would be the basis of all improvements in the value of pi until the 17th century C.E.

Two centuries later, Archimedes (c. 287–212 B.C.E.) inscribed a hexagon in a circle; then he doubled the sides until he had a 96-sided polygon inscribed in the circle. At the same time, he superscribed a similar series of polygons outside the circle. By this method, he found that pi was greater than 3.14084 and less than 3.14286—an extremely close approximation of the actual value (3.14159265). Archimedes was the first mathematician to bound pi in this way, by calculating its upper and lower limits. Thus he should be credited with making the search for the value of pi a science.

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For almost 2,000 years, no one improved on Archimedes’s method of inscribed and superscribed polygons, though refinements were made in the calculation. The second-century C.E. Alexandrian astronomer Ptolemy, for instance, used Archimedes’s method to reach a value of 3.14167. And the method was invented independently by Indian and Chinese mathematicians. In the fifth century C.E., the Chinese mathematician Tsu Chung-Chih and his son Tsu Keng-Chih, using the polygon method, found that pi falls between 3.1415926 and 3.1415927, which is precise enough for most purposes even today.

The calculation of accurate trigonometric tables in the 16th century made the Archimedian approach much easier to pursue than before. The French lawyer and amateur mathematician François Viète (1540–1603) used trigonometry to calculate the perimeter of a polygon with 393,216 sides, pinpointing p somewhere between 3.1415926535 and 3.1415926537.

But it was Isaac Newton’s development of calculus that reduced the calculation of pi to plain old arithmetic. In 1655, John Wallis published his proof of the infinite product π÷2 = 2 x 2/3 x 4/3 x 4/5 x 6/5 x 6/7… And James Gregory, in 1671, found the infinite sum of π÷4 = 1 – 1/3 + 1/5 – 1/7 + 1/9 – 1/11… These formulas take hundreds of steps to arrive at even the first few digits of pi, but they demonstrated the feasibility of the new method. Within a few years, Newton found a series of formulas that quickly gave him a 16-digit expansion of pi. From then on, further computation of pi was only a matter of desire and endurance.

When it comes to endurance, nothing can beat a computer. In 1949, the primitive ENIAC computer, the first of the “giant brains,” was fed an algorithm for calculating pi. Three days later, it arrived at an answer 2,037 digits long. Today programs are available that allow you to calculate a billion digits of pi on your Pentium computer over the weekend.

What’s the point of computing pi out that far? There is none. If we knew the diameter of the universe, the first 30 digits of pi would theoretically enable us to calculate its circumference to within a millimeter. That’s closer than we would ever need to come; the rest is just showing off.

Kim Jonas, a former college math professor, is currently a statistician for the U.S. Census Bureau.

“Origins: 3.14159265…” by Kim Jonas originally appeared in the March/April 2000 issue of Archaeology Odyssey. The article was first republished in Bible History Daily on March 14, 2014.

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