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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Related reading in Bible History Daily

Tabitha in the Bible

Deborah in the Bible

Anna in the Bible

The Creation of Woman in the Bible

What Does the Bible Say About Infertility?

5 Ways Women Participated in the Early Church

The post Scandalous Women in the Bible appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Rembrandt, Moses with the Tablets of the Law, public domain.
Moses, pictured here in a painting by 17th-century Baroque artist Guido Reni, is one of the most iconic figures in the Hebrew Bible. Despite Moses’ obvious Semitic heritage, the name “Moses” is actually Egyptian, like that of other Biblical figures (Phinehas, Hophni, Hur, Merari). All of them are referred to in the Bible’s Levite sources (E, P and D of the Documentary Hypothesis). Levites like Moses fled Egypt to form a new nation of Israelites who were to “love your neighbor.”

It’s one of the most famous lines in the Bible: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18).

Impressive. Fascinating. Inspiring. Capable of a thousand interpretations and raising 10,000 questions. A remarkable proposition coming out of ancient Judah, which was embedded in the Near Eastern world of wars, slavery, class and ethnic divisions and discriminations of all kinds.

One interpretation of this verse that has been making the rounds for years turns this grand idea on its head: The claim is that the verse means to love only one’s fellow Israelites as oneself. Instead of being inclusive, it’s actually exclusive. Is there anything to this claim?

We have to start by going all the way back to the Exodus, which the combination of archaeology and text has led me to argue was historical; it actually happened. Ninety percent of the arguments against its historicity are not about the event itself but about the size of the event: All of Israel! Two million people (as suggested by Exodus 12:37–38)! Impossible!

But the evidence of a real but smaller exodus is a different matter. The earliest Biblical sources—the very early Song of Miriam (Exodus 15) and the text known in critical Biblical scholarship as J—don’t mention any numbers.

Moreover, there is good evidence that only the Levites were in Egypt; it was they who left and then merged with the rest of Israel. Note that only Levites have numerous Egyptian names (e.g., Phinehas, Hophni, Hur, Merari, Moses). The Levites alone reflect Egyptian material culture: Their Tabernacle has parallels with the battle tent of Pharaoh Rameses II.¹ Their ark has parallels with Egyptian sacred barks.² The Levite sources alone require circumcision, which was practiced in Egypt. There is much more. For the whole picture, see my presentation at a recent conference titled Out of Egypt held last year at the University of California, San Diego, which BAR has put online at https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/exodus/video-the-exodus-based-on-the-sources-themselves/.

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One more mark of the Levite sources is crucial and will bring us back now to the interpretation of “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Is neighbor exclusive or inclusive?

Of the four sources of the Torah or Pentateuch that critical scholars refer to as J, E, P and D,^a three—E, P (the Priestly source) and D (the Deuteronomistic source)—are Levite sources. In these Levite sources, the command to treat aliens fairly comes up 52 times! (How many times does this come up in the non-Levite source, J? Answer: None.)

The first occurrence of the word torah in the Torah is: “There shall be one torah for the citizen and for the alien who resides among you” (Exodus 12:49, from the Levite source P).

Why this frequent concern for aliens? We might reasonably guess that it was a matter of geography. Israel lay at the point where Africa, Asia and Europe meet. People of all backgrounds regularly passed through. So we can imagine a nation at that fulcrum of ancient trade routes having a policy of welcome to all those valuable aliens. Still, not all countries that have desired the benefits of trade have emphasized this principle. Again and again, all three Levite sources of the text (E, P and D) rather give this reason:

And you shall not persecute an alien, and you shall not oppress him, because you were aliens in the land of Egypt.

Exodus 22:20

And you shall not oppress an alien — since you know the alien’s soul, because you were aliens in the land of Egypt.

Exodus 23:9

You shall not persecute him. The alien who resides with you shall be to you like a citizen of yours, and you shall love him as yourself, because you were aliens in the land of Egypt.

Leviticus 19:33–34

So you shall love the alien, because you were aliens in the land of Egypt.

Deuteronomy 10:19

You shall not abhor an Egyptian, because you were an alien in his land.

Deuteronomy 23:8

You shall not bend judgment of an alien … You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and YHWH, your God, redeemed you from there. On account of this I command you to do this thing.

Deuteronomy 24:17–18

Why should we be good to aliens? Because we know how it feels. We know the alien’s soul. So we won’t persecute foreigners; we won’t abhor them; we won’t oppress them; we won’t judge them unfairly; we’ll treat them the same as we treat ourselves; we’ll love them.

Indeed, one possible meaning of the word Levi in Hebrew is “alien.”³

It is certainly true that there are also some harsh passages toward foreigners in the Bible: Dispossess the Canaanites, destroy Jericho, etc. But the evidence in the ground, discussed and debated many times in BAR’s pages, indicates that most of that (the so-called Conquest of the land) never happened.^b Moreover in far more laws and instances, the principle of treatment of aliens is positive.

For example: Don’t rape a captured woman in war (Deuteronomy 21:10ff).

Don’t abhor an Edomite (Deuteronomy 23:8).

If you happen upon your enemy’s ox or donkey straying, bring it back to him.

If you see the donkey of someone who hates you sagging under its burden, and you would hold back from helping him: You shall help him (Exodus 23:4–5).

The Bible permits a violent response to those who threaten Israel’s existence, but it still forbids a massacre if they surrender.

The very fact that the Bible’s sources start off with the creation of the earth and all of humankind instead of starting with Israel itself is relevant here. If any of us were asked to write a history of the United States, would we start by saying, “Well, first there was the Big Bang, and then …”? The Biblical authors saw Israel’s destiny as being to bring good to all those foreign nations and peoples—to the earth. It is not a minor point. It appears in God’s first words to Abraham, in God’s first words to Isaac, and in God’s first words to Jacob: Your descendants’ purpose is to be that “all the nations/families of the earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3; 26:2–4; 28:10–14).

Which brings me back to the opening question: Is “Love your neighbor as yourself” meant exclusively or inclusively? Does this admonition refer only to your Israelite neighbor or to all humankind?

When the text already directs every Israelite to love aliens as oneself, what would be the point of saying to love only Israelites—in the very same chapter! Now my friend Jack Milgrom, of blessed memory, wrote that it is precisely because the love of the alien is specifically mentioned there that love of “neighbor” must mean only a fellow Israelite.⁴

I see his point, but his position would have been more likely if the verse about love of aliens had come first in the text and the love of neighbor had came later. But the instruction to love aliens comes after we’ve already had the instruction to love your neighbor as oneself. That is, if you tell people first to love their aliens and then give a second instruction to love their neighbors, that second instruction really does sound like an addition because the first group, aliens, obviously doesn’t include the second group, neighbors. But if you tell people first to love their neighbors, then a second instruction to love aliens a few verses later can make sense as a specification for anyone who would have thought that love of neighbor didn’t include loving others as well.

Watch full-length lectures from the Out of Egypt: Israel’s Exodus Between Text and Memory, History and Imagination conference, which addressed some of the most challenging issues in Exodus scholarship. The international conference was hosted by Calit2’s Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego in San Diego, CA.

Did the Biblical authors think that the specifications referring to aliens were necessary? We know that they did because they said it 52 times in the Torah! And, in any case, Milgrom and I would both recognize that the bottom line is that one is supposed to love both, alien and neighbor, whether they overlap or not.

So from where did the idea come, that the Hebrew word for neighbor in this verse, re‘a, means only a member of one’s own group? We can get a better idea of what the Hebrew word for neighbor, re‘a, means by looking at other places in the Bible where this word is used.

The first occurrence of re‘a is in the story of the tower of Babel (Babylon). It is the Bible’s story of the origin of different nations and languages. It involves every person on earth: “And they said each to his re‘a …” (Genesis 11:3). That is, the term refers to every human, without any distinctions by group.

Now, one might say, though, that the word might still refer only to members of one’s own group because, at this point in the story, all humans are in fact still members of a single group. So let’s go to the next occurrence of the word. In the story of Judah and Tamar, Judah has a re‘a named Hirah the Adullamite (Genesis 38:12, 20). Hirah is a Canaanite! He comes from the (then) Canaanite city of Adullam. He cannot be a member of Judah’s clan because, at this point in the story, that clan, namely the Israelites, consists only of Jacob and his children and any grandchildren.

In Exodus 11:2 the word appears in both the masculine and feminine in the account of how the Israelites are instructed to ask their Egyptian neighbors for silver and gold items before their exodus from Egypt. The word there refers quite precisely to non-Israelites. In Exodus 2:13, on the other hand, in the story of Moses’ intervention between two “Hebrews” who are fighting, he says to the one at fault, “Why do you strike your re‘a?” So in that episode it refers to an Israelite.

Snark/Art Resource, NY
TEACHING THE LAW. In this ninth-century illustration from the Bible of Charles the Bald, Moses explains the law to the Israelites. Fifty-two occurrences in the Bible’s Levite texts (E, P and D) refer to the importance of treating foreigners fairly—no distinction between an Israelite and a non-Israelite. “Love your neighbor as yourself” is also from a Levite text. Considering this pervasive Levite stress on the fair treatment of the alien, why would a Levite text then say you only need to love an Israelite “neighbor”? Our author believes it doesn’t—“neighbor” includes all humankind.

In short, the word re‘a is used to refer to an Israelite, a Canaanite, an Egyptian, or to everyone on earth.

And still some people say that “Love your re‘a as yourself” means just your fellow Israelite. When the Ten Commandments include one that says: “You shall not bear false witness against your re‘a” (Exodus 20:16; Deuteronomy 5:17), do they think that this meant that it was okay to lie in a trial if the defendant was a foreigner (even though elsewhere, as we saw, the law forbids Israel to “bend the judgment of an alien”)? When another of the Ten Commandments says not to covet your re‘a’s wife (Exodus 20:17; Deuteronomy 5:18), do they think that this meant that it was okay to covet a Hittite’s wife (even though elsewhere the Bible condemns King David for doing just that)?

Those who contend that “neighbor” refers only to one’s neighbors of your own people frequently cite its context. They quote the sentence that precedes the sentence about loving one’s neighbor. Looking at the two together, it reads like this:

You shall not take revenge, and you shall not keep on at the children of your people.
And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Since the two sentences were put together into a single verse when verse numbers were added to the Bible, some interpreters have assumed that the “love your neighbor as yourself” line must also be just about “the children of your people.” Why? No reason at all. Read Leviticus 19, carefully. Coming near the very center of the Torah, it is a remarkable mixture of laws of all kinds. It goes back and forth between ethical laws and ritual laws: sacrifice, heresy, injustice, mixing seeds, wearing mixed fabrics (shaatnez), consulting the dead, gossip, robbing, molten idols, caring for the poor. It has everything! I tell my students that if you’re on a desert island and can have only one chapter of the Bible with you, make it Leviticus 19. And its laws all come mixed in between each other. No line can be judged by what comes before it or after it. And, remember, there are no verse numbers or periods or commas in the original.

For more on the Book of Leviticus, read “What Does the Bible Say About Tattoos?” and “Book of Leviticus Verses Recovered from Burnt Hebrew Bible Scroll.”

The much respected Bible scholar Harry Orlinsky made the context argument in 1974.⁵ Because of his scholarly standing, he was followed by others. Robert Wright cited him in The Evolution of God.⁶ Wright had consulted with me on the matter of loving the alien, but unfortunately we didn’t discuss the “neighbor” verse; if we had, I would have cautioned him. Hector Avalos also followed Orlinsky, saying “as Orlinsky has deftly noted …”⁷ The “deftly noted” remark has been used (and often quoted) over and over again in connection with the interpretation of this verse. It was not deft at all.

The same “context” mistake was made by John Hartung, an evolutionary anthropologist⁸ who was cited and followed by Richard Dawkins in his bestselling The God Delusion, saying, “‘Love thy neighbor’ didn’t mean what we now think it means. It meant only ‘Love another Jew.’”⁹ Hartung emphasized the importance of context, but he then used only the one verse (quoted above), seemingly unaware that the joining of its two statements was done by those who created numbered verses centuries after the Bible was written.

“Love your neighbor as yourself” remains: Famous. Impressive. Fascinating. Inspiring. You can accept or challenge it. And you can decide whether you will follow it in your own life. But don’t change what it means.

“Love Your Neighbor: Only Israelites or Everyone?” by Richard Elliott Friedman was originally published in the September/October 2014 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. It was first republished in Bible History Daily on August 19, 2014.

Richard Elliott Friedman is the Ann and Jay Davis Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Georgia and Katzin Professor of Jewish Civilization Emeritus at the University of California, San Diego, and author of the classic Who Wrote the Bible? (1987). He was a visiting fellow at Cambridge and Oxford, a senior fellow of the American Schools of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, a visiting professor at the University of Haifa and participated in the City of David Project archaeological excavations of Jerusalem.

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Notes

a. Richard Elliott Friedman, “Taking the Biblical Text Apart,” Bible Review, Fall 2005.

b: Aharon Kempinski, “Israelite Conquest or Settlement? New Light from Tell Masos,” BAR, September 1976;

• Yigael Yadin, “Israel Comes to Canaan: Is the Biblical Account of the Israelite Conquest of Canaan Historically Reliable?” BAR, March/April 1982;
• Ziony Zevit, “The Problem of Ai,” BAR, March/April 1985;
• David Ussishkin, “Lachish—Key to the Israelite Conquest of Canaan?” BAR, January/February 1987;
• Bryant G. Wood, “Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho? A New Look at the Archaeological Evidence,” BAR, March/April 1990;
• Hershel Shanks, “When Did Ancient Israel Begin?” BAR, January/February 2012;
• Amnon Ben-Tor, “Who Destroyed Canaanite Hazor?” BAR, July/August 2013.

1. Michael Homan, To Your Tents O Israel (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 111–115.

2. Scott Noegel demonstrated this in an impressive paper at the Out of Egypt conference: “The Ark of the Covenant and Egyptian Sacred Barks: A Comparative Study” (conference, San Diego, May 31–June 9, 2013).

3. William Propp, Exodus 1–18, The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1999), p. 128.

4. Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 2000), p. 1654; and see bibliography there.

5. Harry Orlinsky, Essays in Biblical Culture and Bible Translation (New York: Ktav, 1974), p. 83.

6. Wright cited him in The Evolution of God (New York: Little, 2009), pp. 235–236.

7. Hector Avalos, Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2005), p. 140.

8. John Hartung, “Love Thy Neighbor: The Evolution of In-Group Morality,” Struggles for Existence (blog), (strugglesforexistence.com/?p=article_p&id=13).

9. Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2006), p. 253.

The post Love Your Neighbor: Only Israelites or Everyone? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

What purpose did creation stories in Genesis serve? Were they Biblical myths? Pictured here is The Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man (c. 1617) by Flemish painters Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder.

Were the creation stories in Genesis meant to be taken literally?

Maybe not, says biblical scholar Shawna Dolansky in her Biblical Views column “The Multiple Truths of Myths” in the January/February 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Our world is very different from the world in which the Biblical authors lived over 2,000 years ago. The ancient world did not have Google, Wikipedia and smartphones—access to information on human history and scientific achievements developed over millennia at the touch of their fingertips.

Many scholars believe that the ancient Israelites had creation stories that were told and retold; these stories eventually reached the Biblical authors, who wrote them down in Genesis and other books of the Bible. Creation stories in Genesis were etiological, Shawna Dolansky and other Biblical scholars argue.¹ That is, the creation stories in Genesis served to provide answers to why the world was the way it was, such as why people wear clothes and why women experience pain during childbirth.

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Creation stories in Genesis were among the many myths that were told in the ancient Near East. Today we may think of myths as beliefs that are not true, but as a literary genre, myths “are stories that convey and reinforce aspects of a culture’s worldview: many truths,” writes Dolansky. So to call something a myth—in this sense—does not necessarily imply that it is not true.

Scholars argue that Biblical myths arose within the context of other ancient Near Eastern myths that sought to explain the creation of the world. Alongside Biblical myths were Mesopotamian myths in which, depending on the account, the creator was Enlil, Mami or Marduk. In ancient Egyptian mythology, the creator of the world was Atum in one creation story and Ptah in another.

Shawna Dolansky

“Like other ancient peoples, the Israelites told multiple creation stories,” writes Shawna Dolansky in her Biblical Views column. “The Bible gives us three (and who knows how many others were recounted but not preserved?). Genesis 1 differs from Genesis 2–3, and both diverge from a third version alluded to elsewhere in the Bible, a myth of the primordial battle between God and the forces of chaos known as Leviathan (e.g., Psalm 74), Rahab (Psalm 89) or the dragon (Isaiah 27; 51). This battle that preceded creation has the Mesopotamian Enuma Elish as its closest analogue. In Enuma Elish, the god Marduk defeats the chaotic waters in the form of the dragon Tiamat and recycles her corpse to create the earth.”

In what other ways do Biblical myths parallel ancient Near Eastern myths? What can we learn about the world in which the ancient Israelites lived through the creation stories in Genesis? Learn more by reading the full Biblical Views column “The Multiple Truths of Myths” by Shawna Dolansky in the January/February 2016 issue of BAR.

BAS Library Members: Read the full Biblical Views column “The Multiple Truths of Myths” by Shawna Dolansky in the January/February 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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

Notes

1. For example, see Ziony Zevit, “Was Eve Made from Adam’s Rib—or His Baculum?” BAR, September/October 2015; Mary Joan Winn Leith, “ReViews: Restoring Nudity,” BAR, May/June 2014.

Related reading in Bible History Daily

The Adam and Eve Story: Eve Came From Where?

The Creation of Woman in the Bible

What Does the Bible Say About Infertility?

How the Serpent in the Garden Became Satan

Love Your Neighbor: Only Israelites or Everyone?

The Animals Went in Two by Two, According to Babylonian Ark Tablet

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library

The Creation Story from Genesis

Creation Myths Breed Violence

The Persistence of Chaos in God’s Creation

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on January 31, 2016.

The post Should We Take Creation Stories in Genesis Literally? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Rahab the harlot? It may be a surprise to some readers, but Biblical prostitutes were commonly mentioned in the text. What was the profession of Rahab in the Bible? Here, she assists Israelite spies down what may be a casemate wall, within which her home may have been located. Engraving by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Germany, 1860. Image: CCI/The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.

Rahab helped two Israelites when they came to spy out the land of Jericho. She hid them on her roof when the king came for them. When the coast was clear, Rahab let the spies down by a rope through the window.

So what do we know about Rahab the harlot? Was she a Biblical prostitute? The Biblical text identifies her as a zônāh, a prostitute (Joshua 2:1), but she seems more like a landlady. Indeed, the first-century C.E. historian Josephus reports that she kept an inn. The consonants that comprise the word “prostitute” in Hebrew are znh, which are the same consonants that comprise the Hebrew word for a female who gives food and provisions. The text doesn’t describe Rahab’s profession negatively, as one might expect from a description of Biblical prostitutes. The lifestyle of Rahab in the Bible continues to elude us. Whether we remember her as Rahab the harlot or innkeeper, she was a Biblical heroine.

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We may be able to understand the chronology of the story by examining whether Rahab lived on the wall of Jericho or in the city’s casemate. The structure of the city wall varied in different periods in ancient Israel. In the Late Bronze Age, the time in which the story of Rahab in the Bible was set, thick defensive walls were common; people could conceivably have lived on them. During the Iron Age II period (sixth century B.C.E.), when the Book of Joshua was thought to have been edited, Israelite settlements were often surrounded by a casemate wall, which was comprised of two parallel walls with periodic perpendicular walls, forming casemates, or rooms, that people lived within. Analyzing the Hebrew words for “within the wall,” which described the residence of Rahab the harlot, along with the chronology of defensive construction in ancient Israel, Frendo suggests that Rahab lived on the wall. Frendo proposes that an editor changed the Hebrew to reflect that Rahab lived in the wall of Jericho within a casemate wall, rather than on top of a thick defensive wall, to make the text understandable to people in Israel during the late Iron Age.

BAS Library Members: Read the full article “Was Rahab Really a Harlot?” by Anthony J. Frendo as it appears in the September/October 2013 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on September 23, 2013.

Related reading in Bible History Daily:

Scandalous Women in the Bible

How Bad Was Jezebel?

Lilith

Lilith in the Bible and Mythology

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library:

Was Rahab Really a Harlot?

Forgotten Heroines of the Exodus: The exclusion of women from Moses’ vision

Cult Prostitution in Ancient Israel?

The post Rahab the Harlot? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

The fateful encounter between Judah and his daughter-in-law Tamar is depicted in this 17th-century painting by Dutch artist Gerbrand van den Eeckhout. In most translations of the story of Judah and Tamar (Genesis 38), Tamar is described as a cult prostitute. As Edward Lipiński argues, however, there is nothing in the story of Judah and Tamar to suggest sacred prostitution was involved. While temple prostitutes were part of Canaanite Ashtoreth worship, they were not a feature of Israelite religion.

Sacred prostitution was common throughout the ancient world and was particularly associated with Ashtoreth worship, one of the chief Canaanite goddesses. While many scholars have assumed sacred prostitution was practiced in ancient Israel, too, the BAR article “Cult Prostitution in Ancient Israel?” by Edward Lipiński reveals that neither the Bible nor archaeology provides any clear evidence that Israelite religion incorporated the sexual rites of Ashtoreth worship.

Some Biblical scholars, for example, have interpreted the story of Judah and Tamar as a case of sacred prostitution. According to Genesis 38, the unsuspecting Judah mistook his daughter-in-law Tamar for a veiled “prostitute” (Hebrew zonah). For her services, Judah promised Tamar a sheep and gave her his seal as assurance the debt would be honored. When Judah’s friend returned to redeem the pledge, he asked in a nearby village where he could find the qedeshah (a Hebrew word most Bibles translate as “cult prostitute”). As Lipiński argues, however, there is nothing in the story of Judah and Tamar to suggest sacred prostitution was involved; rather, it seems that zonah and qedeshah were synonyms and that the latter has simply been misinterpreted by translators.

Qedeshah likely originally referred to “consecrated maidens” who were employed in Canaanite and later Phoenician temples devoted to Ashtoreth worship. As such, the Biblical writers came to associate the fertility rites of Ashtoreth worship with sacred prostitution, and the word qedeshah, therefore, came to be used as a pejorative term for “prostitute.”

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Indeed, archaeology has shown that Ashtoreth worship and associated rites of sacred prostitution were common throughout the ancient Mediterranean. At the Etruscan site of Pyrgi, excavators identified a temple dedicated to Ashtoreth that featured at least 17 small rooms that may have served as quarters for temple prostitutes.

Similarly, at the site of Dura-Europos on the Euphrates, archaeologists uncovered a temple dedicated to Atargatis, the Aramaic goddess of love. Fronting the entrance to the temple were nearly a dozen small rooms, many with low benches. Although the rooms were used primarily for sacred meals, they may also have been reserved for the sexual services of women jailed in the temple for adultery. Such a situation prevailed at the temple of Apollo at Bulla Regia, where a woman was found buried with an inscription reading: “Adulteress. Prostitute. Seize (me), because I fled from Bulla Regia.”

Sacred prostitution, therefore, existed in much of the ancient world and reflected the ritual practices of Ashtoreth worship. In ancient Israel, however, sacred prostitution was simply a synonym for harlotry. Modern translations often unfortunately give another impression.

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

Related reading in Bible History Daily

Was Mary Magdalene Wife of Jesus? Was Mary Magdalene a Prostitute?

Scandalous Women in the Bible

Paul and Sacred Prostitution in Corinth

5 Ways Women Participated in the Early Church

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library

Cult Prostitution in Ancient Israel?

Classical Corner: Paul, Prostitutes, and the Cult of Aphrodite in Corinth

How to Find a Brothel in Pompeii

How Mary Magdalene Became a Whore

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on January 24, 2014.

The post Sacred Prostitution in the Story of Judah and Tamar appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Ever modest, Joshua hangs back as Moses leads him by the hand in this 15th-century stained-glass panel from the Church of St. Lawrence in Nuremberg, Germany. For Elie Wiesel, Joshua is a sad, troubled character despite his successes in battle and his unfailing devotion to Moses and God. Lacking experience in war, Joshua is sent by Moses to fight the Amalekites; when Joshua succeeds Moses, he leads the bloody conquest of Canaan. Yet this reluctant warrior retires to live out his days with only lonely memories, and when he dies, he is buried without the pomp and circumstance usually afforded a hero. Wiesel notes an immense sadness about Joshua in the Bible, a sadness caused perhaps by the noise and fury of Joshua’s life. Image: Sonia Halliday.

Joshua, the perfect disciple. Obedient and humble. The man whose devotion to his master can serve as an example to all. God’s chosen, just as Moses had been. The servant become leader, whom God and Moses do not cease to encourage—so much so that we wonder why he had such a need. Is it because, in his humility, Joshua felt so inferior to Moses that he believed himself inadequate, unqualified and even unworthy to complete a task that only his master was capable of completing satisfactorily? Joshua will inherit political and religious authority from Moses but not his prophetic style. God accomplished miracles for Joshua. He went so far as to upset the laws of nature by ordering the sun to stand still, but Joshua’s speech lacks the magic that emanates from the words of the prophets.

A great melancholy emerges from his life story, a sadness that stays with him to the end of his days. Is it because his life unfolds in the midst of noise and fury?

In truth, Joshua makes me afraid. His personality is too dark, involved in too many battles, too many confrontations. The man of blood and glory, he is the one sought out when someone is needed to throw himself into the fray, to push back or attack the enemy. To read his book is to move forward into the ashes, among disfigured corpses.

In the Scriptures, his position is assured. The image he projects is always without fault. Admirable is his devotion to Moses: Always stationed at the entrance to his tent, Joshua is the guardian of the door. He is at Moses’ side only when he is called. Never would he disturb Moses in his solitude.

Only one incident could, without surprising us, have a negative connotation: Joshua learns that two young men, Eldad and Medad, are walking around the encampment, prophesizing to the people. Annoyed by their lack of respect, Joshua hastens to inform Moses and suggests that he imprison them. But Moses, more humane and more generous than ever, rebukes him: “Are you so concerned about my honor that you think you need to protect me? May all the people become prophets!” (Numbers 11:29). That said, Moses always has confidence in Joshua, and we do too. He carries out the missions entrusted to him scrupulously, with efficiency and devotion—that is certain. Are they dangerous? Joshua knows neither fear nor doubt. When Moses names him military commander and sends him to fight against the Amalekites, he goes.

What has he done to learn how to command? No matter. He confronts the enemy, and he wins the battle. When Moses orders him to join the spies sent to cross the Canaanite frontier and bring back a precise account of the military and economic capacities of the land promised to the people of Israel, he goes. The questionnaire the scouts receive from Moses reads like an espionage document.

The commander in chief wants to know “whether the population is strong or weak, few in number or many, if the country is good or bad, if the towns are open or fortified, the land fertile or barren, if there are trees or not” (Numbers 13:18–20). The expedition takes 40 days. The text gives us the opinion of the majority and that of the minority: ten against two. Who are the ten? Eminent heads of the tribes of Israel. Their accounts are desperate and hopeless: They say the country runs with milk and honey, but the people who live there are powerful. They are stronger than we are, the towns are large and fortified, the people are gigantic. In their eyes, and in ours, we are no more than grasshoppers. The ten make up an overwhelming majority, but it is the minority of two who carry the day. Joshua, head of the tribe of Ephraim, and Caleb, head of the tribe of Judah, see things differently. Their report is optimistic. Reflecting God’s design, their view prevails—but at a price. Terrified, the people rise up with cries and lamentations against Moses and Aaron: “If only we had died in the land of Egypt…” In vain, Joshua and Caleb try to reason with and to encourage the demoralized Israelites. The more enraged among them attack the two and are ready to stone them. That overwhelming, depressing day will remain marked in the collective memory of Israel by the punishment imposed: It is the moment when God decides that of all those who came out of Egypt, only Joshua and Caleb shall enter the Promised Land. The ten skeptical scouts will die soon after, and the others rescued from slavery in Egypt will perish in the desert.

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In the book that bears his name, Joshua impresses us with his harshness: it depicts a violence, even a thirst for violence, that is found nowhere else. The conquest of the land of Canaan occurs with fire and blood. Too much destruction at every turn. The only moment of tenderness in this account is the story of Rahab in Jericho. The brave and generous prostitute saves Joshua’s spies. In exchange, legend gives her Joshua as bridegroom.

This story is not in his official biography, which, moreover, is very meager. It is only in the midrashic literature that there is interest in Joshua’s private life. His father was a just man, but childless. Nun passed his days praying to God for a son, and his prayer was answered. Moses was still alive, but very old, when Joshua was teaching the Law to the people. One day, Moses came to listen. He remained standing with the crowd. Joshua saw him and, overcome by remorse, cried out in distress. Then a celestial voice was heard: The time has come for the people to receive the teaching of Joshua. Brokenhearted, Joshua submitted. It is because he respected and venerated his Master; he loved him. Of all his qualities, it is his attachment to Moses that moves us the most.

According to the legend, Joshua was then married. He had children: only girls. Having fulfilled the mission that God and Moses had entrusted to him, Joshua retired and lived in the isolation of memory. He was old, the text tells us, and the country rested from the wars.

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He died alone and was buried in a place called Har gaash—a kind of angry mountain, a sort of volcano. The Talmud comments that this illustrates the ingratitude of the people toward their leader. Why was the mountain angry? Because God, in his wrath, was ready to punish his people. Why the rage? Because no one took the trouble to come to Joshua’s funeral. Everyone was too busy. Some were cultivating their gardens, others their vineyards; still others watched over their fires.

Unbelievable, but how true: In war, Joshua had been their leader. Afterwards, the people no longer needed him, to the point that no one came to pay him their final respects, to which all mortal men are entitled, whoever they might be.

How can one not feel sadness when reading Joshua’s story?

Translated by Anne Renner.

The Book of Joshua presents the destruction of the city of Hazor. Read more about the destruction in “Hazor Excavations’ Amnon Ben-Tor Reveals Who Conquered Biblical Canaanites“ and “Scorched Wheat May Provide Answers on the Destruction of Canaanite Tel Hazor.”

Elie Wiesel

The author of more than 30 novels, plays and profiles of Biblical figures, Elie Wiesel received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. This online publication is adapted from Wiesel’s article “Supporting Roles: Joshua,” which was published in Bible Review in December 1998. The article was first republished in Bible History Daily on August 9, 2013. At the inception of Wiesel’s Supporting Roles series in Bible Review, BAS editors wrote:

We are pleased—and honored—to present our readers with the first of a series of insightful essays by Elie Wiesel, the world-renowned author and human rights advocate. Wiesel is best known for his numerous books on the Holocaust and for his profiles of Biblical figures and Hasidic masters. In 1986, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. His occasional series for BR will focus on characters in the Bible that do not occupy center stage—those who play supporting roles.

Read an interview BAR Editor Hershel Shanks conducted with Elie Wiesel and Biblical scholar Frank Moore Cross, republished from BAR, July/August 2004 >>

More by Elie Wiesel in Bible History Daily

Cain and Abel in the Bible

Seth in the Bible

Aaron in the Bible

Jethro in the Bible

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library

Joshua

Hazor and the Battle of Joshua—Is Joshua 11 Wrong?

Peter: How a Flawed Disciple Became Jesus’ Successor on Earth

Moses

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The post Joshua in the Bible appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Opus sectile expert Frankie Snyder is seen here with opus sectile tiles discovered by the Temple Mount Sifting Project. Photo: Temple Mount Sifting Project.

Opus sectile—Latin for “cut work”—is a technique for paving floors and walls in geometric patterns or figurative scenes using meticulously cut and polished polychrome stone tiles.¹ These tiles were crafted and laid with such precision that there was hardly space to insert a knife-blade between them. Opus sectile floors were more prestigious than mosaic ones and were typically used in more important areas of buildings. Along with using frescoed walls, stucco decorations and elegantly carved columns, King Herod the Great (r. 37–4 B.C.E.) introduced this paving technique to Israel to decorate many of his palaces, including Masada, Jericho, Herodium and Cypros.

The first-century C.E. Jewish historian Flavius Josephus comments about the pavements in Herod’s Palace in Jerusalem this way: “The interior fittings are indescribable—the variety of the stones (for species rare in every other country were here collected in abundance).”² Similarly, about the Temple Mount he writes, “The open court [of the Temple Mount] was from end to end variegated with paving of all manner of stones.”³ In his early research at the Sifting Project, Assaf Avraham was able to identify specific paving tiles found in the Temple Mount material as being consistent with the opus sectile technique, and he suggested that some of these may be the paving stones to which Josephus was referring.⁴ Continued research has allowed us to distinguish the time period in which many of the recovered opus sectile tiles were crafted and to mathematically reconstruct possible floor patterns.

DAZZLING DESIGNS. More than a hundred colorful stone tiles that once decorated the floors of King Herod’s Temple Mount have been recovered by the Temple Mount Sifting Project. The technique by which these geometrically-cut tiles were paved is called opus sectile, Latin for “cut work.” Reconstructing the patterns in which these tiles were laid can reveal what the Temple Mount floors looked like in the time of Herod. Photo: Temple Mount Sifting Project.

Roman tiles can be distinguished from others found at the Sifting Project—Byzantine, Crusader and Islamic—by careful analysis of the size, shape, material, color and craftsmanship of each tile. A key characteristic of Herodian tiles is the size, which is based on the Roman foot, 11.6 inches. In the floor patterns, each tile was surrounded by tiles of contrasting colors. Dark tiles were frequently made from bituminous chalk (bitumen) quarried locally just northwest of the Dead Sea, around Nebi Musa. Some of the contrasting light-colored tiles were made from local limestone and calcite-alabaster, while others were made of imported alabaster, africano, breccia coralline, breccia di Aleppo, breccia di Settebasi, giallo antico, pavonazzetto and portasanta from Greece, Asia Minor, Tunisia and Egypt.

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Some opus sectile patterns popular in the Roman world during the first century B.C.E. and the first century C.E. are shown here. These give us some idea of what the flooring on the Temple Mount looked like.

Two blocks comprising four squares arranged in a diamond design in each block have been reconstructed with tiles and tile fragments from the Temple Mount (below left and center).

GEOMETRIC BEAUTY. Roman tiles found by the Temple Mount Sifting Project have patterns that are consistent with popular opus sectile patterns found throughout the Roman world in the first century B.C.E.–first century C.E. These patterns include two blocks comprising four squares arranged in a diamond design in each block (see left and center blocks) and an eight-pointed-star pattern in which eight triangles radiate from a central octagon (see right block). Photo: Temple Mount Sifting Project.

Eight-pointed-stars popular in Roman patterns appear to have been depicted on the Temple Mount. This pattern features an octagonal central tile surrounded by small black triangles and contrasting-colored squares and triangles (above right).

Several Herodian floors use the specifically shaped “Herod’s triangle”—a triangle whose base is equal to its height, like a triangle constructed inside a square. This triangle with the unusual corner angles of 52°-64°-64° was very common in Herodian patterns but was rarely seen in floors elsewhere in the Roman world. When used in a pattern, the Herod’s triangles cause adjacent tiles to also have unusual, but mathematically recognizable, corner angles.

On the Temple Mount, this Herod’s triangle appears to have been used in a way similar to what we find at some of Herod’s palaces. The Temple Mount’s triangular tiles each have a base and height of 1 Roman foot (below right, top).

“HEROD’S TRIANGLE,” a triangle whose base is equal to its height, was featured on several Herodian floors. This pattern appears to have been used on the floors of his Temple Mount, where the triangular tiles have a base and a height of 1 Roman foot (11.65 in) (right, top). Herod’s triangles made of black bitumen have also been used to create the pinwheel pattern popular throughout the Roman period (left image). The popular four-pointed-star pattern can be produced a variety of ways, with Herod’s triangles radiating from a central square tile. The popular four-pointed-star pattern can be produced a variety of ways, with Herod’s triangles radiating from a central square tile (right, bottom). Photo: Temple Mount Sifting Project.

Several smaller Herod’s triangles made of black bitumen were found in the Temple Mount material and may have been used in the popular Roman pinwheel pattern (above, left).

Herod’s triangles can be used to generate fascinating designs. For example, if four Herod’s triangles are drawn inside a 1-Roman-foot square, this creates a versatile template from which to generate several tile patterns. By adding a small square in the center, variations of a popularly used four-pointed-star pattern can be produced, as shown (above right, bottom).

This is just a sample of the opus sectile patterns used on the Temple Mount. Several other complete bitumen opus sectile tiles with dimensions based on the Roman foot have been found in the Sifting Project. Further research may help us understand how these tiles were used in Temple Mount floor patterns.

HEROD’S TEMPLE MOUNT. On the southern end of the Temple Mount was Herod’s Royal Stoa, a roofed, open-air, basilical building where public and commercial activity took place. It was described by Josephus as “more noteworthy than any under the sun.” The Royal Stoa was the perfect place to showcase ornate opus sectile floors. Images: Leen Ritmeyer.

The covered porticoes that surrounded the eastern, northern and western sides of the esplanade may also have had opus sectile floors. Above all, opus sectile pavements may have been used inside the Temple itself.

Once the Temple and its courtyards were destroyed by the Romans, the opus sectile tiles would have been easily looted for use in other buildings. Any tiles made of imported marble or marble-like materials would have been highly prized.⁶

Although the Temple and its courtyards were destroyed almost 2,000 years ago, the fact that we have some of the very tiles that were originally used to pave the floors of the Herodian Temple Mount offers us a unique perspective into the ornate architecture of this extraordinary edifice.

“What the Temple Mount Floor Looked Like” by Frankie Snyder, Gabriel Barkay and Zachi Dvira originally appeared in Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 2016. The article was first republished in Bible History Daily on October 24, 2016.

Notes:

a. See Gabriel Barkay and Zachi Dvira, “Relics in Rubble: The Temple Mount Sifting Project,” Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 2016.

1. Katherine M.D. Dunbabin, Mosaics of the Greek and Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999), pp. 254–264.

2. Josephus, The Jewish War, V.178, trans. by H. St. John Thackeray, Loeb Classical Library 210 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1928).

3. Josephus, War, V.192–193.

4. Assaf Avraham, “Addressing the Issue of Temple Mount Pavements During the Herodian Period,” in Avraham Faust and Eyal Baruch, eds., New Studies on Jerusalem 13 (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University, 2007), pp. 87–96 (Hebrew), English abstract, pp. 22*–23*.

5. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, XV.412, trans. by Ralph Marcus and Allen Wikgren, Loeb Classical Library 489 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1943).

6. James A. Harrell, Lorenzo Lazzarini and Mathias Bruno, “Reuse of Roman Ornamental Stones in Medieval Cairo, Egypt,” in Lorenzo Lazzarini, ed., ASMOSIA 6: Interdisciplinary Studies on Ancient Stone: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference of the Association for the Study of Marble and Other Stones in Antiquity, Venice, June 15–18, 2000 (Padova: Bottega d’Erasmo, 2002), pp. 89–96.

More on Temple Mount Sifting Project Discoveries in Bible History Daily:

Sifting Antiquity on the Temple Mount Sifting Project

Tenth-Century B.C. Stone Seal Discovered by the Temple Mount Sifting Project

Amulet with Cartouche of Thutmose III Discovered in Jerusalem

How Ancient Taxes Were Collected Under King Manasseh

More on Temple Mount history in Bible History Daily:

Searching for the Temple of King Solomon

The Stones of Herod’s Temple Reveal Temple Mount History

What Did Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem Look Like?

The Temple Mount in the Herodian Period (37 BC–70 A.D.) by Leen Ritmeyer

Contested Temple Mount History?

Herod’s Temple Mount Revealed in Al-Aqsa Mosque Restoration

Ancient Chisel Unearthed at the Western Wall

Study Investigates Western Wall Erosion

The post What the Temple Mount Floor Looked Like appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

This large structure was originally built by Herod the Great and later in history alternately served as a church, mosque, church and mosque—and now remains a mosque. The building sits over the Cave of the Patriarchs, the traditional burial ground of the patriarchs and matriarchs at Biblical Hebron: Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah. Photo: Djampa/CC BY-SA 4.0.

According to ancient Jewish historian Josephus, during the First Jewish Revolt against Rome (66–70 C.E.), Zealot leader Simeon Bar-Giora captured Hebron, but the Roman army under the command of general (and later emperor) Vespasian then retook the Judean town and burned it to the ground (Jewish War IV.529, 554). What happened to Hebron following its destruction? David Ben Shlomo discusses the evidence in the September/October 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Referenced about 100 times in the Hebrew Bible, Biblical Hebron held the Cave of the Patriarchs—the burial ground of the Biblical patriarchs and matriarchs (Genesis 23:1–20; Genesis 25:9–10; Genesis 35:27–29; Genesis 49:29–33), was a fortified city when Moses sent spies to Canaan (Numbers 13:22) and served as David’s first capital in the Kingdom of Judah (2 Samuel 2:11).

The site of Tel Hebron resides 3,000 feet above sea level in the Judean hill country, about 20 miles south of Jerusalem. Excavations conducted in 2014 by David Ben-Shlomo and Emanuel Eisenberg revealed four occupational phases at Hebron during the Second Temple period, from the time of the late Hasmoneans (c. 100–37 B.C.E.) to the Bar-Kokhba Revolt (132–135 C.E.). Residential houses, pottery workshops and wine and oil presses were uncovered. Who lived at Biblical Hebron during the Second Temple period? Jewish, Edomite or pagan residents?

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The western mikveh, one of the two mikva’ot found at Biblical Hebron. Two separation walls divided this mikveh into three lanes. A wall can be seen in the middle of this mikveh: the wall was added in the Late Roman period, when the mikveh was converted into a roofed water reservoir. Photo: Assaf Peretz.

Ben-Shlomo describes how the excavators were able to confirm the identity of the Hebron residents:

If it was Jewish, we would expect to find a small mikveh, a Jewish ritual bathing place usually consisting of a small stepped pool. Jews immersed in such pools—often daily or when needed—to be cleansed of impurities. These were common in nearly all Second Temple period Jewish settlements in Judea.

Without a mikveh (plural, mikva’ot), we hesitated to label the site Jewish.

As often happens, near the last days of the excavation, the most surprising, interesting and important discovery of the season—and the answer to our dilemma—surfaced. We had excavated two large pools with the remnants of an arched ceiling and stairs leading to them. The bottom of the pools had not yet been reached, and the stairs were blocked by a transverse wall, which was puzzling.

Suddenly we realized that the arched ceiling and transverse wall were actually later additions (from the late Roman period), and underneath these were two large stepped pools, which we were able to identify as mikva’ot.

Read more about discoveries at Biblical Hebron from the Second Temple period that shed light on the town’s residents in “Hebron Still Jewish in Second Temple Times” by David Ben-Shlomo in the September/October 2017 issue of BAR.

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More on mikva’ot in Bible History Daily:

King Herod’s Ritual Bath at Machaerus

Magdala 2016: Excavating the Hometown of Mary Magdalene

Bet Shemesh Dig Uncovers 2,000-Year-Old Jewish Settlement

Secret Mikveh Discovered Under a Living Room Floor

The post Second Temple Period Discoveries at Biblical Hebron appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Hazor: Canaanite Metropolis, Israelite City

By Amnon Ben-Tor
(Israel Exploration Society and Biblical Archaeology Society, 2016), 232 pp. and 138 color illust., $40 (hardcover)
Reviewed by William G. Dever

It is a pleasure to review this book by Amnon Ben-Tor, whom I have known for 50 years, and whose ongoing excavation at Hazor (since 1990) I have toured many times. I even visited Yigael Yadin’s dig there in 1957!

Yadin’s 1955–1958 and 1968 excavations at Hazor—“the head of all those kingdoms” (Joshua 11:10)—were early in modern Israel’s history and were pivotal in training what became the second and now the third and fourth generations of Israeli archaeologists. Yadin was to the “Israeli school” what Dame Kathleen Kenyon was to the “British school,” Roland de Vaux to the “French school” and William F. Albright and George Ernest Wright to the “American school.” Yet Yadin’s excavations used methods that are now obsolete, and they were never fully published by Yadin himself (partially published by Ben-Tor and others in 1989 and 1997¹). In particular, the end of Canaanite Hazor in the mid-13th century B.C.E. and the question of an “Israelite conquest”—still a major controversy—were never resolved, despite Yadin’s confident assertions.

Thus Ben-Tor, a staff member at Hazor in his early twenties, returned to the site for two dozen seasons (compared with Yadin’s five seasons). The great 180-acre mound of Hazor boasts 21 excavated strata (super-imposed remains of ancient cities) from the late fourth millennium B.C.E. to the Hellenistic era. Ben-Tor’s popular volume here summarizes the results of his 24 seasons of excavations since 1990. (He published the fullscale technical report in 2012.²) But most interesting for BAR readers may be the exposition of Canaanite Hazor’s dramatic destruction c. 1250 B.C.E. and the aftermath in the early Iron Age, or the Israelite era.

The evidence for a fiery cataclysm is beyond doubt: Some enemy was taking out its fury on Canaanite Hazor. But who? The Egyptian overlords in their final, desperate days? Local Canaanite petty princes vying for power in the vacuum? Or an invading Israelite army—Joshua’s troops (cf. Joshua 11:1–14). Yadin favored the latter scenario, but Ben-Tor’s Associate Director, the late Sharon Zuckerman, advanced the internecine warfare model. Ben-Tor sides with Yadin, with a spirited defense of an Israelite conquest, including a discussion of the admittedly conflicting Biblical accounts in Joshua and Judges. Yet many will feel that the question remains open.

As the point where three of the world’s major religions converge, Israel’s history is one of the richest and most complex in the world. Sift through the archaeology and history of this ancient land in the free eBook Israel: An Archaeological Journey, and get a view of these significant Biblical sites through an archaeologist’s lens.

Ben-Tor is right, however, that the possibility of a destruction by invading Israelites cannot be ruled out. But Joshua’s claim that the Israelites defeated and burned Hazor and Judges’ declaration that in a later day the Canaanites still ruled at Hazor (cf. Judges 4:2) cannot both be correct. And today, the archaeological evidence overall clearly contradicts the conquest model. Moreover, Hazor, if indeed destroyed by incoming Israelites, would be an exception.

Ben-Tor’s retelling of Hazor’s story throughout is clear and lively, well balanced between fact and interpretation and copiously illustrated, mostly in color. It is a genuinely “popular” book and a great read.

Among the excellent and innovative discussions are those of the Early Bronze Age Khirbet Kerak ware; the local origin of the Early Bronze Age IV Syrian-style painted wares; the Middle Bronze Age palace, temple, standingstone complex and cuneiform tablets; and the spectacular Late Bronze Age palace complex and its destruction.

The Israelite city (11th–8th centuries B.C.E.) is well presented, with much new data. Ben-Tor’s defense of the conventional chronology for the 10th century B.C.E. (not Finkelstein’s idiosyncratic “low chronology”)—and an Israelite monarchy that early—is right on target.

Of course there are, of necessity, some oversimplifications, as well as arguments that can be countered. I am more positive than ever about the Egyptian execration texts (c. 20th–19th centuries B.C.E.) and their correlation with the rise of urban sites in Palestine in the Middle Bronze Age I (or Albright’s Middle Bronze Age IIA). Ben-Tor’s dismissal of my “Proto-Israelite” term for the 12th–11th centuries B.C.E. era as without justification overlooks that it simply represents an element of caution. These folk are not the citizens of the later Israelite state, but they are their authentic progenitors.

I was puzzled by the omission of any reference to Shulamit Geva’s detailed description of domestic life at Hazor in the Iron Age—a rare glimpse of ordinary folk.³

A final observation: In recent years, several sites excavated fairly recently have been re-excavated in large, longrunning projects, among them Aphek, Hazor, Megiddo, Gezer, Beth-Shemesh, Jerusalem and Lachish, to mention a few. The rationale is clear—unanswered questions—but sometimes I wonder if the effort and expense are justified. Have we really learned that much that is new?

Finally, no data reflecting the Assyrian destruction of Hazor c. 732 B.C.E. is presented, which leaves one wondering. This is a welcomed volume that makes accessible to nonspecialist readers the story of more than 30 seasons of excavations at one of Israel’s largest and most important sites. It joins similar popular books on Biblical sites like Gibeon, Jericho, Jerusalem, Megiddo, Shechem and even Gezer (Hebrew only). It can be compared with Yadin’s popular account of his excavations (1975).⁴ Ben-Tor’s narrative is not quite as spectacular as Yadin’s spell-binder. But his book is clearer, more balanced and more about the site than the author.

I congratulate Amnon on taking the time, trouble and expense to provide such a book, and I trust that it will find the wide audience that it deserves. More archaeologists should take responsibility for presenting their work to the public in an accessible format. Only in that way can archaeology earn the public’s trust—and support.

Ben-Tor and his colleagues have also devoted enormous resources to restoration and conservation so that Hazor’s lessons from history may be shared with countless visitors for many generations. That, too, is a public service.

William G. Dever is professor emeritus of Near Eastern Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Arizona. A world-renowned archaeologist, Dever has dug at numerous sites in Jordan and Israel and served as director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem (now the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research).

Notes:

1. Amnon Ben-Tor, ed., Hazor III–IV: An Account of the Third and Fourth Seasons of Excavations, 1957–1958 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1989); Amnon Ben-Tor and Ruhama Bonfi l, eds., Hazor V: An Account of the Fifth Season of Excavation, 1968 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1997).

2. Amnon Ben-Tor, Doron Ben-Ami and Deborah Sandhaus, eds., Hazor VI: The 1990–2009 Excavations, The Iron Age (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2012).

3. Shulamit Geva, Hazor, Israel: An Urban Community of the 8th Century B.C.E., BAR International Series 543 (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1989).

4. Yigael Yadin, Hazor: The Rediscovery of a Great Citadel of the Bible (New York: Random House, 1975).

The post Hazor: Canaanite Metropolis, Israelite City appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

This woodcut by French artist Gustave Doré, titled “The Walls of Jericho Fall Down” (1885), depicts the Israelites’ destruction of Jericho as described in Joshua 6. In his Biblical Views column, Ronald Hendel wonders what is wrong with religion that it inspires religious violence.

Paris, Colorado Springs, Duma—in 2015, fundamentalist terrorists killed innocent people in these cities allegedly in the name of Allah, Christ and Yahweh, respectively. These are just a few recent examples of religious violence inspired by radical forms of Islam, Christianity and Judaism—the world’s three major monotheistic religions, each Biblically based or derived.

“Is there something wrong with Biblically derived monotheism that gives rise to religious terrorism—to murder in the name of God?” asks Ronald Hendel in his Biblical Views column “The Bible and Religious Violence” in the March/April 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

The concept of holy war (Hebrew: ḥerem), Hendel points out, is referenced several times in the Hebrew Bible and is a major theme in the Book of Joshua. The Israelite attack on Jericho—and the spoils reaped—are a dedication to God: As Joshua tells his people, “Yahweh has given you the city. The city and everything in it are to be dedicated (ḥerem) to Yahweh” (Joshua 6:16–17). Thus, the Israelites in the Book of Joshua believe their religious violence is justified.

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On the ninth-century B.C.E. Mesha Stele (or Moabite Stone), the Moabite vassal King Mesha commemorated his victory over the Israelites, framing the success as a tribute to his god Chemosh: “Chemosh said to me, ‘Go and seize Nebo from Israel,’ and I went in the night, and I battled against it from the break of dawn until noon, and I took it, and I killed all of them—7,000 men and boys and women and girls and maidens—for I dedicated [ḥerem] it to Ashtar-Chemosh, and I took from there the vessels of Yahweh, and I dragged them before Chemosh.”

Ronald Hendel

History—and current events—tells us that religious violence can be as much about material gain as about following doctrine. Indeed, today we see that the extremist group ISIS has been profiting from their devastating destruction of sites in Iraq and Syria.

“The religious ideology of holy war, which has trickled down into the religious motivation for religious terror, is a mask, a justification and a deception,” says Ronald Hendel. “It deceives its practitioners and its victims. Ashur does not want the death of the people of Laqe, nor does Yahweh want the death of the people of Jericho, nor does Chemosh want the death of the people of Nebo. Nor does Allah want the death of people in California.”

For a deeper probe into the ideology of religious violence throughout the ancient Near East, and to learn Ronald Hendel’s solution for addressing religious violence today, read the full Biblical Views column “The Bible and Religious Violence” in the March/April 2016 issue of BAR.

BAS Library Members: Read the full Biblical Views column “The Bible and Religious Violence” by Ronald Hendel in the March/April 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Not a BAS Library member yet? Join the BAS Library today.

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