The Hula Valley at sunrise. Courtesy Nathan Steinmeyer, BAS.

Today, the Hula Valley, north of the Sea of Galilee, is one of the most fertile agricultural regions in Israel. In the biblical period, however, it was better known as an important trade route connecting the commercial centers of Syria and northern Mesopotamia with the eastern Mediterranean and Egypt. Home to important biblical sites like Hazor, Dan, and Abel Beth Maacah, the Hula Valley is never mentioned by name in the Bible but it played an important role in the geopolitical history of the region.

Discover other lands mentioned in the Bible in the “Lands of the Bible” article from our new Knowledge BAR feature.

Exploring the Hula Valley

A fertile valley between the Golan Heights and the Upper Galilee, the Hula was home to several major Bronze Age and Iron Age cities. The valley also formed the northernmost extension of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. While today the region is filled with agricultural fields, historically the area was made up of extensive marshlands centered on the Hula Lake, which was fed by the Hasbani, Banias, and Dan rivers. The waters from the Hula Lake would then flow south through the marshlands into the Sea of Galilee. The Hula Lake has sometimes been identified as the Waters of Merom, where Joshua fought and defeated the Canaanite kings led by Jabin, the king of Hazor (Joshua 11). However, those “waters” are more often thought to refer to various springs located along the western side of the valley.

The six-chambered gate of Israelite Hazor. Courtesy Nathan Steinmeyer, BAS.

Although the Hula Valley has been inhabited since prehistory, its major settlements—Hazor, Dan (Canaanite Laish), and Abel Beth Maacah—were all established as Canaanite cities in the Bronze Age (c. 3300–1200 BCE). During this period, Hazor was the largest fortified city in the southern Levant and one of the most important in the entire Near East, with cultural and economic ties to Syria and Mesopotamia. This status is reflected in the Book of Joshua, where Hazor is called “the head of all those kingdoms” (Joshua 11:10).

Courtesy BAS.

The Hula Valley came under Israelite control during the Iron Age (c. 1200–586 BCE), when it became a frequent battle ground between the Israelite and Aramean kingdoms, as witnessed in the famous Tel Dan Stele. The valley’s major cities were largely destroyed during the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom by Tiglath-Pileser III (c. 733/732 BCE). The area thrived again during the Roman period (c. 37 BCE–324 CE), when it formed part of the agricultural hinterland of Caesarea Philippi/Panias.

View of the agricultural fields of the Hula Valley from Tel Hazor. Courtesy Nathan Steinmeyer, BAS.

With a warm Mediterranean climate and lots of water, the valley is exceedingly rich in flora and fauna, and today it is home to a large nature reserve. The valley is an important stop on the migratory path of birds traveling between Europe and Africa. As such, it is often filled with hundreds of bird species, including pelicans, cranes, herons, ibises, and many more. It is also home to many mammal species, including boars, jackals, otters, and lynx. The Hula Lake once covered nearly 5 square miles and was one of the largest bodies of fresh water in the region. However, following systematic attempts in the 20th century to drain the surrounding marshland in order to combat malaria, today the lake is only around 0.5 square miles.

This article first appeared in Bible History Daily on March 3, 2025.

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Related reading in Bible History Daily

What Is the Judean Desert?

What Is the Negev?

What Is the Shephelah?

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

Shifting Borders? The Benyaw Inscription from Abel Beth Maacah

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

Site-Seeing: Exploring Beautiful Tel Dan

The post What Is the Hula Valley? 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.

Head of an Old Kingdom Egyptian king from Hazor. Courtesy of the Selz Foundation Hazor Excavations.

We all know that one person who fills their home with a never-ending flow of antiques. Maybe that person is even you. No matter who it is, they are participating in a tradition that is far older than the age of an antique tea set. In his article “Projecting Prestige: Egyptian Statues from Canaanite Hazor,” published in the Winter 2024 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, archaeologist Igor Kreimerman examines one of the oldest cases of antiquing in the ancient world: Egyptian statues that ended up in the Canaanite city of Hazor hundreds of years after they were produced.

Collecting Antiques in Ancient Canaan

Excavations of the Late Bronze Age (c. 1550–1200 BCE) acropolis of the powerful Canaanite city have uncovered more than two dozen fragments of ancient Egyptian statues, ranging from the head of a pharaoh to the front paws of a sphinx. This, in itself, is strange enough, considering Hazor is several hundred miles from Egypt’s Nile Valley. But what makes it stranger is that all of these statues were uncovered in archaeological contexts that postdate their crafting by centuries and, in some cases, nearly a millennium.

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Front paws of Menkaure’s sphinx from Hazor. Courtesy of the Selz Foundation Hazor Excavations.

These are the exact questions that Kreimerman tackles in his article. Looking at a few of these impressive objects and their archaeological context, he suggests two possible stories to answer these questions. “One possibility is that the statues were brought to Hazor shortly after their production—namely during the Old and Middle Kingdoms—and retained their importance for many generations, surviving the city’s many changes.” After examining the pros and cons of this theory, he turns to the second, that the statues were sent to Hazor centuries after they were made.

Map of Late Bronze Age Levant, with Hazor marked at the top right. Courtesy BAS.

Of course, there is also a third question when it comes to these two dozen statue fragments found at Hazor. Why are none of them whole? Bearing chisel marks and having been moved from their original locations, these statues were clearly destroyed on purpose, likely by the same people who destroyed the city at the end of the Bronze Age.

While the inhabitants of Canaanite Hazor are no longer around to give us answers to these questions, history and archaeology supply us with some clues. Read the full article “Projecting Prestige: Egyptian Statues from Canaanite Hazor,” in the Winter 2024 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, to find out for yourself!

Subscribers: Read the full article “Projecting Prestige: Egyptian Statues from Canaanite Hazor,” by Igor Kreimerman, in the Winter 2024 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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This article was first published in Bible History Daily on January 8, 2025.

Related reading in Bible History Daily

Just How Big Is the Antiquities Trade?

Who Lived at Hazor?

The Ancient People of Tel Hazor

Canaanite Burial Customs—Pour One Out for the Departed

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library

A Workable Proposal to Regulate Antiquities Trade

Who Lived at Hazor?

Who Destroyed Canaanite Hazor?

Excavating Hazor, Part One: Solomon’s City Rises from the Ashes

Excavating Hazor, Part Two: Did the Israelites Destroy the Canaanite City?

The post When Canaanites Go Antiquing appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Hershel Shanks

Amihai Mazar (better known as Ami) is one of Israel’s most highly regarded archaeologists. He recently retired from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I remember long ago when I featured him on the cover of BAR together with his famous uncle, Benjamin Mazar, a former president of the Hebrew University and a famous archaeologist; Ami was angry. He didn’t want to be pictured with his uncle. Ami wanted to make it on his own—not because of his relationship to his distinguished uncle. Well, Ami certainly has now made it on his own.

This is by way of introducing a seminal article that he recently published that includes a critical assessment of the historicity of the United Monarchy of Israel. It is a thoroughly balanced review of the matter, considering both the Biblical text and the archaeological evidence. It is too detailed to rehearse here in detail—and, as he says, it’s “highly specialized and complicated”—but it is worthwhile just to set forth the issues and Ami’s conclusions.¹

The Biblical narratives, he tells us, although written hundreds of years after the reigns of Saul, David and Solomon, “retain memories of reality.” It’s these “cultural memories … embedded in the Biblical narratives” that are sometimes captured with the help of archaeology. And the “contribution of archaeology to the study of the past ever increases.”

His conclusion is quite nuanced: “I adhere to the moderate views which, in spite of considerable variations and degrees of confidence, agree that the [Biblical] authors worked with ancient sources, including oral and written narratives, transmitted poetry, archival documents, public inscriptions, etc.” Although not written in the tenth century B.C.E. (the time of the United Monarchy), the Biblical narratives “retain memories of realities rooted in that century.”

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Let’s begin by considering the famous passage in 1 Kings 9:15–19, which tells us that King Solomon fortified Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer. The great Israeli archaeologist Yigal Yadin long ago attributed the three impressive six-chambered city gates at these three major sites to the time of Solomon. For a long time, this dating was considered secure. Then Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University came along with his “Low Chronology,” according to which he extends the time of the relevant archaeological period—Iron IIA—by 80–100 years or so, long after King Solomon’s time. Thus he dates these gates to a later time in the Iron IIA, initially about a hundred years later, probably to the time of King Ahab. Ami Mazar disagrees with Finkelstein and convincingly argues that, although some time adjustment should be made in the length of the archaeological period involved, these monumental gates “cannot be dated later than the tenth century [B.C.E.],” the time of King Solomon.

Gezer. Photo: Courtesy Steve Ortiz.

If Iron IIA extended into the ninth century B.C.E., Finkelstein could be right that the gates were later than Solomon’s time. But there is no doubt that it began in the tenth century B.C.E. Thus the gates could also be from the tenth century B.C.E. “The question of dating the monumental structures at Megiddo, Hazor and Gezer,” writes Ami Mazar, “remains in my view unresolved. The evidence is ambivalent, and a tenth century date for this architecture remains plausible. Thus 1 Kings 9:15–19 can still be taken as a source relating to tenth-century B.C.E. reality.” Perhaps there were two phases to Iron IIA, early and late, but “the date of the transition between these two sub-phases is not entirely clear.” (This tells you why the dating of potsherds is so important in archaeology; subtle changes in pottery could help us to distinguish early from late in the same period.)

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Next let’s go to Jerusalem. It was surely a small city in King David’s time, perhaps a bit more than 10 acres with about a thousand residents. Solomon’s annexation of the Temple Mount more than doubled the size of the city with a population of about 2,500 people. Although it was small, it was strong and not to be trifled with. The huge Stepped Stone Structure (SSS), rising to the height of a nine-story building, was there in the tenth century B.C.E., if not before. So was the Large Stone Structure (LSS) on top. Ami Mazar agrees with the following senior archaeologists who date this complex to the tenth century B.C.E. or slightly earlier: Kathleen Kenyon (who first came upon walls of the LSS), Yigal Shiloh, Eilat Mazar (who excavated the LSS), Jane Cahill, Margreet Steiner and Avraham Faust.

The Stepped Stone Structure. Photo: Zev Radovan.

“This immense complex [was] one of the largest structures in ancient Israel,” and the massive fortifications from the Late Bronze Age protecting the Gihon Spring and excavated by Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron, continued in use during the time of King David and King Solomon.

Eilat Mazar has also been excavating structures south of the Temple Mount that “must have been part of Jerusalem’s royal administrative complex” in the time of the United Monarchy. Enabling her to date this complex were large amounts of Iron IIA pottery. In his usual cautious way Ami Mazar concludes, “Although the excavator’s specific dating of these structures to the time of Solomon may be regarded as conjectural, the date cannot be far off, since the pottery in the fills is clearly Iron IIA, namely dated to the tenth to ninth centuries B.C.E.”

As to Solomon’s Temple as described in the Bible, its plan is known in temple architecture of the Levant since the second millennium B.C.E. and continues into the Iron Age. Although archaeology cannot determine whether Solomon was the builder of the Temple, “the Bible does not hint at any other king who may have founded such a temple.”

That there was a central government ruling the United Monarchy is shown by the recent excavation of Yosef Garfinkel at Khirbet Qeiyafa, a site in the Judahite Shephelah on the border with the Philistines.^a Although a small site, Qeiyafa was protected with a massive casemate wall surrounding the site and a large public building on the summit. It was occupied only briefly in the late 11th or early 10th century B.C.E., the time of kings Saul and David. As Ami Mazar observes, “There must have been a central authority that initiated this well-planned building operation. … While no Canaanite parallels are known for either the city plan or the fortifications,² these are a prototype for later Judean [Judahite] towns, such as Beth Shemesh, Tel en-Nasbeh (Biblical Mizpah), Tel Beit Mirsim and Beersheba.”

Finally, Solomon’s kingdom appears to have been backed up with an elaborate metallurgical industry. Initially the vast copper mining operation in the Wadi Feinan in Jordan^b was associated with the Edomites who inhabited the high plateau above the mines. But there is no evidence of these settlements in Edom earlier than the eighth century B.C.E. Instead, these copper mines at the base reflect an affinity with a similar copper mining and smelting operation in the Timnah Valley in the Negev of Israel.^c “It is now clear,” Ami Mazar tells us, “that large-scale copper mining and smelting industry flourished in the Arabah Valley throughout the late eleventh, tenth and ninth centuries [B.C.E. The structures in Feinan] indicate that the industry was administered and controlled by a central authority” and worked by a tribal-state of semi-nomads.

This should be enough to entice the more scholarly minded to explore the additional and often powerful details in Ami Mazar’s trenchant article, evidencing the existence and nature of Israel’s United Monarchy ruled by Saul, David and Solomon. Yes, they very likely were actual historical figures, and they had a kingdom—although not nearly so vast as the Bible describes. Much of the Biblical text is what Ami Mazar recognizes as being of a “literary-legendary nature.”

First Person: Did the Kingdoms of Saul, David and Solomon Actually Exist? by Hershel Shanks was originally published in Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 2017. This article was first published on BHD on September 11, 2017.

Notes

a. Yosef Garfinkel, Michael Hasel and Martin Klingbeil, An Ending and a Beginning, BAR, November/December 2013.

b. See Mohammad Najjar and Thomas E. Levy, Condemned to the Mines—Copper Production and Christian Persecution, BAR, November/December 2011; Thomas E. Levy and Mohammad Najjar, Edom and Copper: The Emergence of Ancient Israel’s Rival, BAR, July/August 2006.

c. Hershel Shanks, First Person: Life Was Not So Bad for Smelters, BAR, January/February 2015.

1. Amihai Mazar, “Archaeology and the Bible: Reflections on Historical Memory in the Deuteronomistic History,” in C.M. Maier, ed., Congress Volume Munich 2013, Vetus Testamentum Supplements (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 347–369.

2. For this and other reasons, Ami Mazar rejects Nadav Na’man’s suggestion that Qeiyafa is a Canaanite town.

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The post First Person: Did the Kingdoms of Saul, David and Solomon Actually Exist? 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.

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

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A seal from Tel Hazor dipicting a warrior fighting a seven-headed serpent. Courtesy Manuel Cimadevilla, The Selz Foundation Hazor Excavations in Memory of Yigael Yadin.

What do a Mesopotamian cylinder seal, a Greek vase, and the Book of Revelation have in common? Seven-headed serpents. The only issue is that scholars are not certain why. Publishing in the journal Near Eastern Archaeology, Christoph Uehlinger of the University of Zurich believes a small stamp seal discovered at Tel Hazor in northern Israel may finally provide a clue as to how the myth of the seven-headed serpent was transmitted between cultures across the millennia.

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The Hero of Hazor

While there is no way to know whether the small seal is Israelite or Phoenician, one thing is certain: Its iconography of a hero fighting a seven-headed serpent connects it to a long tradition of similar mythological depictions. The scene, carved into the seal’s face, depicts a warrior grasping a seven-headed snake with one hand while attacking it with a spear in the other. Behind the warrior are three hybrid creatures, including a griffin, a scarab with feathered wings, and a winged cobra. Other discernable features include two monkeys and an Egyptian-style ankh. Excavated on the acropolis of Tel Hazor, the seal dates on stylistic and stratigraphy grounds to the eighth century BCE.

Drawing of the Hazor seal. Courtesy Ulrike Zurkinden, Stamp Seals of the Southern Levant Project.

While depictions of heroes and deities fighting seven-headed serpents occur throughout history, they are quite unique and often found centuries apart and in different regions from one another. However, the similarities in these depictions have led many scholars to try to connect the imagery and the underlying traditions, even when there is little evidence to link the various examples. According to Uehlinger, the Hazor seal fills at least one gap in the chain of transmission—how the imagery made its way into the Bible.

The earliest attestations of the theme show up in third-millennium Mesopotamia in both pictorial and literary sources. There, the warrior god Ninurta is often credited with having slain a seven-headed serpent, along with other monsters. From Mesopotamia, the theme spread northwest to Ebla in Syria, where the feat was attributed to the storm god Haddu. By the second millennium, it made its way to Ugarit on the Levantine coast, where both the goddess Anat and the god Baal are seen fighting the serpent, who there was associated with the sea and variously named Tunnan (Dragon) or Litan (twisting one).

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Heracles and Iolaos fighting the Lernaean Hydra (c. Sixth Century BCE). Courtesy Louvre Museum, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Appearing across multiple cultures over the course of four millennia, the theme of the warrior fighting the seven-headed serpent is certainly a pervasive one, but also one with an interesting habit of disappearing from the textual and archaeological record, only to reappear centuries later in a different place. But it is objects like the Tel Hazor seal that may hold clues for how such myths travel. Showing up in eighth-century BCE Hazor, the seal hints at the transmission from Ugarit to the Northern Kingdom of Israel, from Isaael to Judah, and from Judah to the biblical authors. At the end of the day, the seal reminds us that in archaeology, we are only ever working with part of the picture.

Editor’s Note: the seal was found in the “The Selz Foundation Hazor Excavations in Memory of Yigael Yadin” carried out by the Institute of Archaeology, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2022, directed by Prof. Amnon Ben-Tor and Igor Kreimerman.

This article was first published in Bible History Daily on July 29, 2024.

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What happened to the Canaanites? DNA sequencing was conducted on five skeletons from Canaanite Sidon, including this one. The results indicate that there is a “genetic continuity” between the Canaanites at Sidon and the modern Lebanese. Photo: Courtesy of Claude Doumet-Serhal.

What happened to the Canaanites?  Researchers conducted DNA sequencing on ancient Canaanite skeletons and have determined where the Canaanites’ descendants can be found today.

The Canaanites were a Semitic-speaking cultural group that lived in Canaan (comprising Lebanon, southern Syria, Israel and Transjordan) beginning in the second millennium B.C.E. and wielded influence throughout the Mediterranean.

In the Hebrew Bible, the Canaanites are described as inhabitants of Canaan before the arrival of the Israelites (e.g., Genesis 15:18–21, Exodus 13:11). Little of the Canaanites’ textual records remain, perhaps because they used papyrus instead of the more durable clay for writing. Much of the Canaanites’ history is reconstructed through the writings of contemporary peoples in addition to archaeological examinations of the material record.

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Marc Haber, Claude Doumet-Serhal, Christiana Scheib and a team of 13 other scientists recently published their DNA findings in The American Journal of Human Genetics (AJHG). The researchers sequenced the genomes of five individuals who were buried in the Canaanite city of Sidon in Lebanon around 1700 B.C.E. as well as the genomes of 99 individuals from Lebanon today.

The results of their study demonstrated a connection: “We show that present-day Lebanese derive most of their ancestry from a Canaanite-related population, which therefore implies substantial genetic continuity in the Levant since at least the Bronze Age,” wrote the researchers in AJHG.

A painted limestone figurine of a human-ram deity from Canaanite Sidon appears on the cover of the July/August 2017 issue of BAR. Photo: Courtesy of Claude Doumet-Serhal.

In the July/August 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Claude Doumet-Serhal provides a glimpse of Canaanite Sidon in the Middle Bronze Age:

At the dawn of the second millennium B.C.E., the site was covered by a thick layer of deliberately cleaned sand between 3 and 4.6 feet deep, brought from the nearby seashore. This “purifying” activity must have taken weeks of hard labor. At this point Sidon became a burial site. To date, 142 burials have been found in this sand and in subsequent layers on top of it dating until around 1500 B.C.E. A funerary feasting tradition took place at the time of burial. High-ranking individuals were buried with objects indicating their power, rank and reputation, such as a Minoan cup (1984–1859 B.C.E.) from Phaistos, Crete, which was found inverted, as was the common Aegean practice.

The DNA study conducted on the skeletons from Sidon is part of the researchers’ larger effort to understand population histories in the Levant.

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“Many of our inferences rely on the limited number of ancient samples available, and we are only just beginning to reconstruct a genetic history of the Levant or the Near East as thoroughly as that of Europeans who, in comparison, have been extensively sampled,” the researchers wrote in AJHG.

Related reading in Bible History Daily

Biblical Sidon—Jezebel’s Hometown

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Canaanite Worship? 3,400-Year-Old Figurine Found at Tel Rehov

Who Were the Phoenicians?

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on August 9, 2017.

The post What Happened to the Canaanites? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Human-Ram Deity from Sidon. With human features as well as the eyebrows, nose and horns of a ram, this painted limestone figurine represents a deity and dates to c. 1650 B.C.E. (the Middle Bronze Age). Photo: Courtesy of Claude Doumet-Serhal.

Who were the Sidonians, and what do we know about their religion?

The Sidonians were the inhabitants of ancient Sidon, a seaport on the Mediterranean Sea in modern Lebanon. Those familiar with the Biblical text will recall that Sidon was an influential, wealthy Phoenician city when the kings of Israel and Judah ruled during the Iron Age. Yet Sidon was a significant site before this period, too.

Claude Doumet-Serhal of the British Museum details recent excavations at Sidon in her article “Sidon—Canaan’s Firstborn,” published in the July/August 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. The latest archaeological discoveries shed light on Biblical Sidon and provide a window into the Sidonians’ polytheistic religion and worship practices during the Bronze and Iron Ages.

Who were the Sidonians of the Bronze Age (c. 3000–1200 B.C.E.)? They were Canaanites and shared numerous similarities, including many of the same gods, with their close neighbors in the southern Levant—who were also predominantly Canaanite.

Who were the Sidonians of the Iron Age (c. 1200–586 B.C.E.)? They were Phoenicians. Essentially, the Phoenicians were the Canaanites who survived from the Bronze Age into the Iron Age and who were not supplanted by new people groups (Philistines, Israelites, etc.). However, even though their origins were Canaanite, the Phoenicians established their own distinct culture. There was, therefore, continuity in Sidon’s population from the Bronze to the Iron Age.

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Biblical Sidon is perhaps most infamously known as the birthplace of the Phoenician princess Jezebel (1 Kings 16:31), who became queen of the Israelites during King Ahab’s reign in the ninth century B.C.E. (the Iron Age). In the Bible, Jezebel is notorious for persecuting the worship of Yahweh and for demanding that the Israelites worship Baal.

Sidon’s Phoenician Temple. Archaeologists at Sidon have uncovered a 12th–11th-century B.C.E. (Iron Age) temple. One of the rooms in this temple had a bench, where offerings would have been placed, and an altar made of piled and unhewn stones, which recalls the Biblical command to make altars of uncut stones (see Exodus 20:25). In another room was a round base that likely supported a wooden pillar. Photo: Courtesy of Claude Doumet-Serhal.

Given Jezebel’s religious fervor in the Bible, one would expect to find evidence of Baal worship at Sidon. Some extraordinary discoveries from recent excavations have allowed us to partially reconstruct Sidonian religion during the Bronze and Iron Ages—showing that Baal worship at the site had deep roots.

Sidon’s Storm God. Dated to c. 1750 B.C.E. (the Middle Bronze Age), this impressed handle depicts a ship and a leonine dragon, which is the symbol of the Mesopotamian storm god Adad. Adad roughly equates with the later Phoenician storm god Baal, the worship of whom is championed by the nefarious queen Jezebel in the Bible. Photo: Courtesy of Claude Doumet-Serhal.

Notably, an impressed handle found near a Canaanite grave at the site depicts Sidon’s storm god and a ship. Dated to c. 1750 B.C.E., the handle pictures the storm god as a leonine dragon. Usually the storm god is illustrated as a striding human figure, but sometimes he is represented by one of his symbols, such as the bull or leonine dragon. Doumet-Serhal explains the significance of the handle’s iconography:

The dragon epitomizes the most fundamental ancient mythical perception of the Mesopotamian storm god. The handle displays an impression of a ship with the leonine dragon Ušumgal, the storm god Adad’s attendant, next to it. Adad (the Canaanite Hadad, the Semitic Hadda, the Hurrian Teshub, the Egyptian Resheph, the Phoenician Baal/Bel, the Sumerian Ishkur) is the Mesopotamian storm god, who has special maritime, celestial and meteorological attributes important to the well-being of sailors. Given Sidon’s position on the coast, it is not surprising that the storm god is Sidon’s most important god.

Indeed, throughout its history, the most important god at Sidon was the storm god—known during the Phoenician period as Baal or Bel.

Learn more about Biblical Sidon and Sidonian religion in Claude Doumet-Serhal’s article “Sidon—Canaan’s Firstborn” in the July/August 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

BAS Library Members: Read the full article “Sidon—Canaan’s Firstborn” by Claude Doumet-Serhal in the July/August 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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This Bible History Daily Article was first published in 2017.

The post Biblical Sidon—Jezebel’s Hometown appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Ramesses II’s Lost Sarcophagus

While the mummy of Ramesses II—known as Ramesses the Great and suggested by some to be the infamous pharaoh of the Exodus—was discovered in 1881, it was not found inside its original coffin, as the body had been moved to a plain wooden coffin in antiquity to protect it from grave robbers. Now, it appears that part of the original granite sarcophagus from his burial has been discovered in a Coptic monastery in Abydos.

Deep Sea Late Bronze Age Shipwreck

While surveying the floor of the Mediterranean 55 miles off Israel’s coast, an international energy company made a startling find: the oldest deep-sea shipwreck ever discovered. Located over a mile below the waves, this shipwreck could rewrite the history of ancient seafaring, showing that Mediterranean sailors left the safety of the coastline much earlier than previously thought.

Archaeologists examining storage jars from the shipwreck. Courtesy Emil Aladjem, IAA

Hercules, Hydra, & Hazor?

What do a Mesopotamian cylinder seal, a Greek vase, and the Book of Revelation have in common? Seven-headed serpents. The only issue is that scholars are not certain why. Now, a small stamp seal discovered at the site of Hazor in northern Israel may finally provide a clue as to how the myth of the seven-headed serpent was transmitted between cultures across the millennia.

A Genie in Jerusalem

How did an Assyrian genie end up in Jerusalem during the First Temple period? During continued excavations of the City of David in Jerusalem, the Israel Antiquities Authority uncovered a rare stone seal bearing two names in paleo-Hebrew script and a depiction of a Neo-Assyrian winged genie. Likely belonging to a high official in the Judahite court, the seal would have served as both a signature and a protective amulet.

Rare stone seal with an Assyrian genie and paleo-Hebrew writing. Courtesy Eliyahu Yanai, City of David.

Herculaneum Scrolls Deciphered

The 2,000-year-old Herculaneum Scrolls make up one of the largest extant libraries from antiquity, whose importance might well rival that of the Dead Sea Scrolls. But ever since their discovery in the 18th century, they have been almost completely unreadable, having been turned into little more than ash when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE. Now, in what may be one of the most significant archaeological discoveries in decades, the Herculaneum Scrolls have been unlocked.

Pompeii Tiny House Frescoes

Archaeologists working in Pompeii have discovered yet another incredible home buried by Mt. Vesuvius. Nicknamed the House of Phaedra, the walls of the house preserve several beautiful wall paintings. The best preserved depicts a scene from Euripides’s tragedy Hippolytus, where a barely dressed Phaedra reclines before a nude Hippolytus, with an unidentified man between them. Another painting shows a satyr and a nymph in an intimate embrace, and a third may be a rendering of the Judgement of Paris.

Scene of Phaedra (left) and Hippolytus (far right) discovered during new excavations in Pompeii. Credit: Archaeological Park of Pompeii.

Paul’s Prison in Caesarea

The final story highlighted by the scholars involves a fascinating room built into the Herodian Promontory Palace at Caesarea Maritima, a city where the apostle Paul spent several years in jail before being sent to Rome for trial before Caesar. According to some scholars, this complex, built as a basement of the seafront palace, may be the same room where Paul was imprisoned.

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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

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Seth in the Bible

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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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