10th Century Archives - Page 8 of 10

Weekend Roundup

A dog fell into a hole in Jerusalem and now it will become an open biblical tourist park.

Work continues in Georgia in constructing a museum for artifacts from Israel.

The next time you travel to the Golan Heights, you can remember your day this way: Bastions, Burials, Battles, and Borders.

Ferrell Jenkins shares a photo of a beautiful sunrise over the Sea of Galilee.

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher may close its doors for a day to protest its bank account being frozen for not paying its water bill.

Al Jazeera posts 15 photos on the Western Wall prayer plaza and excavated tunnels.

The Zondervan Atlas of the Bible is marked down to $14.99 for the Fabulous Friday sale at christianbook.com. (Amazon: $26.39). It might make a great gift for someone who wants to understand the Bible better.

The latest SourceFlix video short is about the olive harvest. (If you appreciate their work, you might consider making a donation some time.)

A special exhibition opens next week at the Lynn H. Wood Archaeological Museum on “The Battle over King David: Excavating the Fortress of Elah.”

I bet that this is the first (future) motion picture reference to Shaaraim in connection with the David and Goliath story. (If they ever read 1 Samuel 17, they’ll get rid of it. Shaaraim is not Qeiyafa and it’s not the Philistine base either.)

HT: Charles Savelle, Joseph Lauer

Woman harvesting olives near Bethlehem
Photo from Cultural Images of the Holy Land

Tagged 10th Century, Galilee, Golan, Museums, Resources, Temple Mount, Weekend Roundup

Megiddo in Text and Archaeology

The on-going excavations of Megiddo are the subject of a report by Nir Hasson in Haaretz. The story focuses on the 10th-century debate but mentions a similar text-archaeology problem in the 15th century.

Archaeologist Israel Finkelstein is leading his sweating guests to a corner of Tel Megiddo. He points to a black stain on a rock, which on closer inspection turn out to be charred seeds. “This,” he says, “is the most important find at Tel Megiddo.”
[…]
In one of the four excavation areas on the mound, each marked by its own flag, we come back to the charred crumbs Finkelstein says were the mound’s most important find. Here, under a rainbow flag, we are told they are tiny seeds that Megiddo’s inhabitants collected around 3,000 years ago. They went up in flames when the city was destroyed.
They are important because of their location in relation to finds above and below them. Organic material like this is especially valuable because it can undergo carbon-14 testing, allowing the level where it was found to be dated.
[…]
One of the black layers indicates destruction in the 10th century. Finkelstein’s detractors say David destroyed this city – an idea that Finkelstein rejects because he says the carbon-14 dating rules out the possibility that the city was destroyed suddenly. It shows a gradual process.

The difficulties in reconciling text and archaeology are not limited to the Bible. Those who have great confidence in archaeology and their interpretation of the material remains tend to denigrate textual accounts.

Not far away, under a Jolly Roger, a group is excavating fortifications. Here, the finds also defy an ancient text. But this time it’s not the Bible, it’s the Egyptian record of the conquest of Megiddo by Pharaoh Thutmoses III in the 15th century BCE, describing a seven-month siege.
But the excavators discovered that the city walls at that time were meager. Finkelstein explains the discrepancy as he does with the Bible. The Thutmoses text was written to glorify the pharaoh’s vanquishing of a supposedly mighty city.

This proposal is less satisfying when considered more carefully. According to Thutmoses’ own records, his army surprised the Canaanite forces when they traveled through the Megiddo pass (Nahal Iron). With the Canaanite soldiers positioned near Jokneam and Taanach, Megiddo was an easy target. Yet the Egyptian soldiers pursued plunder and the Canaanites were able to escape into the safety of the city walls. A seven-month siege was required to take what could have been easily captured with some basic army discipline. While Thutmoses III certainly was glorified by his ultimate defeat of the Canaanite coalition, it is not easy to understand why he would have invented such an embarrassing story.

The full story is here. The Hebrew version includes a slideshow with 6 photos of the excavations.

Some day I’ll explain why many scholars reject Finkelstein’s dating of 10th-century remains at Megiddo.

HT: Joseph Lauer

Tagged 10th Century, Excavations, Jezreel Valley

The Date of the Beginning of Iron II

In 1996, Israel Finkelstein proposed a significant lowering of dates in the Iron I-II periods in Israel.

This sparked a debate which has often been heated in part because Finkelstein’s conclusions entail a virtual elimination of the United Monarchy as described in the Bible. This is the result of Finkelstein’s dating of the end of the Iron I period, with its poor material culture and lack of monumental construction, to the time after David and Solomon lived.

In an article published in 2008, Amihai Mazar released the results of Carbon 14 studies at four sites where “it is agreed by all that these four destructions mark the end of the Iron Age I.” He reports the results as follows:

After eliminating clear outliers, we reached the following results (all in 68% probability) (see Fig. 3, upper line, for combined averages from these four sites):
End of Qasile X: 1039-979 B.C.E.
End of Megiddo VIA: 1010-943
End of Yoqne‘am XVII: 1045-997
End of Tel Hadar: 1043-979

Just to get a better handle on the matter, I pulled out my calculator to determine the middle of the range for each site: Qasile: 1009; Megiddo: 976; Yoqneam (Jokneam): 1021; Tel Hadar: 1011. So it’s safe to say, based upon these results, that the Iron I ended and Iron II began about 1000 BC.

With the calculator still handy, I tabulated the average of the four dates. It came out to 1004 BC.

That’s a familiar number to students of biblical history who know that (1) Shishak invaded Israel in 926 BC, the fifth year of the rule of Rehoboam, such that (2) Solomon died in 931 BC, after forty years on the throne following (3) David who died in 971 and ruled for 33.5 years in Jerusalem, or 1004 BC. This 1004 BC date was acknowledged by the Municipality of Jerusalem which celebrated the 3000th anniversary of the city in 1996 (mistakenly, because of the missing year “0”).

The Carbon 14 numbers provide nothing more than ranges, with varying amounts of probability, but I thought it curious that the average date of the numbers for the beginning of Iron II just happened to be the year that David began ruling in Jerusalem.

The above quotation is from page 114 of Amihai Mazar, “From 1200 to 850 B.C.E.: Remarks on
Some Selected Archaeological Issues,” pp. 86-120 in Israel in Transition: From Late Bronze II to Iron IIa (c. 1250–850 B.C.E.). Volume 1. The Archaeology, ed. L. L. Grabbe.

A recent article that reveals the lack of precision in Carbon 14 dating is “The Four Pillars of the Low Chronology,” by Daniel A. Frese and Thomas E. Levy, pp. 187-212 in Historical Biblical Archaeology and the Future.

Tagged 10th Century, Analysis

Museum for King David Opens in Tel Aviv

From Arutz-7:

A new museum in Tel Aviv – the Beit David Museum, dedicated to the House of David – offers two fun-filled free days honoring the holiday of Shavuot, which is also celebrated as the 3,025th birthday of greatest Jewish king ever. […] The museum, located on 5 Brenner St. in central Tel Aviv, opened just four months ago. It contains archeological exhibits from First and Second Temple times and includes artifacts of special significance in the story of King David: for instance, one section displays slingshot stones found in the Emek HaEla [Valley of Elah] region, where David killed Goliath with a single accurate stone to the head. In another room, a video shows the life of King David, from his humble beginning as a lonely shepherd until his anointment as king. Another video explains the art of lyre-making, and based on writings that describe how King David built the lyres he played. The museum prides itself on the Genealogy Center, a database that traces the descendants of King David to this very day.

The museum seems to have some interesting material, but I’m surprised they chose Tel Aviv for its location. The full story is here.

Tagged 10th Century, Museums

Qeiyafa Shrines: Garfinkel Responds

Yosef Garfinkel, excavator of Khirbet Qeiyafa, has written responses to some of the recent questions about the cultic material uncovered at the site.

To Aren Maeir he addressed questions concerning calling the shrines “arks.” He argues that a more appropriate term than shrine or building model is the biblical term “ark.”

I proposed that the technical term of such items, in their own time, was “Aron Elohim” (box for keeping god symbols). Each religion kept different gods or goddesses in such boxes. In Middle Bronze Ashkelon such example was found with a small calf figurine inside it. The bible described a portable shrine (“Aron”) in various traditions and it was translated into English as: “The Ark of the Covenant”, “The Ark of the Lord”, and other names. I am not talking about this ark, or any other specific ark mentioned in the biblical tradition, but that the term “Aron Elohim” was used to describe this category of objects.

Maeir responds at length, rejecting the proposal. He writes, in part:

There is simply no supporting archaeological, biblical and ANE textual sources that imply this directly (and as far as I know, even indirectly). To this one can add that if “Ark/Aron” was the term used for these and various other types of objects, I think one should expect some extra-biblical mention of this term. Even if these small models were called “arks” – it is clear that the “Aron Elohim” referred to in the biblical text was envisaged as something quite different – see the Aron Brit Adonai that the Philistines capture in the battle of Eben Ezer and moves around Philistia – would it be moved around in a wagon drawn by oxen if so small?

In a comment on that post, Victor Hurowitz rejects the use of the term ark, insisting that these are actually temple models.

The temple models from Yossi’s dig should be compared with well known parallels from Yavneh and elsewhere. In my opinion they resemble the miniature shrines you can find in private houses and on street corners in the far east.. No Temple was found at Keiyafah, and these two models probably came from private homes and represent a family parallel to the official cult.

Garfinkel addressed several other issues on the blog of Luke Chandler, including concerns raised about his claims of aniconism.

Indeed one of them has two guardian lions and birds on the roof, but these are clearly different from similar items in Canaanites, Philistines, Edomite and even sites of the Kingdom of Israel, where naked goddesses were found attached to the models. We never talk about monotheistic cult here, but instead draw attention to the absence of iconic representations. I think that aniconic cult evolved over a large period of time, with deep struggles between those who accepted it and those who still believed in graven images. In Khirbet Qeiyafa we see a strong attitude toword aniconic cult. This needs to be addressed and discussed.

Yesterday I was interviewed about the Qeiyafa discoveries on the Science News Flash produced by Reasons to Believe. A link on that page will take you to a previous post on “Avoiding Crackpot Archaeology.” Krista Bontrager offers some good advice on how to evaluate the latest sensational claim.

Tagged 10th Century, Analysis, Shephelah

More on the Qeiyafa Shrines

A lot has been written about the recent announcement of two portable shrines discovered at Khirbet Qeiyafa. I might draw your attention to a small portion of what has been written in the last two days.

To get a better sense of just what is depicted on the shrines, start with the captions on Luke Chandler’s post.

Luke also addresses the question of whether the shrines are “aniconic,” though as discussion in the comments there indicate it seems best to recognize that while the shrines have depictions of animals, this does not necessarily violate the biblical command against worshipping images.

John Hobbins says that the new discoveries are “boring” because “they are compatible with biblical traditions about the time period in question.”

When you see similar shrines such as those posted by Tom Verenna and Owen Chesnut, the uniqueness of these discoveries is certainly diminished.

Leen Ritmeyer rejects any connection between these shrines and the temple, declaring that “their
origin is patently Pagan and not Biblical.”

Nadav Na’aman believes that the shrines were Canaanite and “had no connection to Jerusalem.”

Aren Maeir makes some brief observations and asks, “Why does this prove ANYTHING about the
accuracy of the bible, the existence of the United Monarchy, etc.?”

James McGrath provides a lengthy list of links.

Finally, it may be worth observing that much of the present discussion concerns the sensational interpretation of the objects and that if the excavators did not promote theories without sufficient evidence these discoveries would be like all the others—described in excavation reports and unknown to most. The question, then, is whether increased publicity is worth inflated or inaccurate claims.

Tagged 10th Century, Analysis, Discoveries, Shephelah