Judah Archives - Page 31 of 39

Recent IAA Excavation Reports

Horbat Hadat Modiin – Two strata from the Chalcolithic period were exposed, revealing high quality construction and a flint repertoire with more than 500 pieces.

Petah Tiqwa, Kefar Abraham – This Middle Bronze IIA industrial site with a tabun and kiln was probably related to the major city of Aphek.

Amazya, Al-Dawayima – A survey northwest of Moshav Amazya on the western end of Nahal Lachish in the Shephelah revealed 37 sites with abundant remains from the Iron, Roman, and Byzantine periods.

Amazya South – A survey south of Moshav Amazya identified 40 sites including many cisterns and cave dwellings.

Yattir Forest – A salvage excavation exposed a farming terrace and a square field tower, both of which might date to the Byzantine period.

Be’er Sheva‘, Bet Eshel Street – Excavations in downtown Beersheba uncovered pottery from the 8th century BC and a home from the Byzantine era.

Middle Bronze kiln excavated at Petah Tiqwa, Kefar Abraham.
Photo by Israel Antiquities Authority.

Tagged Excavations, Israel's Coast, Judah, Negev, Shephelah

Judean Temple Discovered Near Jerusalem

A Judean temple from the 10th-9th centuries BC has been discovered four miles northwest of ancient Jerusalem. The structure has massive walls, faces east, and contained a cache of sacred vessels. The site of Tel Motza may be the town of Mozah mentioned in the city list of Joshua 18:26 and some believe the Emmaus mentioned in Luke 24 was located nearby.

Location of Moza in relation to Jerusalem.
Map from Google Earth.

Archaeologists have dated the building to the Iron Age IIA, a period dated by most scholars to 980–830 BC, contemporary with the reigns of Solomon, Rehoboam, Asa, and Jehoshaphat. Each of these kings was faulted for not “destroying the high places” (1 Kgs 11:7; 14:23; 15:14; 22:43). Few such illicit worship sites are known from the land of Israel; the best preserved ones were excavated at Dan and Arad.

According to Anna Eirikh, Dr. Hamoudi Khalaily and Shua Kisilevitz, directors of the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “The ritual building at Tel Motza is an unusual and striking find, in light of the fact that there are hardly any remains of ritual buildings of the period in Judaea at the time of the First Temple. The uniqueness of the structure is even more remarkable because of the vicinity of the site’s proximity to the capital city of Jerusalem, which acted as the Kingdom’s main sacred center at the time.”

The site was excavated as part of road construction works on Highway 1, the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road.

The press release of the Israel Antiquities Authority is here and six high-resolution photos are available from this link. The story is reported by the Jerusalem Post, Arutz-7, and other sites.

Aerial view of excavation site. Photograph: Skyview, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Figurines of bearded men. Photograph: Clara Amit, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Figurine of horse. Photograph: Clara Amit, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Tagged Discoveries, Judah

Questions about Christmas

Religion News Service has begun a few feature called “Ask the Experts” and the first edition is focused on Christmas. They ask half a dozen scholars to weigh in on the following questions. I provide responses to three questions.

Why do some Christians celebrate Christmas on January 7th?
Why do we repeatedly hear about the “three wise men,” when biblical scholars tell us there were in fact many magi who attended Jesus after his birth?
Why did Mary and Joseph have to go to Bethlehem? How did civil authorities determine which town people had to report to at census-taking time?
Is it true that the word translated “inn” – kataluma – could also mean guest room? In other words, could Mary and Joseph been seeking shelter in relative’s guest rooms, rather than at the inn?
How was the birth of Christ celebrated before Constantine?
Is it true that most Christian churches did not celebrate Christmas in significant way until about a hundred years ago?
Is it true that department stores were the ones that started many of the traditions that we celebrate today?

The statement that Bethlehem was not on a major road is wrong. Bethlehem is located along the central ridge of the hill country and virtually everyone traveling to Jerusalem from the south would have passed by it. For more about the kataluma issue, see my previous post here.

Read all of the questions and answers here.

Shepherd with flock near Bethlehem.
Photo from The American Colony Collection.

Tagged Holidays, Jerusalem, Judah

Weekend Roundup

Leen Ritmeyer discusses the restoration work on the building that sits over the location of the Antonia Fortress and hopes that they don’t damage the important archaeological remains. (He has an illustration showing where he believes Paul addressed the crowd in Acts 22.)

The Herodium—A Monument to…whose sovereignty? Wayne Stiles provides a surprising twist on this one.

“The greatest church in the world” has been undergoing excavation since 2006 and I had no idea.

Amihai Mazar and Emanuel Tov were among a group of scientists inducted into the Israel Academy of the Sciences and Humanities this week.

The newest issue of Biblical Archaeology Review is the first to carry a photo of the Samson mosaic showing the fox tails on fire. I am disappointed that Samson himself was not preserved. You’ll need a subscription to either the print or digital version to see the photo. For the original press release, see here.

New book: The Photographs of the American Palestine Exploration Society, by Rachel Hallote,

Felicity Cobbing, and Jeffrey B. Spurr. “This volume includes over 150 never previously published photographs of archaeological sites in the Middle East (Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Israel) taken in 1875 by photographer Tancrede Dumas for the American Palestine Exploration Society.” 368 pages, $90.

The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible exhibit at Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth closes in one month. If you have the opportunity, I highly recommend it (and I challenge you to find the large
Jerusalem photograph printed in mirror image). Groupon has a 2-for-1 deal, but you’ll have to act fast as these sold out before I could mention it last time.

HT: Jack Sasson, Mark Vitalis Hoffman

Renovation of building over the location of the Antonia Fortress. Photo by Alexander Schick.

Tagged Galilee, Jerusalem, Judah, Museums, Photo Resources, Weekend Roundup

Radio: The Geography of the Christmas Story

If you’ve ever wondered which way Joseph and Mary traveled to Bethlehem or how the Magi were able to flee without Herod chasing, you should listen in tomorrow to the broadcast of The Land and the Book. Hosts Charlie Dyer and Jon Gauger interview me on the background of the familiar Christmas story.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…or so goes the song! From the music on the radio to the decorations in store windows, it’s hard to miss the fact that Christmas is almost here. But what would it have been like for Mary and Joseph that very first Christmas? If we could somehow go back in time, what would the sights, sounds and smells of that first Christmas season have been like? We don’t have a time machine here on The Land and the Book, but we have the next best thing…someone who has lived in the land of Israel and who knows it like the back of his own hand. We’ll be talking with Todd Bolen about what it would have been like for Mary and Joseph that first Christmas season.

You can find more details and a link for listening live on the Moody Radio website.

Tagged Holidays, Judah

Recent IAA Excavation Reports

An agricultural complex one mile northeast of the Church of the Nativity of Bethlehem in Khirbet el-Qatt was in use during the Roman period and included cisterns, terrace walls, watchman’s huts, winepresses, olive presses, and a coin from the time of Herod.

Some ancient pits excavated in Ramat Aviv in Tel Aviv had remains of mountain gazelle, dogs, and a donkey.

A quarry of unknown date and sections of plastered wall and floors from a Byzantine monastery were excavated along Nablus Road north of the Old City of Jerusalem.

Two squares were excavated on the western slope of Jonah’s hometown of Gath Hepher, revealing remains from the Early Bronze, Middle Bronze, and Iron II. If the excavators were a little more media-savvy, they could have made their fame and fortune showing off the cooking pot and jar that were certainly used by Jonah’s mother.

Excavations on the edge of Tel Yafo (biblical Joppa) revealed lots of Iron Age pottery (the canteen Jonah dropped on his way to the boat?) as well as finds from the Hellenistic, Early Islamic, Crusader, and later periods.

Vandals excavated a winepress in Horbat Pezaza but they left a second one untouched for those paid by the day rather than the piece. The archaeologists dated the winepresses to the Late Roman and Byzantine period.

Winepress in Horbat Pezaza. Photo by IAA.

Tagged Excavations, Galilee, Israel's Coast, Jerusalem, Judah, Shephelah