Category Archives: Archaeology

Expanded from my notes on Rami Arav, “Bethsaida,” pp 145–166 in Jesus and Archaeology, ed. James H. Charlesworth (Eerdmans, 2006).

From pp 148–149:

Four years after [Bethsaida’s] foundation, Philip, the founder of the city, died at Bethsaida and was buried in a costly burial; unfortunately, Josephus, our source of information, does not indicate where Philip was buried. Thirty-five years after this event, the city witnessed clashes between Jewish rebels led by Josephus and the Roman mercenaries of Agrippa II. As a result of this episode the city was partly deserted and ruined (Josephus, Vita 71, 72). It is important to mention in this context that Mk 8:23 preserves the tradition of Bethsaida as being a village (kōmē) and not a town (polis). Luke refers to Bethsaida as a polis (Lk 9:10), and it seems that he was not careful in his definition of the place. Bethsaida as a town named Julias did not exist for more than a few years.

Arav’s conclusion may also be seen as somewhat backwards. Both Gospels could be correct for the times in which they were written, if the kōmē and polis usage is indicative. That is, there is a more logical solution. Bethsaida was the polis Julias from either the late first century BC or some point early in the first century AD (see below) until a point during the Great Revolt of the Jews against Rome, between the years of 30 to 68 AD, according to Arav, taking his “thirty-five years” inclusively, as 69 AD is certainly too late (see below). It is thus most likely that the Gospel According to Luke was written during that time, when the place was known as such. Indeed, if the ending of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, the volume following on the Gospel, is any indicator of its date, then it must have been written in 62 AD. This fits the usage. Likewise then, the Gospel of Mark must date to a period either before or after Bethsaida was known as the polis Julias, and was just a kōmē. To date Mark before 30 AD is patently absurd, as the Gospel itself includes events that are generally recognized as occurring later. Taking into account the above evidence regarding Luke, to date Mark after 68 AD supports the Griesbach or Two Gospel Hypothesis regarding the production of the Synoptic Gospels, which posits Mark as a later conflation of both Matthew and Luke. To claim otherwise complicates the issue, requiring us to believe that Mark is somehow more correct than Luke, as Arav seems to imply, though the former imposes the anachronistic label of kōmē on Bethsaida during the ministry of Jesus in preference for the status of the place in the author’s time, and the latter correctly depicts it as a polis during Jesus’ ministry. Issue appears be taken with this evidence in Luke, however, for not toeing the party line: not correctly indicating the status of Bethsaida in light of the typically much later date proposed for the writing of Luke in the Two Source Hypothesis (Mark first, Matthew and Luke later drawing on Mark, Q, and other traditions). And yet, Luke could easily have been written during the time when Bethsaida-Julias was a polis, while Mark could just as easily have been written when it was a kōmē, which is the most logical, least complicated, and patently clear explanation of this piece of evidence.

Of course, the above approach requires us to accept as given that each author can only have described Bethsaida using the proper term (kōmē or polis) that applied to the place during the author’s time, rather than the time indicated in the narrative, which is the period of Jesus’ ministry. This approach fails to take into account the evidence found in the Gospel According to John (1.44), where Bethsaida is called “the city (πολεως) of Andrew and Peter.” John is universally recognized to be the latest written among the canonical Gospels, dating to the last decade of the first century AD, when Bethsaida was most decidedly no longer a polis.

A further issue is in regards to the date used by Arav of 30 AD for the establishment of Julias as a polis, and of 68 AD for its demo(li)tion. These are far from certain. Josephus does not give a specific date for the founding of Julias at Bethsaida, but perhaps implies that it was soon after Tiberius became Emperor, in 14 AD (War 2.168), that Philip acted to honor Tiberius’ mother Livia (as some would correct Josephus; see Ant 18.27–28), known as Julia only from that point forward, when she received membership in the gens Iulia by bequest of Augustus. Arav sets the date in 30 AD, soon after the death of Julia, with the foundation of Julias and its temple being simultaneous and intended to reap the benefits of worship of the Imperial family. This is certainly possible, even plausible, though the equation of temple and city is nowhere stated in Josephus. It is necessary, too, to recall that Josephus states that Julias was named after “Caesar’s daughter” (Ant 18.28) this being Julia, daughter of Tiberius and mother of Gaius (Caligula), who fell from favor in 2 BC. Unless we unwisely wish to posit an error on the part of Josephus, this little bit of evidence indicates that Philip founded Julias almost immediately upon recieving his tetrarchy in 4 BC. This is the closest to a precise indicator that Josephus gives for the foundation of Julias, as the other mentions of the founding of the city appear in simplified lists of Philip’s accomplishments. The date for the demotion (nowhere explicitly stated, either) is likewise up in the air, with our only indication being that it is after the first year of the War, obviously, as Josephus is a general, and before the end of the War in 70 AD. The only indication of the timing of its capture by Placidus (War 4.438) is that it is described just prior to Vespasian hearing of the revolt of Vindex against Nero (War 4.440), which occurred in late 67 or early 68, and Nero’s death, which occurred 9 June 68, is related further on (War 4.491). Clearly, 68 AD is the most likely date for the capture of Bethsaida-Julias, and the de facto (de jure?) end of its existence as a polis.

Perhaps Arav’s ongoing excavations of Bethsaida-Julias will eventually clarify the date of its promotion by Philip. For now, all of the above is rather, I think, indicative of the murky and imprecise nature of the intersection of text and trowel. At least, it is not as exact as we would like it to be, with too much vagueness lying in the realms of both. But I want to thank Dr Arav for his fascinating work and his obviously thought-provoking article. I very much look forward to reading more on the work of the Bethsaida excavations, a site which previsously held no interest for me, but which Arav’s article has made much more interesting, particularly the discussion of the Iron Age findings.

One of the interesting things that has been clarified by James Hoffmeier’s (et alia) North Sinai excavations around Tel Hebua is the nature of the Shihor, the “Waters of Horus” described in various Egyptian texts alternately as a channel or a basin of water connected to the Mediterranean. It turns out to be both: the easternmost branch of the Nile in the Eastern Delta which emptied into a lagoon or estuary which in turn opened onto the Mediterranean up until the late second millennium or early first millennium BC. See Hoffmeier’s Ancient Israel in Sinai: The Evidence for the Authenticiy of the Wilderness Tradition, particularly chapter 4, “The Geography of the Exodus: Ramesses to the Sea,” and Figures 3-6, 10, and 19 for topographical and geological maps of the area in question in the Eastern Nile Delta. This branch of the Nile began a bit south and west of Avaris/Pi-Ramesses and continued in a northeasterly direction until debouching into the aformentioned lagoon adjacent to Tjaru/Silu/Sile, the great border fortress of Egypt, located at Tel Hebua I and II (the fortress comprised two large buildings, one on either side of the channel, connected by a bridge). It is generally recognized that this Shihor actually defined the border of Egypt. On the western bank was Egypt, on the eastern bank, “the East.” For its entire length, the Shihor channel is paralleled by the “Way of Horus” the road leading from Avaris/Pi-Ramesses to Canaan.

The references within the Bible to this particular body of water are Jos 13.3; 1Chr 13.5; Isa 23.3; Jer 2.18. (There is also mention of a Shihor-Libnath, near Mount Carmel, in Jos 19.26, but this appears to be a Canaanite town or regional name interestingly based on a combination of the Semitic roots for “black” שחר and “white” לבן whatever the meaning may have been.) Nadav Naʾaman in two articles, “The Brook of Egypt and Assyrian Policy on the Border of Egypt” and “The Shihor of Egypt and Shur That is Before Egypt” (reprinted in Ancient Israel and Its Neighbors: Interaction and Counteraction. Collected Essays volume 1. pages 238-264 and 265-278 respectively) conveniently provides summaries of the scholarship on the subject of the Shihor, describing the various agreements and disagreements over the referents of the Shihor in these Biblical passages. The former article has become the classic statement on the subject, it seems. To summarize reactions to the Biblical use of Shihor, the Isaiah and Jeremiah references are unanimously recognized as referring to the Nile, but the Joshua and Chronicles passages are not. Some (like Naʾaman himself) would equate Shihor in the Joshua and Chronicles references to the Wadi Besor (so Naʾaman argues) as the “Brook of Egypt” rather than the Nile itself, though this “Brook of Egypt” is typically placed further south, at the Wadi el-Arish. Generally, the Joshua and Chronicles Shihor usage is denied as referring to the Nile because the Shihor is elsewhere not described as the border of Canaan or the Promised Land, while the “Brook of Egypt” is. One is forced to ask, however, “Is it necessarily objective to change the referent of a geographical name depending upon equivocal contexts?” Is that actually treating the text fairly, or is it rather attempting to force the text to fit our own theoretical understanding? In this case, it is clearly the latter.

Firstly, there is not necessarily any “Brook of Egypt” which is separate from the “River of Egypt” which is the Nile, particularly in these cases—the easternmost branch in the Delta which was called the Shihor in the second millennium BC, and, much later, the Pelusiac. There is no particular difference in the Hebrew נהר and נחל such that the former means “river” and the latter means “brook” which would justify the tendentious translation “Brook of Egypt.” They are synonyms for a lengthy, flowing body of water of whatever size, large or small. The fascinating information that Naʾaman provides from the Assyrian texts (in “The Brook of Egypt…” article noted above) is still equivocal, and the article has the overall feel of a tour de force rather than an objective, rational investigation. It’s interesting, but forced in its fitting of the evidence to a hypothetical border placed close to Gaza.

Secondly, the Joshua 13.3 and 1 Chronicles 13.5 usages are not so anomalous as we would be led to believe. The former relates a boundary of the territory of the land still to be taken by the Israelites near the end of Joshua’s life, obviously from the actual border of Egypt up to Ekron, not from some unimportant wadi. Interestingly, the “Wadi of Egypt” (as the NRSV puts it) is also mentioned to be the southern border of the promised land in both Numbers 34.5 and Joshua 15.4. Importantly, in Isaiah 27.12, the “Wadi of Egypt” is put in apposition with the Euphrates, just as in Isaiah 23.3, the Shihor is. This seems rather to suggest that no matter the period involved, the Shihor and the “Wadi of Egypt” were understood by the Biblical writers as identical, and as the theoretical or ideal, if not actual, border between Egypt and Israel. That the Egyptians considered the Shihor their border is well known and unanimously acknowledged. That the Israelites, producing the only other body of material to elaborate on this border, indeed to even mention the Egyptian name of this border feature, claimed to share this border with the Egyptians either ideally or actually should not surprise us. Theirs was a vibrant culture immediately to the north of Egypt, with a cultural territory of larger extent than any of the Canaanite or Philistine city-states, and with a literary tradition of astonishing richness which is still appreciated to this day, aside from anyone’s conception of the workings of God in their history. Such things do not indicate the Israelites to have been an inconsiderable cultural force in the region. Control by such a cultural force, to a greater or lesser degree, over the unclaimed lands to the east of Egypt should actually be expected. The incidental usage of Nile/Shihor/River of Egypt in parallel with the Euphrates as indicating the maximal extent of Israelite influence, and Canaanite before that, through several centuries of writing by the Israelites, whether it was ideal or actualized (as it seems to have been at times), should not be denied because it doesn’t fit hypothetical models of Israelite borders based on other, more equivocal and less objectively determinative factors. To do so is clearly an injustice to all the evidence, and this theory of a “Wadi of Egypt” at Wadi Besor or Wadi el-Arish should be abandoned by scholarship.

Of course, we needn’t expect anything to really change on that front, for, as they say, “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.”

On the whole Mount of Olivet there seems to be no spot higher than that from which the Lord is said to have ascended into the heavens, where there stands a great round church, having in its circuit three vaulted porticoes covered over above. The interior of the church, without roof or vault, lies open to heaven under the open air, having in its eastern side an altar protected under a narrow covering. So that in this way the interior has no vault, in order that from the place where the Divine footprints are last seen, when the Lord was carried up into heaven in a cloud, the way may be always open and free to the eyes of those who pray towards heaven.

For when this basilica, of which I have now made slight mention, was building, that place of the footprints of the Lord, as we find written elsewhere, could not be enclosed under the covering with the rest of the buildings. Whatever was applied, the unaccustomed earth, refusing to receive anything human, cast back into the face of those who brought it. And, moreover, the mark of the dust that was trodden by the Lord is so lasting that the impression of the footsteps may be perceived; and although the faith;of such as gather daily at the spot snatches away some of what was trodden by the Lord, yet the area perceives no loss, and the ground still retains that same appearance of being marked by the impress of footsteps.

Further, as the sainted Arculf, who carefully visited this spot, relates, a brass hollow cylinder of large circumference, flattened on the top, has been placed here, its height being shown by measurement to reach one’s neck. In the centre of it is an opening of some size, through which the uncovered marks of the feet of the Lord are plainly and clearly seen from above, impressed in the dust. In that cylinder there is, in the western side, as it were, a door so that any entering by it can easily approach the place of the sacred dust, and through the open hole in the wheel may take up in their outstretched hands some particles of the sacred dust.

Thus the narrative of our Arculf as to the footprints of the Lord quite accords with the writings of others–to the effect that they could not be covered in any way, whether by the roof of the house or by any special lower and closer covering, so that they can always be seen by all that enter, and the marks of the feet of the Lord can be clearly seen depicted in the dust of that place. For these footprints of the Lord are lighted by the brightness of an immense lamp hanging on pulleys above that cylinder in the church, and burning day and night. Further in the western side of the round church we have mentioned above, twice four windows have been formed high up with glazed shutters, and in these windows there burn as many lamps placed opposite them, within and close to them. These lamps hang in chains, and are so placed that each lamp may hang neither higher nor lower, but may be seen, as it were, fixed to its own window, opposite and close to which it is specially seen. The brightness of these lamps is so great that, as their light is copiously poured through the glass from the summit of the Mountain of Olivet, not only is the part of the mountain nearest the round basilica to the west illuminated, but also the lofty path which rises by steps up to the city of Jerusalem from the Valley of Josaphat, is clearly illuminated in a wonderful manner, even on dark nights, while the greater part of the city that lies nearest at hand on the opposite side is similarly illuminated by the same brightness. The effect of this brilliant and admirable coruscation of the eight great lamps shining by night from the holy mountain and from the site of the Lord’s ascension, as Arculf related, is to pour into the hearts of the believing onlookers a greater eagerness of the Divine love, and to strike the mind with a certain fear along with vast inward compunction.

This also Arculf related to me about the same round church: That on the anniversary of the Lord’s Ascension, at mid-day, after the solemnities of the Mass have been celebrated in that basilica, a most violent tempest of wind comes on regularly every year, so that no one can stand or sit in that church or in the neighbouring places, but all lie prostrate in prayer with their faces in the ground until that terrible tempest has passed.

The result of this terrific blast is that that part of the house cannot be vaulted over; so that above the spot where the footsteps of the Lord are impressed and are clearly shown, within the opening in the centre of the above-named cylinder, the way always appears open to heaven. For the blast of the above-mentioned wind destroyed, in accordance with the Divine will, whatever materials had been gathered for preparing a vault above it, if any human art made the attempt.

This account of this dreadful storm was given to us by the sainted Arculf, who was himself present in that Church of Mount Olivet at the very hour of the day of the Lord’s Ascension when that fierce storm arose. A drawing of this round church is shown below, however unworthily it may have been drawn; while the form of the brass cylinder is also shown placed in the middle of the church.

This also we learned from the narrative of the sainted Arculf: That in that round church, besides the usual light of the eight lamps mentioned above as shining within the church by night, there are usually added on the night of the Lord’s Ascension almost innumerable other lamps, which by their terrible and admirable brightness, poured abundantly through the glass of the windows, not only illuminate the Mount of Olivet, but make it seem to be wholly on fire; while the whole city and the places in the neighbourhood are also lit up.

Excerpts from St Adomnán of Iona De Locis Sanctis (“On the Holy Places”) on the description of the Imbomon Church at the peak of the Mount of Olives, the traditional site of the Christ’s Ascension, related by a certain Frankish Bishop Arculf, who visited Jerusalem circa 670 AD. Arculf was shipwrecked at Iona when returning from his lengthy travels in the East. He related to Adomnán an account of the various holy sites he visited and, most importantly, drew diagrams of their layouts, all of which Adomnán compiled in De Locis Sanctis. This makes De Locis Sanctis an extremely valuable historical account of the appearance of these sites in the third quarter of seventh century, within fifty years of the Arabs taking control of the city. An old, but workable, English translation of Adomnán’s De Locis Sanctis is available here. The reconstruction plan (the second image, above) is from Jerome Murphy O’Connor, The Holy Land: And Oxford Archaeological Guide from Earliest Times to 1700 (Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 124. I’ve rotated both images, so that north is to the top. The dashed octogon in the reconstruction drawing indicates the outline of the currently standing dome illustrated below.

The ancient Imbomon Church in its prime must have been quite beautiful. The original church was built circa 380. The church Arculf saw circa 670 was one that was rebuilt after the Persian destruction in 614 of all churches in the Holy Land (except for that of the Nativity in Bethlehem, because its facade’s mosaic depicted the Magi as Persians). Centuries later, the victory of Saladin over the Crusaders led to the church being transferred to the ownership of some of Saladin’s retainers, who massively altered the site, though much of this alteration likely occurred under the Crusader regime. Only the central, formerly unroofed, section was retained, the outer parts of the building being razed to their foundations. The remaining structure was covered with a dome and a mihrab was added to the south wall (visible in the interior photo), making it a mosque, which it is to this day. A rough wall making mostly a round courtyard (it’s more of a semicircle now) around the central structure indicates (in the round part) roughly the original size of the church, which was massive. The following pictures date to between 1900 and 1920, and are from the online Library of Congress collection of the Matson Photo Archives.

Tyler Williams over at Codex has begun keeping track of the best posts amongst the Biblioblogs in response to the latest media pseudo-scandal about a particular tomb near Jerusalem being that of Jesus’ family, friends, followers, dog-walker, and pool-cleaner, no doubt. See particularly this post which highlights a response from James Tabor, who is marginally (and/or should that be “scandalously”?) involved in the project. Keep watching there, as I’m sure he continue with the round-ups.

In addition, see this excellent post by Jim Davila at Palaeojudaica, which includes input from his colleague at St Andrews, Richard Bauckham, who provides some fascinating information on the distribution of various Greek forms of “Mary,” particularly the surprising (to me) information that the Greek form μαριαμνη, “Mariamne,” is unique in Biblically-related literature to the Acts of Philip. I think I was thrown off on that score by the old Whiston-translated edition of Josephus’ works, which I internalized long ago. Whiston regularly uses “Mariamne,” where modern editions have μαριαμμη throughout. I wonder if that’s a peculiarity of the admittedly peculiar Whiston, or a peculiarity of the edition(s) he utilized? In any case, Bauckham’s careful statistical information on name distribution in among first-century Jews in his Jesus and the Eyewitnesses is a good read on the subject. His work is a lesson in how to do this kind of name research.

Over the past few decades, for a number of reasons “Biblical Archaeology” has fallen out of favor in the academy. One of those reasons, very much a charicature of the best of the field, was the perception that its practitioners were out to “prove the Bible.” Undoubtedly there were secondary and tertiary applications of the findings of Biblical Archaeology, usually tied to confessional interests, which abused the data, indeed claiming them to have proved the Bible correct in various ways.

Here is how G. Ernest Wright, one of the most eminent of the proponents of Biblical Archaeology defined the field in the beginning of his book on the subject:

Biblical archaeology is a special “armchair” variety of general archaeology. The biblical archaeologist may or may not be an excavator himself, but he studies the discoveries of the excavations in order to glean from them every fact that throws a direct, indirect or even diffused light upon the Bible. He must be intelligently concerned with stratigraphy and typology, upon which the methodology of modern archaeology rests and of which more will be said later in this chapter. Yet his chief concern is not with methods or pots or weapons in themselves alone. His central and absorbing interest is the understanding and exposition of the Scriptures.
Biblical Archaeology (Westminster Press, 1962), 17.

Interestingly, Wright describes Biblical Archaeology as a tool of exegesis, yet one rooted in realia rather than literary theory. Nowadays, some modern Biblical critics regard the Biblical texts as wholly fictional, tendentious, and lacking in all connection to realia, so to draw on archaeology for illuminating realia as Wright describes above is, in such perspectives, ludicrous. Such a severe disjunction is, however, generally considered extreme and unwarranted. The Bible is a document originating in the ancient Near East, in a particular territory, and describes various people, places, and events in that territory and others. And while various items of realia, the remains of cities, and so on do indeed support numerous elements of the Biblical narratives, to take those direct and indirect corroborations and illuminations and state that the entire Bible is thereby “proved” in its entirety by them, is likewise unwarranted. Wright also deals with this abuse:

In this perspective the biblical scholar no longer bothers to ask whether archaeology “proves” the Bible. In the sense that the biblical languages, the life and customs of its peoples, its history, and its conceptions are illuminated in innumerable ways by the archaeological discoveries, he knows that such a question is certainly to be answered in the affirmative. No longer does this literature project from the chaos of prehistory “as though it were a monstrous fossil, with no contemporary evidence to demonstrate its authenticity.” Yet the scholar also knows that the primary purpose of biblical archaeology is not to “prove” but to discover. The vast majority of the “finds” neither prove nor disprove; they fill in the background and give the setting for the story. It is unfortunate that this desire to “prove” the Bible has vitiated so many works which are available to the average reader. The evidence has been misused, and the inferences drawn from it are so often misleading, mistaken, or half true. Our ultimate aim must not be “proof,” but truth. We must study the history of the Chosen People in exactly the same way as we do that of any other people, running the risk of destroying the uniqueness of that history. Unless we are willing to run that risk, truth can never be ours.
Biblical Archaeology, 27.

That’s a very enlightening passage, which puts into relief much modern vituperation against Biblical Archaeology, complaints about “Albrightian” approaches, and so on. Wright was well aware, as was Albright, that the data were being misused by some unscrupulous authors in order to “prove the Bible.” To lump Albright, Wright, et alia, and this misuse of Biblical Archaeology together with such misuse is either misinformed or dishonest. Biblical Archaeology itself, properly understood as defined in the first quote above from Wright, is a perfectly legitimate practice. It is, in all actuality, simply archaeology.

On the other hand, since the term “Biblical Archaeology” has become entirely associated with that misuse, from the late twentieth century critical scholarship has been moving away from use of the term. Especially illustrative of this is that the journal The Biblical Archaeologist, published by the organization American Schools of Oriental Research, experienced a name change in 1998 to Near Eastern Archaeology. Largely this was due to the fact that the journal generally comprised articles that had nothing to do with biblical subjects, but the former name’s connotation indeed played a role, as discussions upon the proposition of the name change revealed.