2026-06-09

Two (more) Recommended Readings for Richard Carrier

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Rene Salm has posted responses to Nazareth-related arguments in Ken Dark’s last three publications. Richard Carrier relies heavily on Ken Dark for the site of first century Nazareth and has recommended others read Dark’s work carefully. My first recommended reading for Carrier is Salm’s detailed analysis of Dark’s claims.

Compare the difference:

Carrier’s response to Dark‘s argument that the “large” stone before the tomb is evidence of a date before 100 CE

Salm’s response (pages 18-20) to the same point by Dark

Reference:
Smaller rolling stone diameter size: 0.8–1.0 m. (2.6–3.3 ft.)
Average rolling stone diameter size: 1.0–1.2 m. (3.3–4.0 ft.)
Larger rolling stone diameter size: 1.2–1.8 m. (4–6 ft.)

Similarly, critics might “skip over” the fact that Dark makes a distinction between “large” (far more expensive) rollstones (which are all pre-100) and small ones (which were abundant in later periods but nowhere found at Nazareth). Indeed, the tomb in question may have been cut for one of the priests resettled there after the first war.

And again, statistically, to have such a tomb there entails decades, probably at least a generation (about half a century), of prior town flourishing. So even if against the odds this was the last such tomb built, in exactly the year 100, that still makes it more likely than not that Nazareth had been there since at least 50 AD.

And once you are admitting Nazareth predates the War, insisting it only “just” got established “right” after Jesus is supposed to have lived there is playing a high-wire act of coincidences—and on no evidence, just a desire for the result. It can’t be argued that there is no evidence of Herodian occupation “except” for all the evidence of Herodian occupation, simply because you “desire” all that evidence to be post-Herodian.

We turn to another invention of Prof. Dark: that the rolling stone at the SoN [Sisters of Nazareth] convent site is of the “large” variety. In fact, the stone is 1.09 m (3.6 ft.) in diameter (Dark 2021:121). Despite the imposing impression given by photographs in general circulation (Illus. 3 above), this diameter is typical and places it in the “intermediate” category.

However, Dark describes the rolling stone at the SoN site as “large” and then uses that false characterization to date it before 100 CE:

(11a) Although smaller rolling stones continued in use into the Byzantine period, stones of the size attested here [i.e. at the SoN convent site] were no longer used after c. AD 100… (Dark 2021:121)

(11b) A key chronological indicator is the use of a large rolling stone (0.8 m or over in diameter) to seal the entrance of the tomb [at the SoN site]. (Dark 2021:121)

Dark’s confusion regarding rolling stone sizes is underlined by the foregoing citation 12b, in which he considers that a rolling stone of diameter 0.8 m (2.6 ft.) is “large.” It is no typo, for he confirms the error in the following passage:

(12) In Galilee, where they apparently have no associations with tombs of exceptional status at all, tombs sealed by large (0.8 m or over) circular rolling stones seem to have been especially common. (Dark 2020:97)

However, an 0.8 m diameter stone is at the small end of the rolling stone scale. Virtually all rolling stones (and round leaning stones — see below) were larger than 0.8 m in diameter! Yet with this error Dark dates the Nazareth rolling stone (and thus the associated SoN tomb complex) to I CE:

(13) Hachlili (2005) and Kloner and Zissu (2007) also agree that although rolling stones were used after c. AD 100, the stones were much smaller than those before that date. Consequently, a tomb sealed by a rolling stone of c. 0.8 m or more in diameter can confidently be assigned to between the late first BC and the late first century AD, and probably more specifically to the mid- to late first century AD. (Dark 2020:97)

This is another case of misrepresentation, for Hachlili, as well as Kloner and Zissu, wrote nothing of tomb blocking stones in II CE and beyond — both of the cited books deal specifically with Second Temple–period tombs (2nd c. BCE–1st c. CE).

In my opinion, it is probable that Dark did not properly understand a certain passage in Kloner’s 1999 BAR article (below). Indeed, I too misunderstood the passage on first reading it, for Kloner makes a fine distinction (one that only a tomb specialist would make) between a “round blocking stone” and a “rolling stone.” In fact, Kloner avoids the designation “rolling stone,” even at the risk of rendering his English (which is not his native language) quite cumbersome. For him, the “blocking stone” that closed a tomb could come in a variety of forms — some unknown to the average lay reader. In the first instance, the blocking stone could be square (the vast majority) or round in shape. In the second instance (and this is what escaped me at first, and what escapes most readers — including Dark) is that the round blocking stone could (a) “lean against the rock facade” (BAR p. 28) or (b) be “set on one end between two parallel walls and thus moved on a sort of track” so that they “could easily be rolled away” (p. 25). It is the latter that we casually call “rolling stone,” but we must bear in mind that all round blocking stones are not automatically “rolling stones.” There also existed the category of round blocking stones that simply leaned against the entrance to the tomb. These “leaning stones,” if you will, came to preponderate in Late Roman and Byzantine times — and they were much smaller than the earlier round stone that rolled away (what we call the “rolling stone”). A leaning stone was a smaller round stone simply propped against the tomb entrance, without a carved track. The critical takeaway from this abstruse discussion on tomb blocking stones is this: when Kloner writes of “later round stones” that “were much smaller” (in the citation below) he is not writing about rolling stones at all — he is writing about round “leaning stones,” which constitute an entirely different mechanism of tomb closure than the stone that rolls away.

Furthermore, the leaning stone (as I call it for simplicity) does not require a hewn recess into which it is rolled. Nor does it require the thickness of a stone that, while being rolled, must stay upright — lest it fall over. For these reasons leaning stones were much smaller and lighter than “rolling stones.” They were generally less than 0.9 m (3 ft.) in diameter — small enough for one or two people to move (or roll) aside — while not requiring either a hewn track or a hewn recess to one side.

With the foregoing discussion in mind, here is Kloner’s description of later “leaning stones” (not to be confused with “rolling stones”):

(14) So far we have been talking about blocking stones from the Second Temple period, which ended with the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. In later periods the situation changed, and round blocking stones [read: “leaning stones”] became much more common. Dozens of them have been found from the late Roman to Byzantine periods (second to seventh century C.E.). These later round stones were much smaller than the Second Temple period stones (less than 3 feet in diameter), and they did not move on a track but simply leaned against the rock facade, making them even simpler to move. (A. Kloner, BAR 1999.5:25, 28.)

I suspect that Dark read the foregoing passage and simply assumed that “rolling stones” diminished in size after ca. 100 CE. That conclusion is, after all, what he writes (above, citations 10, 11, 13). However, what actually happened was that the preferred mechanism of closure changed from a round rolling stone to a round leaning stone, with the concomitant reduction of stone weight. Nevertheless, a few rolling stones of the larger variety continued to be used after 70 CE — including the one at the SoN site at Nazareth.¹⁶

Unfortunately, the foregoing nuances have apparently escaped Dark. He proposes a change in rolling stone size ca. 100 CE and calls a small rolling stone of 0.8 m “large.” Heaping error upon error, he then dates the tombs at the SoN convent site before 100 CE, simply because Tomb 1 was closed by a rolling stone of very average size. On the basis of these several errors, the archaeologist then proposes that the (alleged) dwelling predated the tombs and thus the alleged dwelling must date to early I CE. This entirely wayward concatenation is, however, only in Dark’s mind. Armed as he is with a fertile imagination, neither the physical evidence at the SoN site, nor tomb typology, nor the published scholarly literature prevent him from reaching one overriding goal: the discovery of a dwelling at the SoN site “in the time of Jesus.”

16 Excavated and published sites include (a) Khirbet Midras (Judean Shephelah), Bar Kochba period, rolling stone diameter ~1.5 m; (b) Horvat ‘Ethri (Judean Hills), Bar Kochba period, rolling stone diameter ~1.4 m; (c) Khirbet Shema (Upper Galilee), II–III CE, rolling stone diameter ~1.45 m. In comparison, the rolling stone at the SoN site is 1.09 m in diameter.

Carrier speaks of lazy/lazily and apologetic dating and presents himself as the “PhD brain” against the “amateur” Salm. I suggest the above comparison shows Carrier as the lazy reader and it is Salm who is the genuine scholar with his genuinely critical reading. Read the full response by Salm for a full appreciation of the apologetics and confusion throughout Dark’s attempts to establish an early first century Nazareth.

Moving on to another reading recommendation for Richard.

In my previous post I offered a series of works arguing that Jerusalem was not an “uninhabited ruin” from 70 CE to 132 CE in the sense that it had no practical place in the religious life of the Jews. Evidence tells us that it continued to be visited by Jews (or Judeans) in their regular pilgrimages and even informal sacrifices were offered there. There were hopes that the temple would be rebuilt.

In the same post RC makes his point about Jerusalem being “by law” an “uninhabited ruin” suggesting it was bereft of any cultic relevance. Two sentences later he cites Matthew Grey’s dissertation:

The debate is discussed in Matthew Grey’s 2011 dissertation for UNC Chapel Hill (“Jewish Priests and the Social History of Post-70 Palestine”).

So this is my next recommended reading for Richard. (He evidently did not critically read it himself when he made his point in the same paragraph about the condition of post 70 CE Jerusalem.)

Grey, Matthew J. “Jewish Priests and the Social History of Post-70 Palestine.” Ph.D., The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2011.

The city was occupied by the 10th legion. Yet priests continued to live nearby, hoping for a new temple, and as we have seen, still able to offer personal sacrifices at the temple site, still partaking in festival pilgrimages to the city.

Families of the priestly aristocracy also seem to have settled in northern Judea and just outside of Jerusalem, likely to await the rebuilding of the temple. . . . It appears that many Jews of the post-70 generation fully expected that the Romans would rebuild the temple in their lifetime. (p. 156)

Note Grey’s added detail:

Some scholars have even suggested that aspects of the sacrificial cult continued in Jerusalem in the period between the revolts. Kenneth W. Clark, “Worship in the Jerusalem Temple after A.D. 70,” NTS 6 (1959-1960): 269-280 made the following observations:

1) No sources explicitly declare the cessation of a sacrificial cult in 70.

2) The exilic and post-exilic Jews maintained a sacrificial cult for some time before the rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple in the fifth century B.C.E.

3) The Romans issued no decree prohibiting worship at the temple site until 135.

4) Hints exist in the literature of some ongoing pilgrimage activity for several years after 70.

These are intriguing arguments. However, Clark‟s lack of conclusive evidence has left many scholars skeptical of the continuation of cultic sacrifices in Jerusalem between 70 and 135. See Barclay, Apion, 279 n.769. Cohen, Three Crowns, 160 points out that if there was some form of post-70 sacrificial cult, priests undoubtedly would have retained much of their involvement in it and still would have been seen as being able to facilitate contact with the divine. (p. 156)

One can see extracts of Clark’s article along with more details of more recent publications arguing the same point in the previous post. Note that Grey appears to be more open to the argument for an ongoing, though subdued, active Jewish cultic engagement with Jerusalem than Carrier would want to admit.

But I was curious after reading Grey’s remark that “many scholars” are sceptical so I consulted his two supporting references.

The first support, Barclay, is as follows:

Pace Clark 1959-60, there is no firm evidence that the temple sacrifices continued after 70 CE in a reduced form (see Smallwood 1981: 347-48): the Romans would hardly shut down the relatively harmless temple in Leontopolis (War 7.420-21) but allow the symbolic focus of the Revolt in Jerusalem to remain (on their policy, see Rives 2005). So Josephus is writing at a time when there is no temple of the one God.

Barclay appears to have misread Clark. Clark does not argue that there was a standing temple where sacrifices were offered. He says nothing more than that private persons offered their own sacrifices at the site of the temple. There was no national cult or national sacrifice, of course. Barclay is also pitting what he imagines would have been in the minds of the Romans with respect to those sacrifices against the evidence cited in the previous post. As for Barclay’s appeal to Smallwood, again see the previous post where I have quoted Smallwood’s words.

But the second reference was most interesting. Here is what Cohen writes in The Three Crowns, page 160 (my bolding etc):

Whether – and if so, for how long some Jews continued to offer sacrifices on the Temple mount after 70 C.E. has long been debated. That many continued to observe the custom of three annual pilgrimages to the site seems beyond doubt.³⁹

I will take his word for it that sacrifices at the temple post 70 has “long been debated”, but from what I have seen so far there is more incredulous disbelief (and mind-reading) on the side of the doubters than any engagement with the evidence that has been cited to argue the “for” side of the case. But by no means does Cohen represent post 70 Jerusalem as a place lost from all relevance to Jews: Jews continued visiting and engaging in cultic practices related to the city and held fast to hopes for its Temple’s restoration.

Just as the Temple was destroyed, Israel did not cease from making pilgrimage three times a year. (382) . . . Indeed, they go up to Jerusalem, but with melancholy and gloom. . . A Roman citizen used to go up and visit Jerusalem every year. . . then before us is testimony concerning a merchant from the Galilee who had the means to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem from time to time. (383) . . . . The earliest accounts of sages going up to visit Jerusalem are already from the generation of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai . . . “Once Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai was leaving Jerusalem, and Rabbi Joshua was walking behind him and saw the Temple destroyed. Rabbi Joshua said: Woe to us that this is destroyed!” From the next generation, the tradition is known about the visit of the head of the Sanhedrin. . . they were going up to Jerusalem. When they reached the watchtowers, they tore their garments. When they reached the Temple Mount and saw a fox emerging from the Holy of Holies, they began to weep. (385) . . . . From the sources we have brought, not only did they visit, but they also entered the Temple Mount. (391) . . . . Pilgrimage to Jerusalem after the destruction was accompanied by a number of legal regulations. As we have seen, one who saw the destruction of Israel was obligated to rend his garments. (384) . . . . There is no doubt that pilgrims came not only from the circles of the sages and their disciples, but from much broader circles, as emerges from the general descriptions we have brought and even from some of the detailed testimonies we will bring below. (385) . . . . From all the numerous testimonies we have brought, it follows that they made pilgrimages on the three pilgrimage festivals and on all the days of the year. No Jewish source connects specifically to the day of the Temple’s destruction. These testimonies cast doubt upon the testimonies of the Church Fathers and its writers that the Jews were permitted to visit Jerusalem only once a year on the Ninth of Av.⁸⁶(393)

86. The first to mention this custom is the Bordeaux Pilgrim in his itinerary (*Itinerarium Burdigalense*, ed. Geyer, p. 12, written around 333). See also Jerome’s commentary on Zephaniah 1:15 (*In Sophoniam P.L.*, ed. Migne, t. 22, col. 1355) and the words of Gregory of Nazianzus (*Orat. V 4 P.G.*, t. 35, col. 668).

Extracts from the footnote 39 are found in the side box here.

The text is by S. Safrai, translated from Hebrew: —>

Safrai, Shmuel. “Pilgrimage to Jerusalem after the Destruction of the Second Temple.” In Jerusalem in the Second Temple Period Memorial Volume for Abraham Schalit, edited by Aharōn Oppenheimer, Uriel Rappaport, and Menaḥēm Šṭern. Jād Jiṣḥāq Ben-Ṣeḇī, 1981. — That’s a translation. The original citation = S. Safrai, ‘Ha-‘Aliyah la-Regel Lirushalayim la-‘Ahar Hurban Bayit Sheini’, Peraqim be-Toledot Yerushalayim Bimei Bayit Sheini (eds. A. Oppenheimer, et al.; Jerusalem, 1981), pp.376-93.

All of this means that the ideal of Jerusalem as a centre of worship and hopes for a rebuilt temple were still alive in the minds of Judeans in the time of Hadrian. Physical practices sustained these hopes. Other works (I hope to discuss at least one major one soon) point to the actual place — the site of the Holy of Holies in the old Temple — where Hadrian set up his statue. That was the Abomination of Desolation of which the synoptic gospels speak. Hadrian was not doing something that had by his time lost any relevance for the Judeans.

Reading Grey’s thesis, critically, is a good place to start one’s journey into other literature that witnesses to the ongoing practical, day to day relevance of Jerusalem and its temple centre as a cultic focus for Judeans right up to the Bar Kokhba revolt.

2026-03-19

Twice, Richard Carrier Does Not Read What He Argues Against

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by Neil Godfrey

So Richard has stooped to changing his post in the light of my critique and I am unable to leave a reply to him on his blogsite. (He points out that he made a change to respond to me but only at the very end of a long comment trail.)

Carrier initially wrote: Vridar’s critiques are also a decade out of date . . .

To which I responded that I had posted one of René Salm’s (not my) critique of Dark and pointed out that my views were based on careful, critical study of Salm’s and Dark’s writings. I was responding to Carrier’s assertion that I was following Salm with some kind of “excess trust” and “reliance on assertions”.

Oh my god, so since then Carrier has added the following: Vridar’s critiques of Dark are also a decade out of date . . .

kendarkcritiques.001 300x274 — The point: Carrier is slapdash. He doesn’t check what’s before him. This is the same type of failure to actually read posts and comments in full, critically, to be sure he knows what they are saying before he responds as he has demonstrated earlier (see my criticisms of his use of Bayes and his posts on Pliny’s letter about the Christians). Carrier assumes certain persons are saying rubbish and so attacks them (including personally) — at least his attacks only demonstrate he has not read them with any serious intent in the first place. Presumably he is writing to persuade with rhetoric rather than honest argument that would require some work.

Plural. The link — please check it for yourself — is to posts where the word “Dark” appears in a title (e.g. “the Dark Side of”) or in the post (e.g. “dark green”)!!!!! There is ONLY ONE critique of Ken Dark!

Richard Carrier simply does not bother to read what he thinks he is writing against.

I do not believe Richard Carrier has bothered to even read René Salm’s arguments. I would like Carrier to demonstrate that he has done more than place trust and reliance on Dark’s assertions.

Carrier has since dismissed my post as “facesaving” and not worth a reply. In other words, he did not read it — or did not comprehend the meaning of critically reading and checking claims — something that seems quite alien to Carrier’s abilities when it comes to the archaeology of Nazareth.

Richard Carrier is in the same bucket as Bart Ehrman who notoriously demonstrated that he had not read the works he once wrote a diatribe against.

—-

I attempted to post the following to Richard Carrier’s site but was forbidden. Perhaps someone else can discreetly notify Richard and his readers what I have posted here:

Okay, Richard, My “face-saving” was simply to point out that I have actually critically read and checked Salm’s Nazareth arguments and compared them critically against Dark. I see you avoid giving any indication that you have actually read Salm’s work on Nazareth in a critical manner and compared with Dark as I have done. That would require some honest work.

and

Richard, you clearly do not always read what you write against. You spoke of my “critiques”, plural, of Ken Dark’s views of salm and linked to a page of mine that contained ONE critique and a whole lot of other posts with the word “Dark” in them! Oops.

If you read my “face-saving” response to you you would have seen that I was pointing out that I had actually critically read and studies Salm’s work on Nazareth and the various criticisms, including Dark’s, of his work. You offer no evidence that you have done that. I have never “trusted” the “assertions” of Salm as you claim — nor the “assertions of Dark” for that matter! — but demonstrated the basis for my sympathy for Salm’s studies.

You once again use sweeping dismissal to respond instead of actually doing some honest work and responding to the arguments and counter-claims critically.

2026-03-18

On Arguing Against Salm Without Reading Salm? (On the Archaeology of Nazareth)

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by Neil Godfrey

Added: Richard Carrier has since posted a link in his blogpost to the following post of mine and said what I wrote is mere “facesaving” and not worthy of a reply. See the next post here for my response.

—–

though Salm also gets pilloried online (example, example, example). You’ll find some excess trust in him at Vridar, where in critiquing prior work by Dark I see too much reliance on the assertions of Salm, whom I find personally shady and untrustworthy.

That’s a snippet from Richard Carrier’s new post in which he delivers another polemical, ad hominem piece that attempts to use scholarship as a club in a rhetorically aggressive and often dismissive (borderline bullying) style. (Carrier also seems to think it demeans René Salm by linking his readers to three fundamentalist/evangelical articles protesting that anyone should dare challenge the Bible’s accuracy. — and what Carrier personally thinks of Salm is also introduced as a gratuitous character slur. Omg, let’s not revisit here what others have thought of Carrier personally!) René Salm can certainly hold his own so I will not speak for him in this post (my time is also very limited), but I do have to respond to Carrier’s accusation that I have placed “excess trust in [Salm]”. Carrier does not link to any post of mine that would demonstrate any “trust” at all, let alone “excess trust”. “Trust” suggests taking Salm at his word, and Carrier makes it clear this is exactly what he means when he goes on to speak of “assertions of Salm”. If I have argued on that basis, on trust in assertions, anywhere then I deserve to be so faulted.

Perhaps Carrier was thinking of my 2023 post A Critique of Ken Dark’s Work at the Sisters of Nazareth Convent.

That post was an introduction — an invitation — for readers to go to Salm’s article and read his criticisms of Dark. I pointed out in my introduction that I have had the same experience as Salm: we have both discovered that footnote citations too often do not support what the citing author claims they do. I will return to this point of sham footnotes.

In the last paragraph of that post I quoted Salm’s conclusion of the argument/evidence he presented in the linked article. That was an attempt to encourage readers to look at the linked article. If I was placing too much trust in Salm’s words and if Carrier or anyone else could demonstrate that Salm’s article does not support the conclusion I quoted, I can be faulted. Maybe I did not bother to read Salm’s article at all but just skipped to the last paragraph and quoted that conclusion in “excess trust” of what it asserted. Carrier could do readers the favour of demonstrating that Salm’s article did not overthrow Dark’s assertions, that the paragraph I quoted was mere assertion and unsupported by evidence. Then he would have a case and I would have to admit I was wrong, had misread Salm, had too much reliance on mere assertions.

My books by Salm are filled with pencil marks highlighting key points to follow up and mark steps in the argument. I have long made it my habit to check citations. Always follow up footnotes! Indeed, some time back I found myself uncomfortably having to write a series of posts demonstrating that too often Carrier’s own footnotes did not support what he claimed they did. I have found that fault all too often in scholarly literature and not even Carrier is an exception, unfortunately. (I don’t mean the authors are necessarily dishonest. I think sometimes an author assumes a certain passage says what he or she is in the habit of thinking it claims. Laziness is the more likely suspect than dishonesty.)

A key reference in one of Salm’s publications was a German text. It was not readily available in Australia. I managed to acquire a copy from Germany through interlibrary loan. I did not only translate the cited passage; I translated two full chapters. I like to be thorough, to be sure. I also followed up the articles and books Salm critiqued so I could get my own handle on the evidence and arguments from the different perspectives. I have also followed up critiques of Salm, including those by Ken Dark. I have found — not infrequently — that those critiques are misrepresenting or overlooking Salm’s arguments. The impression I have been left with is that the more savage critics of Salm — Tim O’Neill and Richard Carrier — tend to place excess trust in Dark’s word without following up and comparing it with Salm’s. This is essentially appeal to authority — one of the informal fallacies Carrier likes to point out in others: no detail, no evidence, just the assertions of a scholar against an amateur. I expect there will be more to say about these arguments in future posts.

The new blog post by Carrier makes sweeping assertions mixed with ad hominem and a worse sin than mere personal attack: punching down. It would appear that Carrier expects readers to trust his claims about what others have written. I am sure Carrier believes what he is writing but I also suspect he has not actually carefully (let alone critically) read Salm’s arguments for himself. It appears that he relies primarily on Dark’s and others’ representations of Salm’s points. I might be persuaded differently if Carrier could actually support his claim that at Vridar “you’ll find some excess trust in Salm — too much reliance on his assertions”.

2025-12-22

Looking for Evidence for a Persian Period Temple in Samaria’s Mount Gerizim – Part 3

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by Neil Godfrey

Continuing with Part 3….

Surely a simpler explanation is that the capitals bearing those motifs [Astarte’s tree of life and guardian cobra heads] were on Mount Gerizim because they were not forbidden in Persian times.

This time I will skip the background introduction and begin with a list of English language articles by Yitzhak Magen. There are no doubt other articles that I have not noticed but I am more than willing to address anything of relevance if they come to my notice. Do the following writings add anything to Magen’s claim that he has published “unequivocal” proofs of a Samaritan Temple in Mount Gerizim in Persian times?

Magen, Yitzhak. “The Dating of the First Phase of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim in Light of the Archaeological Evidence.” In Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century B.C.E, edited by Oded Lipschits, Gary N. Knoppers, and Rainer Albertz. Eisenbrauns, 2007.
Naveh, Joseph, and Yitzhak Magen. “Aramaic and Hebrew Inscriptions of the Second-Century BCE at Mount Gerizim.” ’Atiqot 32 (1997): 9–17.
Stern, Ephraim, and Yitzhak Magen. “Archaeological Evidence for the First Stage of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim.” Israel Exploration Journal 52, no. 1 (2002): 49–57.

I’ll address them in chronological order.

Article 1

Naveh, Joseph, and Yitzhak Magen. “Aramaic and Hebrew Inscriptions of the Second-Century BCE at Mount Gerizim.” ’Atiqot 32 (1997): 9–17.

Magen begins by explaining a detail that partly contradicts something he wrote in a later work and that was discussed in Part 1 of this series. In this 1997 article, the massive wall with its three imposing gates, the same that reminded him of Ezekiel’s description of a gated wall surrounding the Jerusalem Temple, was not from the Persian period at all.

The area of the sacred precinct on the summit of the mountain is about 5 acres. Two building stages have been identified: the ancient precinct, dating to the Persian period, and a later one, from the Hellenistic period; the precinct occupied the same area in both stages. The later precinct was surrounded by a particularly thick wall, built, like the residential buildings, of dressed quarried stones, and coated on the outside with three layers of plaster. . . . Three gates can be dated to this stage: the southern gate, originally used by worshippers as the main entrance gate, of which a tower and a broad staircase have survived; and the northern and eastern gates, of which several cells have survived, recalling the structure of the gates in the book of Ezekiel (40:6-16) and the Temple Scroll. (my bolding and italics in all quotations)^[1]

Later Magen wrote that some of the Persian period gates also reminded him of Ezekiel’s description. Details to help the reader decide what was so Ezekiel-like in the Persian wall are not abundant in his later post.

Again, Magen makes his emphatic declaration of what “we know” about the date of this temple for which he has provided no evidence:

However, while Josephus dates the construction to the reign of Alexander the Great, we now know that it was built in the time of Nehemiah.^[2]

The remainder of the article addresses the inscriptions on the stones within the area of the precinct. All that needs to be pointed out here is that all of these inscriptions are dated from the Hellenistic era and later.^[3]

The unprecedented large number of inscriptions at one site indicates that the Samaritans habitually wrote inscriptions on building stones, from the Hellenistic period onward.^[4]

So when one quotes Magen’s translations of the inscriptions that seem to suggest the existence of a temple connected in some way to the stones, one is doing nothing more than sharing evidence suggesting a temple in the Hellenistic period or later. We will return to the dating of the inscriptions in the last part of this post.

Article 2

Stern, Ephraim, and Yitzhak Magen. “Archaeological Evidence for the First Stage of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim.” Israel Exploration Journal 52, no. 1 (2002): 49–57.

Now here we have a most interesting article. Two capitals of Phoenician design, bearing Phoenician and Egyptian religious motifs, were discovered on Mount Gerizim by Yitzhak Magen’s team.

^[5]

They consist of two motifs, “the central triangle with the two spiralling volutes and a Phoenician palmette”, very common among the Phoenicians and Iron Age Israel (that is before the Assyrian captivity).

[T]hey represent the Phoenician-Israelite version of the ‘tree of life’ (fig. 7), that major and most common ancient Near Eastern motif (Stern 1995: 319-334), towards which devotees turned with raised hands, standing or kneeling on both sides. This motif . . . was adopted from an Egyptian prototype, and is depicted . . . on a number of ivories found in the palace of the Israelite kings at Samaria . . . ^[6]

^[7]

The article continues:

It now seems almost certain that the ‘tree of life’ in these times symbolised the goddess ‘Astarte, the main Phoenician female deity. . . .

The other sacred emblem appearing on one of our capitals (fig. 1) is that of seven uraei [raised cobra heads], the heads of whom were cut away, . . . . In Egypt, uraei symbolised divine protection and as such they served as guardians to sacred locations . . . ^[8]

Stern and Magen conclude that the capitals were originally made in the time of the Israelite monarchy, perhaps for use in Shechem. So how to explain their presence on Mount Gerizim? Their answer: they were relics of the old “House of Yahweh” in Shechem but were taken from ruins there and re-used for the Temple on Mount Gerizim in Persian times.^[9] This is their conclusion, even though they earlier wrote,

[B]oth capitals exhibit the motifs of the ‘tree of life’ and the uraei, which were prohibited during the Persian and Hellenistic periods by the Samaritan religious authorities, who—at this period—were strictly monotheistic. To the best of our knowledge, these two emblems are strict exceptions among the finds of the Mount Gerizim temple.^[10]

^[11]

Surely a simpler explanation is that the Persian period Samaritans continued the same form of Yahweh worship much as it had been practised in the days of the kingdom – and as it still appeared to be practised among Jews at Elephantine in Egypt, complete with a pantheon of gods alongside Yahweh. In other words, the capital with those “pagan” motifs was on Mount Gerizim because they were not forbidden in Persian times.

So I don’t see any evidence in this article for the kind of temple Magen would want us to imagine was constructed in Persian era Mount Gerizim.

Article 3

Magen, Yitzhak. “The Dating of the First Phase of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim in Light of the Archaeological Evidence.” In Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century B.C.E, edited by Oded Lipschits, Gary N. Knoppers, and Rainer Albertz. Eisenbrauns, 2007.

Once more Yitzhak Magen begins his discussion by claiming the two-stage construction on Mount Gerizim’s “sacred precinct” area: the Persian period of the mid-fifth century BCE and the Hellenistic period of the early second century BCE. Magen describes the layout of the “sacred precinct”, its measurements, and so forth. The western wall has no discernable gate and Magen believes this is because it was closest to a Temple’s “holy of holies”:

This lack of gates may be due to the location of the Holy of Holies, the extremely hallowed rear extremity of the temple. I believe that the current Samaritan sacred site known as “The Twelve Stones” is located in the area of the Holy of Holies.^[12]

Unfortunately “belief” is not evidence. Magen continues:

The Persian-period enclosure most likely featured three chamber gates: to the north, the east, and the south, reminiscent of the temple gates depicted in the book of Ezekiel (40:10–16), which was the basis for the temple built by the returning Babylonian exiles. The temple built by the returnees served, in turn, as the model for the temple erected by the Samaritans on Mt. Gerizim.^[13]

So gates that “most likely” were there are “reminiscent” of Ezekie’s gates, which was the blueprint for the Jerusalem Temple supposedly built by returnees from Babylon – even though we have even less evidence for such a temple in Jerusalem at this time nor any for waves of returnees from Babylonian captivity. (See Evidence Against Jerusalem in Persian Times Producing the Hebrew Bible)

The closest Magen comes to offering any semblance of a Persian period temple is the following:

The precinct yielded thousands of pottery vessels and burned bones of sacrifices—of sheep, goats, cattle, and doves. The coins from the Persian period, the pottery vessels, and Carbon 14 (C-14) testing at the site enable us to ascribe the first phase of the temple to the mid-fifth century b.c.e. This temple was active for approximately 250 years, until the establishment of the new temple in the Hellenistic period.^[14]

And then,

Numerous discoveries from the sacred precinct substantiate the existence of a Temple to the Lord. Dozens of finely dressed ashlars of similar size and fashioned with stone masons’ marks had been removed from the temple’s walls and were unearthed in the excavations. These stones, the only ashlars discovered on Mt. Gerizim in either private or public construction, were quarried away from Mt. Gerizim before being brought to the site. The debris yielded proto-Ionic or Aeolic capitals belonging to the early temple from the Persian period (fig. 8). The inscriptions discovered on Mt. Gerizim are the most striking indication of the existence of a temple.^[15]

Those inscriptions, as we have seen, are acknowledged by Magen elsewhere to belong to the Hellenistic and later periods, not the Persian period. And figure 8 is a repeat of the one we saw bearing the pagan motifs associated with Astarte’s Tree of Life and the Egyptian guardian cobra (uraei).

^[16]

Concerning the inscriptions, Magen explains their relevance for a temple:

The inscriptions discovered on Mt. Gerizim are the most striking indication of the existence of a temple. Some contain the titles of the priests who served as religious functionaries (fig. 9),4 while others contain the formulas “before the God in this place,” “before (the) God,” or “before the Lord,” which are always indicative of a temple (fig. 10).5 An additional inscription in Hebrew notes “that which Joseph offered for his wife and his sons before the Lord in the temple” (fig. 11).6 Yet another inscription mentions the “house of sacrifice,” an expression that parallels an expression used to refer to the temple in Jerusalem (2 Chr 7:12).7 An inscription in Paleo-Hebrew script contains the Tetragrammaton, apparently as part of the phrase “the house of the Lord” (fig. 12).8 A Greek inscription on a sundial contains the phrase “Highest God,” which is the name of the Lord in Greek. Perhaps the most fascinating discovery is a small gold bell with a silver clapper from the fringes of the high priest’s ephod (Exod 28:33–35; fig. 13). ^[17]

Each of the footnotes I have preserved in the above quotation (from 4 to 8) point to twenty translations of inscriptions found in the volume that we discussed under the heading JSP vol. 2 in Part 1 of this series. Recall that Magen had introduced all of those inscriptions with this observation of their post-Persian date:

The excavations of Mt. Gerizim brought to light some four hundred inscription fragments in Neo-Hebrew and Aramaic (lapidary and Proto-Jewish) scripts, inscribed on building and paving stones, that were found inside the city’s Hellenistic period sacred precinct. Scores of Greek inscriptions were uncovered as well, some from the Hellenistic period, but most dating from the reconstruction of the Samaritan sanctuary in the reign of Constantine I in the fourth century CE; some also dated from the time of the subsequent Byzantine church. Also found were a few inscriptions in the Samaritan script, whose style dates them to the medieval period. The unprecedented large number of inscriptions at one site indicates that the Samaritans habitually wrote inscriptions on building stones, from the Hellenistic period onward. . . .

We believe that most of the early inscriptions should be dated to the Hellenistic period (third-second centuries BCE), although some may belong to the earliest period of the sacred precinct (fifth-fourth centuries BCE).^[18]

No further discussion attempts to justify the “belief” that “some may” belong to the fifth-fourth centuries.

As for the “dating the first phase of the Temple and the surrounding precinct”, Magen refers readers to the finds already covered in this series:

This section is devoted to the Persian period, with the goal of ending the long-standing debate concerning the beginnings of the Samaritan temple at the site. I anticipate that the presentation of the ceramic finds, the coins, and the C-14 examinations of the bones and ashes of the sacrifices will securely date the construction of the first phase of the temple to the mid-fifth century B.C.E. and not to the late fourth century B.C.E.—the time of Alexander the Great—as was claimed by Josephus (and subsequently by later scholars). ^[19]

As we have already seen, Magen does well enough in convincing us of the date of the pottery but continues to fail to explain how this pottery is evidence of a nearby temple:

[A]ll the pottery discovered at the site’s sacred precinct is to be securely dated to the period between the fifth and the fourth centuries b.c.e., that is, before the conquest of Alexander the Great. This dating is further supported by the numismatic finds.^[20]

Similarly, again as we have seen by now, with the coins:

Despite the abundance of coins at the site, the number of coins from the Persian period is relatively small. . . .

I conclude, therefore, that all the Samaritan coins found on Mt. Gerizim, even if undated, preceded the time of the conquest of Alexander the Great (figs. 27–29).^[21]

And the date of the ashes of the sacrificed animals? As we would expect:

Several C-14 samples were taken of charred wood and bones found at the site, all from the strata belonging to the early phase of the sacred precinct—the Persian–Ptolemaic period (450–200 B.C.E.), preceding the Seleucid conquest of the land of Israel in the time of Antiochus III.^[22]

And we recall Magen’s perhaps inadvertent reminder elsewhere that there were more common centres for regular sacrifices than temples:

The sole acceptable fashion of worshiping a deity, whether YHWH or some other god, was by the construction of altars, shrines, and temples and offering sacrifices and burning incense.^[23]

Conclusion

I believe that I have given Yitzhak Magen a fair chance to demonstrate the existence of a temple on Mount Gerizim in Persian times. When I first saw his emphatic claims (e.g. “unequivocal proof”) I assumed that he must have published irrefutable material evidence for that temple. I remained puzzled, however, by a few remarks of other scholars holding on to doubts or even outright rejection of such a temple. And the only other scholars who insisted on the temple cited the same source: Y. Magen. So I read and re-read Magen’s volumes on the archaeological finds and have presented the main points in this series of posts. I fail to see how Magen has come close to demonstrating that a Samaritan temple was built on Mount Gerizim in the Persian period.

And without that evidence, we cannot assume that Deuteronomy or any other work reflecting temple ideologies of the Pentateuch was being composed.

The fact is that Magen has left indications in his writings that support the alternative view that Samaria in Persian times embraced a polytheistic cult worship of Yahweh. Evidence for Pentateuchal ideas does not surface until well into the Hellenistic period.

Notes

^[1] Joseph Naveh and Yitzhak Magen, “Aramaic and Hebrew Inscriptions of the Second-Century BCE at Mount Gerizim,” ’Atiqot 32 (1997): 9. Bolded highlighting is mine.

^[2] Naveh and Magen, “Aramaic and Hebrew Inscriptions of the Second-Century BCE at Mount Gerizim,” 10.

^[3] Naveh and Magen, “Aramaic and Hebrew Inscriptions of the Second-Century BCE at Mount Gerizim,” 10ff. The same article covers inscriptions clearly made in the Christian era.

^[4] Yitzhak Magen et al., Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume I: The Aramaic, Hebrew and Samaritan Inscriptions, trans. Edward Levin and Michael Guggenheimer, JSP Series Judea and Samaria Publications 2 (Israel Antiquities Authority, 2004), 13. Magen does qualify this point by saying that “some may belong to the earliest period of the sacred precinct (fifth-fourth centuries BCE). (p.14)

^[5] Ephraim Stern and Yitzhak Magen, “Archaeological Evidence for the First Stage of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim,” Israel Exploration Journal 52, no. 1 (2002): 49.

^[6] Stern and Magen, “Archaeological Evidence for the First Stage of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim,” 53.

^[7] Stern and Magen, “Archaeological Evidence for the First Stage of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim,” 53.

^[8] Stern and Magen, “Archaeological Evidence for the First Stage of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim,” 54.

^[9] Stern and Magen, “Archaeological Evidence for the First Stage of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim,” 56.

^[10] Stern and Magen, “Archaeological Evidence for the First Stage of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim,” 55.

^[11] Stern and Magen, “Archaeological Evidence for the First Stage of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim,” 55.

^[12] Yitzhak Magen, “The Dating of the First Phase of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim in Light of the Archaeological Evidence,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century B.C.E, ed. Oded Lipschits et al. (Eisenbrauns, 2007), 160.

^[13] Magen, “The Dating of the First Phase of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim in Light of the Archaeological Evidence,” 161.

^[14] Magen, “The Dating of the First Phase of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim in Light of the Archaeological Evidence,” 164f.

^[15] Magen, “The Dating of the First Phase of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim in Light of the Archaeological Evidence,” 166.

^[16] Magen, “The Dating of the First Phase of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim in Light of the Archaeological Evidence,” 166.

^[17] Magen, “The Dating of the First Phase of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim in Light of the Archaeological Evidence,” 166ff.

^[18] Magen et al., Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume I, 13f.

^[19] Magen, “The Dating of the First Phase of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim in Light of the Archaeological Evidence,” 176.

^[20] Magen, “The Dating of the First Phase of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim in Light of the Archaeological Evidence,” 179.

^[21] Magen, “The Dating of the First Phase of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim in Light of the Archaeological Evidence,” 179f. Coins are from pages 207, 209, 211.

^[22] Magen, “The Dating of the First Phase of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim in Light of the Archaeological Evidence,” 180.

^[23] Yitzhak Magen, The Samaritans and the Good Samaritan, trans. Edward Levin, JSP Series 7 (Israel Antiquities Authority, 2008), 10.

2025-12-21

Looking for Evidence for a Persian Period Temple in Samaria’s Mount Gerizim – Part 2

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Continuing …..

Background: I have set out the evidence that indicates the Persian provinces of Yehud (Judea) and Samaria were polytheistic societies, worshiping Yahweh, yes, but a Yahweh as part of a pantheon of deities. Judaism as we recognize it only surfaces in the archaeological record in the Hellenistic period, from around the mid third century BCE. I have found Russell Gmirkin’s comparisons of biblical literature with Greek and other Near Eastern literature to be thorough and his case for the biblical literature being indebted for most part to Greek works solid. As for how to validly recover history of ancient Israel and Judah I side with those who place the archaeological record first and use that archaeological data to understand the contexts and purposes of the later narratives of the Bible. Compare Troy: we can either interpret all the finds of Troy through our reading of Homer, or we can study the remains of Troy to better understand the later works of Homer.

One notable archaeologist has effectively declared that there can be no debate concerning the strength of evidence for the existence of a Samaritan Temple of Yahweh on Mount Gerizim in the Persian period, and that this temple was built and functioned according to the biblical laws of purity, cult and commandments. Others have repeated his dogmatic claims and even used them to argue for some early form of Deuteronomy existing as early as Persian times — thus overturning the hypothesis that biblical literature did not primarily emerge until Hellenistic times. So extensive is the evidence for the existence of this Persian period temple that the same archaeologist has said it can be appreciated through the following:

Extensive answers to the questions raised [i.e. the archaeological evidence for a fifth-century date of the Temple on Gerizim] can be found in three books published in the JSP series (Judea and Samaria Publications, volumes 2, 7 and 8), and in additional articles, all in English.^[1]

Yitzhak Magen’s assertions of “unequivocal proof” of a Gerizim Temple in Persian times have been repeated by others, again with specific citations:

The archaeological digs carried out by Yitzhak Magen from 1982 to 2006 have confirmed the existence of a Samaritan temple on Mt. Gerizim although, so far, only its temenos (surrounding precinct) has been unearthed. . . . ⁶

⁶ . . . On the Samaritan sanctuary and its dating, see (Magen 2007; 2008b, pp. 97–205). . . . ^[2]

In this series of posts we are looking for the evidence said to be found extensively in

JSP series, volumes 2, 7 and 8;
and perhaps then additional articles by Magen in English

The last post looked at volume 2 of the JSP (Judea and Samaria Publications) series. Do we find anything more decisive in volume 7?

JSP Series, Volume 7

Or more completely referenced:

Magen, Yitzhak. The Samaritans and the Good Samaritan. Translated by Edward Levin. JSP Series 7. Israel Antiquities Authority, 2008.

Here on page 10 we learn that Magen interprets details in the Book of Nehemiah according to his belief that the Mount Gerizim temple existed in Nehemiah’s time. And that belief is said to be grounded in archaeology:

According to the archaeological finds from Mt. Gerizim, the first phase of the sacred precinct was built in the Persian period, in the fifth century BCE . . .

But Magen then concedes that there is some room for doubt on this point so draws a bottom line:

What we know for sure is that the historical and archaeological background of the erection of the temple is firmly entrenched in the fifth century BCE, at the time of Nehemiah and Sanballat.^[3]

Despite that dogmatic statement, I am still waiting to read where Magen explains how we “know for sure”. Reading on I come once again to Magen’s insistence that there is archaeological evidence for (Pentateuchal/biblical) purity laws and their forbidding of any links with paganism being observed in this early time:

Sanballat controlled the sacred site of Mt. Gerizim, with its ancient tradition that was untainted of paganism, and which was one of the most ancient such sites in the Land of Israel.^[4]

It is actually in the Hellenistic era that Magen acknowledges evidence for undisputed observance of those Pentateuchal laws:

The Samaritans did not allow Hellenistic culture and art to penetrate the life of the city. . . .
The Samaritans on Mt. Gerizim during the Hellenistic period were much more isolationist and conservative than the Jews in Jerusalem. . . .
We believe that in the Hellenistic period the laws of the Torah and the purity laws were more strictly observed at Mt. Gerizim than in Jerusalem. The population of the former was composed primarily of priests who had settled in proximity to the temple after the destruction of the city of Samaria, and consequently was a priestly city, as well as a temple city.*

In other words, one might think, Magen cannot help but acknowledge that the evidence for Niels Peter Lemche’s and Russell Gmirkin’s hypothesis of a Hellenistic origin of the Biblical literature is stronger than any notion of part of it being a product of Persian times.

* Magen, Yitzhak. Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume II, A Temple City. JSP Series 8. 2008. pp ix, 89

But elsewhere Magen was not so sure about those purity observances (as we noted in the previous post):

[I]t appears that the prohibition of graven images and likenesses was not scrupulously observed during the Persian period. This is evident in the material culture of the time, such as the images on coins from this period, both Samaritan and Jewish.^[5]

I ought to point out that I am not claiming that there was no temple on Mount Gerizim prior to the Greek conquests of Alexander. What is problematic is the dogmatic assertion that that temple did exist and the murkiness of what is said to be the evidence for it. I am sure the Samaritans did have a temple somewhere. But whatever its location, as pointed out above and related posts, it was almost certainly a temple dedicated to Yahweh along with other gods and knew nothing of some of the most distinctive commands of Deuteronomy or other Pentateuchal books (e.g. that only one place of worship was permitted).

Indeed, Magen’s following remarks could be understood as supportive of such a (polytheistic) temple:

The silence of the Book of Nehemiah and of other books written or redacted in the fifth to fourth centuries BCE concerning the existence of the temple at Mt. Gerizim has not been satisfactorily explained. Every people and every populace worshiped some god; why, then, would it be exceptional for the governor of Samaria to build a temple to the God of Israel at Mt. Gerizim? In the Iron Age and Persian period, temples were found everywhere, and the exiles who went to Babylonia and Egypt almost certainly prayed in temples; the Elephantine temple was not the only one. We may assume that the Jewish and Samaritan communities in Egypt and in other places of exile continued to worship YHWH at some sort of altar or temple. The sole acceptable fashion of worshiping a deity, whether YHWH or some other god, was by the construction of altars, shrines, and temples and offering sacrifices and burning incense.^[6]

And then we come to this most telling paragraph (my bolding):

The period between the destruction of Samaria and the establishment of the Samaritan temple at Mt. Gerizim in the fifth century BCE remains an enigma, leaving us with neither an archaeological nor a historical glimpse into the nature and religion of the population of the region of Samaria. This lack of information has impeded our understanding of Samaritan history in the Persian period.^[7]

But there are archaeological glimpses^[8], and they do not favour Magen’s assumptions or assertions to the contrary.

JSP 7 is not very enlightening about the evidence for the Persian period Gerizim Temple. Let’s look at Magen’s third reference.

JSP Series, Volume 8

The title for this volume:

Magen, Yitzhak. Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume II, A Temple City. Translated by Edward Levin and Carl Ebert. JSP Series 8. Israel Antiquities Authority, 2008.

Surely in a volume with the title “Temple City” we will at last meet some of the “extensive” evidence promised us. Magen points out, however, that the archaeological finds point to cultural continuity in the region of Samaria from the days of the biblical northern kingdom of Israel through to the Persian period. I am sure he does not mean that the biblical notoriety of Samaria’s “paganism” continued into Persian times alongside his Gerizim Temple, but how else are we to understand the following observation?

The settlement upheaval and the destruction of the Northern Kingdom occurred in the late eighth century BCE, followed by Assyrian resettlement of peoples brought from neighboring lands with the remnant left in Samaria. These fateful historical events left hardly any traces in the material culture of Samaria.^[9]

We have seen that Yonatan Adler has observed clear markers in the material culture that point to the emergence of a community’s observance of Pentateuchal laws. Yet it appears that Magen has to confess that there is no comparable evidence in the case of Persian period Samaria.

Recall the Elephantine correspondence with the priests of Samaria indicating that Samaritan religion embraced a pantheon of gods along with Yahweh. Was there really no change in the Persian period from the Iron Age religion? Is not the case for a Hellenistic origin of what we know as Judaism (and the Pentateuchal laws) becoming a little more likely?

Vridar posts setting out the evidence that we do have for Samarian religion in Persian times:

Magen’s list the “archaeological finds” that “date the temple at Mount Gerizim” to Persian times begin with the pottery:

The ceramic assemblage presented here was taken predominantly from the clean pre-Hellenistic loci of the sacred precinct, which also yielded Persian-period coins. Most of the pottery vessels are characteristic of the Persian period and include juglets, flasks, cooking pots, kraters (frequently ornamented with wedge decorations), bowls (some red-slipped and burnished), lamps with a flat base, and fragments of Attic vessels.^[10]

Nowhere, though, does Magen explain how that pottery dated to Persian times should be interpreted as evidence for a temple nearby.

Similarly with the coins discovered in the “sacred precinct” of Mount Gerizim. Of the thousands of coins uncovered there^[11] 72 date from the Persian period. Of these 72 coins Magen explains the early coins attest the existence of the sacred precinct in that century.^[12]

Unless I missed it, Magen does not explain how these coins are evidence for the sacredness of the area. Other sites with abundant finds of coins he interprets differently:

In both buildings, about 885 coins were found, lending support to the notion that these public buildings were involved in commercial activities taking place at the city gate.^[13]

and

The structure yielded 158 coins, more than were found in the other structures, which also indicated this was a public structure.^[14]

Why a sacrificial site should be interpreted as a temple Magen leaves unexplained. As noted earlier, he does acknowledge that simple shrines and altars were (surely more commonly) set up for that purpose.^[15]

I suppose the abundance of bones from sacrificed animals in the same area where the Persian period coins were found and the fact that there was a gated wall separating that space from the wider area secures Magen’s interpretation that the coins found here must be interpreted as indicating something more sacred than normal commercial activity. But evidence for a temple structure is not provided.

But while on the subject of coins….

Let’s take a look at those Persian period coins. As per the previous post:

The earliest coin discovered at the excavations … is a silver drachma from Cyprus (Soli?), roughly dated to 480 BCE.^[16]

Now let’s look at some other coins lest this one above be thought of as an outrageous anomaly. The following samples are said to have been minted in Samaria and belong to the Persian period.^[17]

Magen sums up the evidence:

To conclude this section on the dating of the first phase of the sacred precinct, we may state with a great degree of certainty that on the basis of the pottery, coins, and C-14 testing, the first phase of the precinct was built in the fifth century BCE. ^[22]

He has indeed shown readers pottery and coins from the Persian period but nowhere explained how those finds demonstrate the existence of a nearby temple. Later, he writes:

[T]he archaeological finds from Mt. Gerizim attest that “Sanballat the Horonite,” mentioned in the Book of Nehemiah (Sanballat I), established a temple at Mt. Gerizim.^[23]

Magen certainly listed archaeological finds from the Persian period but nowhere explained how those finds demonstrate the existence of a nearby temple.

Perhaps we need to turn to the articles he mentioned. We will look at some of those in the next post in fading hopes of being informed of his “unequivocal proof” for a Persian period Mount Gerizim temple.

Notes

^[1] Yitzhak Magen, “Dating of the Samaritan Temple on Mt. Gerizim. Yitzhak Magen’s Response,” Biblical Archaeology Society, September 6, 2012, https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/scholars-study/magens-response/.

^[2] Jonathan Bourgel, “The Samaritans during the Hasmonean Period: The Affirmation of a Discrete Identity?,” Religions (Basel, Switzerland) 10, no. 11 (2019): 2, https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10110628. I was alerted to Bourgel’s reference by Peter Kirby’s post on earlywritings forum: https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14039. The citations Bourgel provides are problematic for anyone seeking material evidence for a Persian period temple on Gerizim and will be discussed in posts here. Bourgel’s assertion of “confirmation” of the temple proves to be as hollow as Magen’s claim in the above quotation.

^[3] Magen, The Samaritans and the Good Samaritan, trans. Edward Levin, JSP Series 7 (Israel Antiquities Authority, 2008), 14.

^[4] Magen, The Samaritans and the Good Samaritan, 11.

^[5] Yitzhak Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume II, A Temple City, trans. Edward Levin and Carl Ebert, JSP Series 8 (Israel Antiquities Authority, 2008), 153,

^[6] Yitzhak Magen, The Samaritans and the Good Samaritan, 10

^[7] Magen, The Samaritans and the Good Samaritan, 14.

^[8] See Comparing Samaria and Judah/Yehud – and their religion – in Persian Times

^[9] Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume II, A Temple City, 167.

^[10] Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume II, A Temple City, 167.

^[11] Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume II, A Temple City, ix.

^[12] Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume II, A Temple City, 168.

^[13] Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume II, A Temple City, 19.

^[14] Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume II, A Temple City, 74.

^[15] Magen, The Samaritans and the Good Samaritan, 14.

^[16] Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations III The Coins., 84.

^[17] Yitzhak Magen et al., Mount Gerizim Excavations III The Coins., JSP Series 19 (Israel Antiquities Authority, 2022), 131f.

^[18] Ya‘akov Meshorer and Shraga Qedar, Samarian Coinage, (Israel Numismatics, 1999), 83, no. 1.

^[19] Meshorer and Qedar, Samarian Coinage, 106, no. 127.

^[20] Meshorer and Qedar, Samarian Coinage, 112, no. 159.

^[21] Meshorer and Qedar, Samarian Coinage, 120, no. 204.

^[22] Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume II, A Temple City, 169.

^[23] Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume II, A Temple City, 173.

2025-12-20

Looking for Evidence for a Persian Period Temple in Samaria’s Mount Gerizim – Part 1

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

The broader context of that discussion had been my defence of Russell Gmirkin’s thesis that the Hebrew Bible, especially the Pentateuch (which includes Deuteronomy, of course) was composed as late as some time after the conquests of Alexander the Great, less than three centuries before the time of Christ.

This post follows on from An Attempt to Date a pro-Samarian Deuteronomy to the Persian Period — which in turn was a response to When was the pro-Gerizim book of Deuteronomy written?

As a rule of thumb it is not a bad idea to consult scholarly authorities to learn “what’s what”. But scholars are also human and fallible, and sometimes have their own agendas that they attempt to push on less than attentive readers. So another rule, more precise than measurement by random thumbs, is this: it is an even better idea when consulting scholarly authorities to be alert for the evidence they cite to support their “what’s whats”.

That little gem of wisdom came to me when I noticed a case for the Book of Deuteronomy, at least in some early Samaritan form, being composed in Persian times. The starting point of the Persian period argument was to appeal to the authoritative declarations of an archaeologist who has had the Albrightian habit of interpreting archaeological finds in ways that would ensure confirmation of some plausible interpretation of biblical narratives.

To argue, against Gmirkin, that Deuteronomy was composed in Persian times, the claim was made that Deuteronomy was largely written against the backdrop of a Temple on Mount Gerizim in Samaria.

To argue, against Gmirkin, that the Book of Deuteronomy was composed well before the Greeks, indeed in those Persian times we associate with Haggai and Zechariah, Nehemiah and Ezra, the claim was made that it was in significant part written against the backdrop of a Temple to Yahweh on Mount Gerizim in Samaria. Deuteronomy’s insistence that only one place of worship was permitted, along with the various other purity laws, rituals and commandments, all made sense given the authoritative assurance of a standing Temple. (For an explanation of how it was Deuteronomy that came to be specifically related to the Samaritan temple see an earlier post: The Samaritan Tenth Commandment.)

But alas, the opening line of that argument is an appeal to authority but when we look for the supporting evidence we find nothing but dust and ashes being scattered in the wind.

Here is the beginning of the argument per the earlywritings forum:^[1]

From Yitzhak Magen, regarding the temple at Gerizim (ca. 475-445 BCE, i.e. the “middle” and before 445 BCE), based on archaeological excavations:

The archaeological excavations at Mt. Gerizim proved unequivocally that the temple on the mount was built in the middle of the fifth century B.C.E., that is, most likely before Nehemiah’s arrival in 445 B.C.E.

It is always handy to have an overpowering descriptor like “unequivocally” when one fails to provide specific evidence. And it is specific evidence that another scholar had asked of Yitzhak Magen:

I have a question . . . . Magen states that his excavations reveal that the Temple on Gerizim was built in the time of Nehemiah . . . . It seems to me that the archaeological evidence for a fifth-century date would have to be quite powerful to overcome the documentary evidence. And since there is nothing remaining of the Gerizim temple itself . . . . . strong archaeological evidence for the earlier date would be most enlightening.^[2]

Magen responded with his “proved unequivocally” declaration quoted above. He indicated that the proofs were so “extensive” that they could not be summarized briefly but required the reading of three books and additional articles:

Extensive answers to the questions raised in this letter can be found in three books published in the JSP series (Judea and Samaria Publications, volumes 2, 7 and 8), and in additional articles, all in English.^[3]

“More specifically”, Magen continued, there is an argument he derives from a reinterpretation of details found in the Book of Nehemiah. I will set that argument aside because it reminds us of the bad old days when “biblical archaeologists” were notorious for finding ways to interpret archaeological finds that marvellously “proved” some particular interpretation of the Bible. We have no independent evidence to confirm that Nehemiah has any serious relationship to historical events of the Persian period, however the text is interpreted. Until such evidence is forthcoming it is best to guard against interpreting the archaeological evidence tendentiously in the light of the Bible. (I have discussed scholarly critiques of the historical value of Nehemiah “extensively” on this blog: search “Nehemiah” alone for core arguments and then “Nehemiah and Finkelstein” for additional archaeologically-based criticisms.)

So let’s assume that the archaeological evidence for a Mount Gerizim Temple in the Persian period is so vast and overwhelming that one can only grasp it by reading three volumes and various articles. I will for most part therefore confine the following discussion to the works Magen signalled:

JSP series, volumes 2, 7 and 8;
and perhaps then additional articles of his in English

JSP Series, Volume 2

More completely referenced, this work is

Magen, Yitzhak, Haggai Misgav, and Levana Tsfania. Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume I: The Aramaic, Hebrew and Samaritan Inscriptions. Translated by Edward Levin and Michael Guggenheimer. JSP Series 2. Israel Antiquities Authority, 2004.

On page 12 Magen writes,

The archaeological finds prove that Josephus was indeed mistaken in ascribing the construction of the temple to the days of the fourth century BCE Sanballat, Alexander’s contemporary.

That remark pulled me up because I thought I had been reading carefully up to that point and could not recall reference to such probative archaeological finds. Was Magen going to list those finds later? A review of the table of contents and other skimming left me thinking there was no room for a later explanation. Perhaps the evidence would be covered in later volumes. But till then, it appeared that Magen was referring to what the reader should already know. So I re-read the preceding pages and took closer note of this passage (my bolding):

The many coins and pottery vessels discovered in the sacred precinct attest to the construction of the temple in the Persian period, during the fifth century BCE. The finds include pottery, as well as 68 coins from the fifth and fourth centuries BCE (preceding the arrival of Alexander the Great in the Land of Israel).

The earliest coin dates from 480 BCE. The temple on Mt. Gerizim was thus built in the days of Sanballat the Horonite (Sanballat I), governor of Samaria in the days of Nehemiah, who arrived in the Land of Israel in 444 BCE (Neh. 2:1-10).^[4]

I re-read pages 1 to 10 again – and again. How could coins and pottery vessels in themselves stand as witnesses to a temple nearby? On page 1 Magen had written that

A sacred precinct with a temple to the God of Israel that was built in the Persian period, during the fifth century BCE, stands on the highest part of the mountain.

(We will see in a future post how Magen finds other ways of interpreting the significance of what coin finds indicate when they are not needed to somehow witness to a nearby temple.)

I was still looking forward to reading the supporting evidence for that temple. On page 3 I read the following:

The sacred precinct, centered around the temple, was built on the highest point on the mountain . . . . The excavations revealed two main construction phases: the precinct and the temple were first built in the fifth century BCE, during the Persian period . . . .

Still waiting for the evidence for this temple. First, a description of the sacred precinct itself is presented:

The early precinct measured 98×96 m. . . . , including the gates. This square structure was built of hewn fieldstones extracted from the mountain’s exposed upper strata of rock. . . .

The rooms around the inside of the precinct wall are reminiscent of the open-roofed chambers and courtyards mentioned in Ezekiel, in whose vision of the Temple in Jerusalem they were used by the Temple officiaries for cooking the sacrifices brought by the people (Ez. 46:22-24).

The structure of the Persian period precinct, in particular the six-chambered gates, bear a resemblance to the description of the Temple in Ezekiel (ch. 42) and to that of the future Temple in the Temple Scroll found at Qumran, which is itself based to some extent on Ezekiel’s description. The consistency of the remnants of the sacred precinct on Mt. Gerizim with the descriptions of the Temple in these two sources would seem to support the claim by Josephus that the temple on Mt. Gerizim was constructed on the model of the Temple in Jerusalem (Ant. 13:256).^[5]

Your mileage may differ from mine, but I don’t see how such comparisons with the Book of Ezekiel (otherwise unattested until the Hellenistic period) and its vision of a wall and cooking rooms can confirm the existence of a Temple within those walls in the Persian period. My difficulty in agreeing with Magen’s method here is compounded by the fact that he had already stated – twice – that that wall had even been “rebuilt” in Hellenistic times:

In the third century BCE, in the Hellenistic period, the temple and the sacred precinct were rebuilt . . . .^[6]

In the Hellenistic period, under Seleucid rule (early second century BCE) the precinct and temple were rebuilt.^[7]

If the evidence for the existence of that “rebuilt” temple and its supposedly related wall were more secure for the Hellenistic era, would not that kind of archaeological evidence stand in favour of Russell Gmirkin’s hypothesis? So far Magen has failed to provide any material evidence for the existence of a temple in the Persian period. Suggesting that the evidence we do have belongs to the “rebuilt” wall in the Hellenistic period does not provide strong help for his case.

But I continue to re-read these first ten pages looking for “other evidence” for this temple that I may have missed. Here is the next item:

A great number of finds were discovered on Mt. Gerizim, including hundreds of thousands of burnt animal bones inside thick layers of ash, thus testifying to the existence of a temple dedicated to the God of Israel in which sacrifices were offered.^[8]

No date is cited for those bones but I suspect they would include the sacrifices offered throughout the Hellenistic era. There are other questions arising, too. Magen explains in a later publication (JSP vol 7) that sacrifices were performed at a variety of sacred sites and not only at temples:

We may assume that the Jewish and Samaritan communities in Egypt and in other places of exile continued to worship YHWH at some sort of altar or temple. The sole acceptable fashion of worshiping a deity, whether YHWH or some other god, was by the construction of altars, shrines, and temples and offering sacrifices and burning incense.^[9]

So remains of sacrificed animals are not necessarily evidence for a temple at all.

I also fail to see how one could determine the god to whom the animals were sacrificed from the bones themselves. After all, we do know that Yahweh-worshiping contemporaries with close relations to the Samaritans during the Persian period worshiped Yahweh alongside other deities. See the post Comparing Samaria and Judah/Yehud – and their religion – in Persian Times for details.

Magen cites late rabbinical and biblical sources to explain the meaning of other finds on Mount Gerizim. There were many bathtubs in private houses and these are presented as evidence that priests were following the Pentateuchal laws for priests to maintain purity when at the temple:

According to the Pentateuch ritual cleansing is performed by bathing in water . . . (Lev. 14:8 et passim). . . . . It would thus seem that the many bathtubs found on Mt. Gerizim were intended for the use of the temple priests, who were required to remain in a state of ritual purity at all times, not only when serving in the temple.^[10]

^[11]

Finally, we have another “proof” of the observance of biblical laws – and by implication the Persian period existence of the ideology we read about in Deuteronomy:

The finds on Mt. Gerizim indicate very strict observance of the commandment “You shall not make for yourself an idol” (Ex. 20:4). No human or animal images of any kind were unearthed in the excavations . . . ^[12]

Except that Magen appears to have changed his mind shortly afterwards (in JSP 8) when he wrote, instead, that:

it appears that the prohibition of graven images and likenesses was not scrupulously observed during the Persian period. This is evident in the material culture of the time, such as the images on coins from this period, both Samaritan and Jewish.^[13]

As noted above (see note 4) the earliest coin is dated 480 BCE. Here is a photograph of that coin (not provided by Magen) held in the British Museum:

^[15]

A graven image of a lion and an Egyptian ankh! Hardly indicators that they marked the presence of the Deuteronomist’s Temple! And apparently dated 480 BCE though of course we have no way of knowing how many hands it had felt and purses it had inhabited before it found its way to Mount Gerizim.

But we are moving away from the first of several readings Magen advised for us. In the next post we will look at more of Magen’s “extensive” evidence for the temple on Mount Gerizim in the Persian period.

Notes

^[1] Peter Kirby, “When was the pro-Gerizim book of Deuteronomy written?,” Biblical Criticism & History Forum, September 19, 2025, https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14343.

^[2] John Merrill, “Dating of Samaritan Temple on Mt. Gerizim. Merrill’s Letter,” Biblical Archaeology Society, September 6, 2012, https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/scholars-study/merrills-letter/.

^[3] Yitzhak Magen, “Dating of the Samaritan Temple on Mt. Gerizim. Yitzhak Magen’s Response,” Biblical Archaeology Society, September 6, 2012, https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/scholars-study/magens-response/.

^[4] Yitzhak Magen et al., Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume I: The Aramaic, Hebrew and Samaritan Inscriptions, trans. Edward Levin and Michael Guggenheimer, JSP Series vol. 2 (Israel Antiquities Authority, 2004), 10.

^[5] Magen et al., Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume I, 6.

^[6] Magen et al., Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume I, 1.

^[7] Magen et al., Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume I, 6.

^[8] Magen et al., Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume I, 9.

^[9] Yitzhak Magen, The Samaritans and the Good Samaritan, JSP Series vol. 7 (Israel Antiquities Authority, 2008), 14.

^[10] Magen et al., Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume I, 10.

^[11] Yitzhak Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations III The Coins, JSP Series vol. 19 (Israel Antiquities Authority, 2022), 83.

^[12] Yitzhak Magen et al., Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume I: The Aramaic, Hebrew and Samaritan Inscriptions, trans. Edward Levin and Michael Guggenheimer, JSP Series vol. 2 Judea and Samaria Publications 2 (Israel Antiquities Authority, 2004), 10.

^[13] Yitzhak Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume II, A Temple City, trans. Edward Levin and Carl Ebert, JSP Series vol. 8 (Israel Antiquities Authority, 2008), 153.

^[14] Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume II, A Temple City, 194.

^[15] Sir George Francis Hill, Catalogue of the Greek Coins of Cyprus (The Trustees, 1904), Plate XIII.

2025-10-22

Yonatan Adler’s New (Free) Book Relating to Hellenistic Period and the Hebrew Bible

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Yonatan Adler has posted on his academia.edu page that from today we are able to download his new book for free.

Free to download for two weeks only!

Starting today, you can download for free my new book:
Between Yahwism and Judaism: Judean Cult and Culture during the Early Hellenistic Period (332–175 BCE)

Download it now, and read it later.

And of course, please share and spread the word.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/between-yahwism-and-judaism/DF4B36DC1118F3DDAF3A060C7B4878CC

Past posts relating to Yonatan Adler’s work:

Snippets from the Conclusion of Between Yahwism and Judaism:

This study set out to investigate the character of Judean cult and culture during the Early Hellenistic period, as a transitional time between the preceding Persian era and the subsequent Late Hellenistic and Roman periods. . . .

One thing has become very clear in my other studies is that there was no clear archaeologically discernable divide between conditions in Persian Yehud (the Persian province of Judea) and those of the early Hellenistic period. Those of us interested in Russell Gmirkin’s views of the Egyptian provenance of the Hebrew Bible will be interested in this observation (my bolding):

In Judea, we find a strong degree of cultural continuity from the preceding Persian period in terms of language (Aramaic), naming conventions, and material culture – with almost no evidence for Greek influence in these matters. In Egypt, by contrast, Judeans began to replace Aramaic with Greek, and began to adopt Greek names alongside traditional Hebrew and Aramaic names. However, as the trigger for both these developments in Egypt was likely the very practical need to facilitate social and commercial contacts in an increasingly Greek-speaking environment, we should probably not regard these shifts as a fundamental rejection of traditional Judean culture in favor of Greek.

Interesting. More questions arising.

2025-10-11

The Tel Dan Inscription — (The Sacred “House of David” Inscription — “proof” of the biblical Kingdom of David)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Such problems are never discussed. It is obvious that the inscription has been accepted in modern Israel as a kind of magna carta for the relations between the modern state and ancient Israel, a holy text, even more holy than the Hebrew Bible and as such beyond discussion – including any discussion about the meaning of the “house of David” part of the inscription.

Some points about this inscription less well known publicly, from a passage in N.P. Lemche’s Back to Reason…..

All bolded highlighting is my own.

The inscription was linguistically without serious problems, a phenomenon Cryer noted as exceptional since no other inscription of the time and of a similar size and complexity has ever presented itself in a similarly unproblematic way; somehow they all have at least one phenomenon which has to be discussed among specialists for years. The Tel Dan inscription knows of no such problems; it is totally translatable.

The reception in those days [from 1993-94, when it was discovered] was almost universally positive, if not simply overwhelmingly positive. The only exception was the Italian specialist in Northwest Semitic languages Giovanni Garbini (1931-2017), who simply rejected the inscription as a rude falsification. Apart from a few linguistic arguments, Garbini based his rejection of the inscription on its similarity in content to, especially, the Mesha stele; it is as if you lifted the text of Tel Dan Fragment A and placed it over a similarly sized section of the Mesha inscription, an astonishing amount of identical phrases and issues appear.

The main battle over the inscription’s authenticity was, however, not fought over linguistic details; it was quite different and had to do with physical peculiarities. It is often maintained that the minimalists had to reject this inscription as genuine simply because it represented a blow to their very minimalism which rejected the historicity of King David. Those waving such opinions are unaware of two things: First of all, the Tel Dan inscription is not a proof of the existence of King David, only at best of a house of David. This is hardly a distressing surprise to the minimalists, because it is exactly what is to be expected, because there is no dearth in the Old Testament as far as references to this “house of David” go. The title “the House of David” makes David as historical as “the House of Windsor” makes Windsor a historical person, as it has been put. The second thing is that the minimalists – or not all of them – did not consider the inscription a fake from the very day of its publication. . . .

The change in attitude came late, in 1995, when Frederick Cryer returned to Copenhagen from a visit to Jerusalem where he had been at the Israel Museum with Russell Gmirkin. Gmirkin had taken a couple of perhaps not quite legal photos of the inscription. Cryer brought them back to Copenhagen for a seminar and just handed them over to me with the question: Can you see it? And it was easy to see: in the almost non-existent first line the vertical line in the “m” did, at the edge of the inscription fragment, suddenly turn to the right (it was supposed to continue in an angle to the left) – down the broken side. This means that if this is really so, the text on the slab has been engraved on it after the slab had been “produced”, which again means that it must logically be a fake inscription and not an ancient one. . . . George Athas discusses Gmirkin’s evidence but dismisses it as “scratches”, which they of course definitely are (Athas 2003, 35-9): Nobody ever said that the slippage was intentional. Finally – and it is really an ironic coincidence (?) – the problems are very clearly exposed in an unusually clear photo of the inscription by Zev Radogan printed on the cover of a book by Megan Bishop Moore and Brad E. Kelle, Biblical History and Israel’s Past (Moore and Kelle 2011).

Such problems are never discussed. It is obvious that the inscription has been accepted in modern Israel as a kind of magna carta for the relations between the modern state and ancient Israel, a holy text, even more holy than the Hebrew Bible and as such beyond discussion – including any discussion about the meaning of the “house of David” part of the inscription. (Lemche, 106-108)

What of the actual words translated “house of David” [bytdwd]?

It is noted that the writing: bytdwd is unusual. Otherwise, words in this inscription are separated with a marker, a dot. Accordingly, we should expect bytdwd written as byt . dwd, in two words. No such marker is found here. If it is an ancient inscription we have no way of knowing the reason for this omission; perhaps a slip from the side of the engraver, but then we should ask: Why exactly here? Was it intended to catch the eye of the reader? It is simply too much of a coincidence? In the early part of the discussion this led to a series of alternative proposals to understand the meaning of the bytdwd, including proposals that it was the name of some locality in the vicinity of Dan, a sanctuary or the like. As the interpretation of the inscription assumed canonical importance, such divergent opinions were simply dismissed without further discussion. The peculiar writing bytdwd received, after Cryers intervention, no more attention, although it is exceptional to find the word bayit “house, temple, family, dynasty” written in early Aramaic as byt. Normally the -y- is left out. We should have expected in normal writing bt . dwd or maybe simply bt . dd, and the discussion should have started from this point. (Lemche, 108)

Just one more thing….

From Lemche’s Amman lecture (in Thompson):
In a doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Sydney, which was recently published by Sheffield Academic Press, the Australian scholar George Athas presents a new, innovative and well-argued theory about the Tel Dan Fragments (Athas 2003). According to Athas, fragments A and B1/B2 belong to one and the same inscription, though the extant portions were some distance apart in the unbroken original. Performing a hands-on experiment in which he reconstructed the conditions under which the inscription would have been created—Athas proposes that an ancient scribe would have chalked his words on the stone surface before a skilled mason carved them—Athas was able to demonstrate that the variations in line orientation are quite in keeping with an inscription made on a large piece of stone:

If Athas is correct—and in my view his approach is quite brilliant—all earlier reconstructions of this text and its interpretation are rendered obsolete, since most of them are based on theories involving the non-existent joins. (53f)

One more issue has to be addressed before we can leave this inscription behind: the combination of the two (three) fragments into one text. It is no more seen as problematic, but it was when the combination was first made. The fragments (A and B_1-2) do no[t] align. This is obvious if we try to do so as I did in my Amman-lecture (Lemche 2003c, 53 — see side box). But do we have a join where they meet? The authorities of the Israel Museum definitely think so. I only have the opinion of a leading Israeli archaeologist of my own generation who was able to inspect the fragments before they were joined, and his response was: There are no joins. George Athas made an ingenious reconstruction of the inscription based on the angle of the chisel used to cut out the inscription on the slab, and it turned out that the angle is different on fragment A and fragments B_1-2 (Athas 2003, 191). Comparing the angles of the letters of the inscription he placed fragment B_1-2 further down than fragment A, bursting, in this way, the usual interpretation of the inscription as a victory stele of Hazael of Damascus. Of course in the light of the ongoing canonization of the inscription his challenge was never taken up and the usual but most likely impossible interpretation remains in force.⁹³

93 A question not taken up here is the one of the circumstances of the finding of the fragments. There was some confusion about the exact place where it was found, but definitely not as part of a wall of fortification. Fragment A was extracted from below a wall somehow sticking out in the open where it was discovered by the Israeli archaeologist Gila Cook. Ihe first photos of the inscription in Israel Exploration Journal 43 (p. 82) did not show it in situ but moved from its original placed out to the plaza in front of it and standing up. The confusion became total when The Biblical Archaeology Review (March/April 1994, p. 38) published a photo of the inscription in situ (sic!) but inverted. The conditions surrounding the discovery of the two other fragments are not much different. As to the joining of the fragments, Hagelia presents an overview of the interpretations of the stele (until c. 2005) (Hagelia 2006, 13-50). A recent view separating fragments A and B can be found in Knauf and Guillaume 2016, 94, repeated in Knauf and Niemann 2021, 208, where Knauf admits to be the originator of this separation in his “histories”.

(Lemche, 108f)

For other related posts see https://vridar.org/tag/tel-dan-inscription/

Lemche, Niels Peter. Back to Reason: Minimalism in Biblical Studies. Sheffield, South Yorkshire ; Bristol, CT: Equinox, 2022.

2025-09-22

Plan for a Study of the Origins of the Hebrew Bible: Persian or Hellenistic period?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Following is a recent assigmnment of mine — a research plan for an essay — that I think contains some information that will be of interest to some readers. . . . Russell Gmirkin gets a mention, by the way.

Rethinking Scribal Culture in Persian Period Yehud: Evidence and the Formation of the Hebrew Bible

Background, context, rationale

According to conventional scholarship, the Hebrew Bible took shape in Yehud, the Persian period province of Judah, with Samaria sometimes added as a contributing centre. This view rests largely on readings of Ezra–Nehemiah as historical sources and on frameworks inherited from the Documentary Hypothesis. Yet excavations show Yehud lacked the urbanization or resources necessary to sustain a scribal culture capable of producing such complex literature. A question rarely addressed is why there is very scant evidence of Hebrew writing in Yehud.¹ By contrast, Iron Age II and the Late Hellenistic period yield abundant finds that “demonstrate widespread scribal activity and literacy across diverse media and inscriptional forms.”² If Yehud was not the cradle of biblical literature, the implications are considerable, extending to the origins of Judaism’s foundational texts, the interpretation of writings that situate those origins in the Persian period, and conventional accounts of Judaism’s formation.

In 2016, Israel Finkelstein argued that archaeology does not corroborate the settings of Pentateuchal narratives but rather can only illuminate the contexts of their composition.³ At the 2022 Yahwism under the Achaemenid Empire conference he updated⁴ that publication with reference to new excavations and the Tel Aviv University digital epigraphy project.⁵ He advised looking for the origins of the Biblical literature in the Iron Age and then in Babylonia (as more recently suggested by Albertz⁶ and Römer⁷) or Egypt – with additions as late as the Hasmonean era. Taken together, the material record points away from fifth and fourth century Palestine for the production of the biblical literature.

Finkelstein’s challenge has yet to gain traction in mainstream scholarship. At the same conference, only Reinhard G. Kratz explicitly addressed the tension between the archaeological record and the assumption that biblical literature was taking shape in Yehud, highlighting the disparity between the forms of “Judaism” attested in the epigraphic sources of Yehud and those presupposed in the biblical tradition.⁸

An even more radical challenge comes from Yonatan Adler’s 2022 study of archaeological evidence, which establishes that Judeans continued a polytheistic Yahwism and show no awareness of Torah observance before the third century.⁹

The 2019 volume On Dating Biblical Texts to the Persian Period sought firmer criteria for fifth-century dating.¹⁰ Its essays reflect the general trends in the study of the Hebrew Bible’s origins – relying almost entirely on textual analysis, with archaeology relegated to a secondary role, if acknowledged at all. When an attempt is made to apply a theoretical historical method, as when Konrad Schmid invokes Ernst Troeltsch’s principles, the task fails because, as is so common, historicity of the texts is presupposed, thus falling into circular reasoning.¹¹ Again reflecting common procedures in the wider field, other contributions date texts linguistically to the Achaemenid period, a contested procedure.¹²

Kratz has elsewhere sought to maintain the fifth and fourth centuries as the formative period for the biblical texts by suggesting that the traditions circulated orally at this time and crystallized into written texts only in the Hellenistic age.¹³ The papyri from the fifth century colony at Elephantine testify to a form of Yahwism with little resemblance to Pentateuchal prescriptions, despite scholarly efforts to detect in them some background awareness of biblical writings, as Kratz observes. Further, these and other Aramaic papyri from Samaria show no signs of the scribal activity that would have been necessary for the production of biblical literature.

Archaeology further indicates a markedly low population in Persian period Yehud compared with the Iron Age and Hellenistic eras—too low, some argue, to sustain centers of scribal culture.

Niels Peter Lemche has challenged the mainstream by emphasizing the circularity of arguments for a Persian period origin of biblical literature, stressing that archaeological surveys of the period render such a dating highly improbable.¹⁴ He argues that the Hellenistic period provides the most plausible setting for the creation of these texts. In recent years, a small but growing number of scholars¹⁵ have argued for strong textual relationships between the Hebrew texts and Greek literature—relationships that suggest not merely indirect influence through Achaemenid era trade contacts but to a deeper engagement with Hellenistic intellectual culture that contributed to the formation of the Hebrew Bible.

Aims and objectives

1: Clarify the scholarly consensus on the nature of the biblical literature.

Survey how scholarship generally characterizes the Hebrew Bible as a composite work shaped by multiple sources, successive redactions, and editorial layers. Establish what kind of scribal activity this consensus presupposes, and use it as the baseline for testing whether Achaemenid Palestine could plausibly support such production.

2: Assess expected forms of writing and scribal activity.

Distinguish functional writing (administrative, economic, and legal records) from evidence for sustained literary scribal culture (e.g. physical space for archives and schools, inscriptions). Specify what types of finds would be expected if a scribal society capable of producing complex literature were present.

3: Contextualize Persian period material finds within broader patterns of settlement and urbanization.

Identify the archaeological record of Persian period Palestine, comparing it with that of Iron Age II and the Late Hellenistic period. Highlight demographic and urbanization changes in key regions (Jerusalem, Bethel, Samaria, Mount Gerizim), and assess whether these shifts plausibly indicate conditions supportive of a scribal-literary culture.

4: Identify and analyze Persian period finds.

Present the relevant finds from Yehud (Jerusalem and Bethel), Samaria (Shechem and Wadi Daliyeh) and related sites. These will be described with respect to:

medium (stone, clay, papyrus, coins, seals, bullae, ostraca),
archaeological context (urban, rural, temple, cave, or administrative building),
language and script (Aramaic or Hebrew),
function and audience (who produced the text, for whom, and for what purpose).

5: Assess external and imperial evidence and arguments advanced in support of a Persian period creation of biblical literature.

Examine evidence outside Palestine that bears on the question of Pentateuchal origins, including the Elephantine papyri, the evidence for the supposed decree of Darius I to codify laws, and other fifth and fourth century literary sources (e.g. Herodotus, Theophrastus). Assess the debates over whether the external archaeological evidence corroborates or challenges the idea of a necessary scribal milieu.

6: Review other common arguments for Persian period authorship.

Survey the evidence and assumptions underlying widespread arguments that biblical literature essentially came together in Persian-ruled Palestine, and evaluate critical responses in the scholarship. Particular attention to be given to:

linguistic variations in the Pentateuch and their chronological implications,
narratives of Ezra and Nehemiah as historical witnesses to fifth century events.

7: Explore alternative explanations for the provenance of the Hebrew Bible.

Identify alternative models for the origins of the Hebrew Bible and assess their viability (e.g., Hellenistic-period composition or layered traditions). Consider why biblical narratives themselves point to the time of Persian domination as formative for Judaism, and whether this reflects memory, ideology, or literary construction rather than historical fact. This will lay the groundwork for exploring models of provenance beyond the Persian period hypothesis.

Research methods, techniques, and tools

Scholarly foundations and theoretical approach

The research will begin with the most recent collective examination of Persian-period Palestine: the Yahwism under the Achaemenid Empire conference (December 2022; published 2024). Of particular significance is Israel Finkelstein’s paper, which argues from archaeological evidence against the prevailing view that the Persian period was decisive for the emergence of biblical literature.¹⁶

Primary evidence—data from the time and place under investigation—will be assessed independently, rather than interpreted through biblical texts, unless those texts can be shown to convey information that has been transmitted reliably from direct interaction with the event. Archaeological finds will be treated on their own terms, not used to confirm religious or ideological¹⁷ narratives. This approach, sometimes criticized as “hyper-critical,” is instead an effort to respect the integrity of different sources: material data as direct evidence of their period, and literary texts as works requiring literary analysis before being considered evidence for historical events.¹⁸ As several scholars have long observed¹⁹ the Persian period construct of the biblical literature is based on circular argumentation—assuming underlying historicity of biblical narratives and interpreting archaeological finds through those narratives to confirm the basic narrative construct

Archaeological and epigraphic data

The study will consult the major published corpora and excavation reports relevant to Persian period Palestine. These include standard print publications²⁰ as well as specialized online databases to check for more recent finds. Of particular importance are:

IIP: Inscriptions of Israel/Palestine – https://www.inscriptionsisraelpalestine.org/
ETANA: Electronic Tools and Ancient Near Eastern Archives – https://etana.org/node/6795

Bibliographic research

Online and hard copy scholarly sources from diverse perspectives will be assessed for both the nature of the archaeological finds and the various interpretations of these finds. See the Annotated Bibliography.

Translation tools

Because much of the relevant scholarship is published in German, French, and Hebrew, among other languages, digitization and translation tools (including ABBYY Finereader and AI-translation programs) will be employed to ensure access to non-English work.

Scope

The focus will be on Persian administered Yehud and Samaria. Other areas and periods will be referenced only for summary comparison and analytical purposes. Conventional scholarly views of the biblical literature will be used for comparison; no separate literary analysis will be undertaken. Alternative hypotheses will be briefly noted.

Notes

¹ Finkelstein, Jerusalem the Center of the Universe, 351.

²Finkelstein, “Jerusalem and Judah 600–200 BCE Implications for Understanding Pentateuchal Texts,” 14.

³Finkelstein, 3.

⁴Finkelstein, “Archaeology’s Black Hole: Jerusalem and Yehud/Judea in the Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods.”

⁵Faigenbaum-Golovin et al., “Literacy in Judah and Israel.”

⁶ Albertz, Israel in Exile.

⁷ Römer, “Comment Dater Les Textes Du Pentateuque ? Quelques cas d’étude”; Römer, The So-Called Deuteronomistic History.

⁸ Kratz, “Where to Put ‘Biblical’ Yahwism in Achaemenid Times?”

⁹ Adler, The Origins of Judaism.

¹⁰ Bautch and Lackowski, On Dating Biblical Texts to the Persian Period.

¹¹ Schmid, “How to Identify a Persian Period Text in the Pentateuch.”

¹² Ehrensvärd, “Why Biblical Texts Cannot Be Dated Linguistically”; Hurvitz, “The Recent Debate on Late Biblical Hebrew”; Young, “Starting at the Beginning with Archaic Biblical Hebrew.”

¹³ Kratz, “Temple and Torah: Reflections on the Legal Status of the Pentateuch between Elephantine and Qumran”; Kratz, Historical and Biblical Israel.

¹⁴ Lemche, “The Old Testament—A Hellenistic Book?”

¹⁵ Thompson and Wajdenbaum, The Bible and Hellenism; Gmirkin, Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts; Gmirkin, Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible; Gmirkin,Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus; Wajdenbaum, Argonauts of the Desert: Structural Analysis of the Hebrew Bible; Wesselius, Origin of the History of Israel.

¹⁶ Finkelstein, “Archaeology’s Black Hole: Jerusalem and Yehud/Judea in the Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods.” Even Finkelstein, who warns against such circularity in his paper, himself falls into the same trap when interpreting Iron Age Judah as the time of a literary renaissance and the composition of the Book of Deuteronomy (Silberman and Finkelstein, The Bible Unearthed).

¹⁷ El-Haj, Facts on the Ground, 8.

¹⁸ Eckhardt, “Memories of Persian Rule: Constructing History and Ideology in Hasmonean Judea,” 262; Finley, Ancient History, 12f, 21; Kosso, “Observation of the Past,” 30ff; Liverani,Myth and Politics in Ancient Near Eastern Historiography, 28; Moles, “Truth and Untruth in Herodotus and Thucydides,” 90, 115, 120; Woodman, “From Hannibal to Hitler: The Literature of War,” 120.

¹⁹ Lemche, The Old Testament Between Theology and History: A Critical Survey; Lemche, Early Israel: Anthropological and Historical Studies on the Israelite Society Before the Monarchy; Thompson, Early History of the Israelite People; Davies, In Search of “Ancient Israel.” Despite such criticisms the scholarly field has for most part resisted a method that fully gives primacy to archaeology. A large segment of scholars adopts a “centralist” position, one that is in between accepting the Bible to be true until proven otherwise and those who avoid a priori presumption of historical reliability in the Hebrew Bible (Lemche, Ancient Israel, pp 5-9).

²⁰ Magen, Misgav, and Tsfania, Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume I; Dušek, Les manuscrits araméens du Wadi Daliyeh et la Samarie vers 450–332 av. J.-C.; Stern, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, Volume II; Porten, The Elephantine Papyri in English.

Bibliography

Adler, Yonatan. The Origins of Judaism: An Archaeological-Historical Reappraisal. In The Origins of Judaism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022.

Albertz, Rainer. Israel in Exile: The History and Literature of the Sixth Century B.C.E. Studies in Biblical Literature, no. 3. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003.

Bautch, Richard J., and Mark Lackowski, eds. On Dating Biblical Texts to the Persian Period: Discerning Criteria and Establishing Epochs. Forschungen Zum Alten Testament. 2. Reihe, 101. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019.

Dušek, Jan. Les manuscrits araméens du Wadi Daliyeh et la Samarie vers 450–332 av. J.-C. Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2007.

Eckhardt, Benedikt. “Memories of Persian Rule: Constructing History and Ideology in Hasmonean Judea.” In Persianism in Antiquity, edited by Rolf Strootman and Miguel John Versluys, 249–65. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2017.

Ehrensvärd, Martin. “Why Biblical Texts Cannot Be Dated Linguistically.” Hebrew Studies 47 (2006): 177–89.

El-Haj, Nadia Abu. Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.

Faigenbaum-Golovin, Shira, Arie Shaus, Barak Sober, Yana Gerber, Eli Turkel, Eli Piasetzky, and Israel Finkelstein. “Literacy in Judah and Israel: Algorithmic and Forensic Examination of the Arad and Samaria Ostraca.” Near Eastern Archaeology 84, no. 2 (June 2021): 148–58.

Finkelstein, Israel. “Archaeology’s Black Hole: Jerusalem and Yehud/Judea in the Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods.” Paper presented at Yahwism under the Achaemenid empire (Prof. Shaul Shaked in memoriam), University of Haifa. December 21, 2022. Video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T21U7tBCB8.

———. “Jerusalem and Judah 600–200 BCE Implications for Understanding Pentateuchal Texts.” In The Fall of Jerusalem and the Rise of the Torah, edited by Dominik Markl, Jean-Pierre Sonnet, and Peter Dubovsk, 3–18. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016.

———. Jerusalem the Center of the Universe: Its Archaeology and History (1800–100 BCE). Atlanta: SBL Press, 2024.

Finley, M. I. Ancient History: Evidence and Models. New York: Viking, 1986.

Gmirkin, Russell E. Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories and the Date of the Pentateuch. New York: T&T Clark, 2006.

———. Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible. New York: Routledge, 2016.

———. Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts: Cosmic Monotheism and Terrestrial Polytheism in the Primordial History. Abingdon, Oxon.: Routledge, 2022.

Hurvitz, Avi. “The Recent Debate on Late Biblical Hebrew: Solid Data, Experts’ Opinions, and Inconclusive Arguments.” Hebrew Studies 47 (2006): 191–210.

Kosso, Peter. “Observation of the Past.” History and Theory 31, no. 1 (February 1992): 21.

Kratz, Reinhard G. Historical and Biblical Israel: The History, Tradition, and Archives of Israel and Judah. Translated by Paul Michael Kurtz. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

———. “Temple and Torah: Reflections on the Legal Status of the Pentateuch between Elephantine and Qumran.” In The Pentateuch as Torah: New Models for Understanding Its Promulgation and Acceptance, edited by Gary N. Knoppers and Bernard M. Levinson, 77–103. Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 2007.

———. “Where to Put ‘Biblical’ Yahwism in Achaemenid Times?” In Yahwism Under the Achaemenid Empire: Professor Shaul Shaked in Memoriam, edited by Gad Barnea and Reinhard G. Kratz, 267–68. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2024.

Lemche, Niels Peter. Ancient Israel: A New History of Israel. 2nd edition. London: T&T Clark, 2015.

———. “The Old Testament—A Hellenistic Book?” In Did Moses Speak Attic? Jewish Historiography and Scripture in the Hellenistic Period, edited by Lester L. Grabbe, 287–318. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001.

Liverani, Mario. Myth and Politics in Ancient Near Eastern Historiography. Translated by Zainab Bahrani and Marc Van De Mieroop. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2007.

Magen, Yitzhak, Haggai Misgav, and Levana Tsfania. Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume I: The Aramaic, Hebrew and Samaritan Inscriptions. Translated by Edward Levin and Michael Guggenheimer. Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2004.

Moles, J. L. “Truth and Untruth in Herodotus and Thucydides.” In Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World, edited by Christopher Gill and Timothy Peter Wiseman, 88–121. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1993.

Porten, Bezalel. The Elephantine Papyri in English: Three Millennia of Cross-Cultural Continuity and Change. Leiden: Brill, 1996.

Römer, Thomas. “Comment dater les textes du Pentateuque? Quelques cas d’étude.” In Finkelstein and Römer, Aux origines de la Torah: Nouvelles rencontres, nouvelles perspectives, chap. 2. Montrouge Cedex (France): Bayard, 2019.

———. The So-Called Deuteronomistic History: A Sociological, Historical and Literary Introduction. London ; New York: T&T Clark, 2007.

Schmid, Konrad. “How to Identify a Persian Period Text in the Pentateuch.” In On Dating Biblical Texts to the Persian Period: Discerning Criteria and Establishing Epochs, edited by Richard J. Bautch and Mark Lackowski, 101–18. Forschungen Zum Alten Testament. 2. Reihe, 101. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019.

Silberman, Neil Asher, and Israel Finkelstein. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. New York: Touchstone, 2002.

Stern, Ephraim. Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, Volume II: The Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian Periods. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001.

Thompson, Thomas L., and Philippe Wajdenbaum, eds. The Bible and Hellenism: Greek Influence on Jewish and Early Christian Literature. Durham: Routledge, 2014.

Wajdenbaum, Philippe. Argonauts of the Desert: Structural Analysis of the Hebrew Bible. London: Equinox, 2011.

Wesselius, Jan-Wim. Origin of the History of Israel: Herodotus’ Histories as Blueprint for the First Books of the Bible. London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002.

Woodman, A. J. “From Hannibal to Hitler: The Literature of War.” The University of Leeds Review 26 (1983): 107–24.

Young, Ian. “Starting at the Beginning with Archaic Biblical Hebrew.” Hebrew Studies 58 (2017): 99–118.

2024-09-21

The Conquest of Canaan: Observations of a Philologist

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

What follows is what I originally planned as the second part of the previous post. My aim is to contribute towards expanding public awareness of material that is otherwise sheltered within cloisters of academic publications and paywalls.

The information here covers the evidence for the Hebrew language being indigenous to Canaan. That means that the Hebrew language was not introduced into Canaan by Israelites or anyone else entering the land as newcomers. Linguistic evidence supports the view that the kingdoms of Israel and Judah emerged from people indigenous to the land of Canaan. The roots of the Hebrew language are found in the Bronze Age, centuries before the emergence of Israel as a distinct political entity.

Think for a moment of other cases where newcomers have occupied land through mass migration. The Anglo-Saxon and Norman invasions of England made their mark in linguistic changes as evidenced in early literary sources. Yet, as philologist Felice Israel remarks, there is no comparable linguistic evidence to be found in the wake of the supposed entry of Israelites into Canaan after their acclaimed exodus from Egypt.

I was led to the evidence for Hebrew origins by a reference in a major 2008 volume on the archaeological finds relating to the religious ideas of Israel’s Syrian neighbours:

Recently, the results of a long study conducted by F. Israel on the general cultural aspects (primarily linguistic), whether innovative or conservative, related to the conquest of Palestine by the tribes of Israel, have been published.³⁵²

³⁵² F. Israel, “La conquête de Canaan: observations d’un philologue,” in Antiquités sémitiques IV, Paris 1999, pp. 63-77. I wish to express my gratitude to my colleague F. Israel, who discussed with me the issues presented here.

(Mander, 97)

I immediately requested a copy of Felice Israel’s presentation, (translation = “The Conquest of Canaan: Observations of a Philologist”) from the ever-helpful librarians at the Queensland State Library.

The philologist begins with Israel Finkelstein’s archaeological reconstruction (published 1988) of the emergence of Israel in Canaan and selects the linguistic sources surrounding this period. Finkelstein had identified two phases of settlement expansion of the people who would later be identified in the historical record as consisting of the kingdom of Israel. Where did these settlers come from?

The vast majority of the people who settled in the hill country and in Transjordan during the Iron I period, must have been indigenous . . . . (Finkelstein, 348)

They had “dropped out” of earlier Bronze Age city-state networks that suffered collapse — Shiloh constructions were violently destroyed in the middle Bronze Age and sharp population decline followed. The first phase of the new settlement begins around 1200-1150 BCE (Early Iron Age) with former pastoralists beginning to settle down (left map):

. . . . These people had dropped out of the framework of permanent settlement back in the 16th century BCE and lived in pastoralist groups during the Late Bronze period. While they might have been active all over the country, their presence would have been felt most keenly in the sparsely inhabited ‘frontier zones’ that were suitable for pasturage — the Transjordanian plateau, the Jordan Valley, the desert fringe and the hill country. They had traversed these areas as part of a seasonal pattern of transhumance and established economic relations with the sedentary inhabitants, especially those resident in the few centers existing in these marginal regions, e.g., Shechem and Bethel. (ibid)

‎maps.‎001 1024x451 — — Left map (Finkelstein, 325): first phase of settlement, ca 1200-1150 BCE;
— Centre map (ibid, 329): second phase of settlement expansion, ca 1000-950 BCE “when the last Canaanite enclaves in the Jezreel Valley were subdued and when the Philistines were repulsed from certain areas”;
— Notice the comparative emptiness of what was later Judah: the reason being that this area at the time was very rocky and covered in dense coppice (ibid, 326, 339)
— Right map (added for comparative reference) from Coogan, 6.

So the archaeologist concludes that the population increase in the region destined to become the land of Israel “must have been indigenous”.

The Philologist’s Sources for Assessing Hebrew Origins

‎lexical.‎001 300x254 — Top: Clay liver model (Landsberger 207); vase inscription with owner’s name (Yadin, Pl. CLXXX); Bottom: Lexical list (Tadmor, pl. 13); Letter fragment (Horowitz, 165); Multiplication table prism (Horowitz, 192)

Now for the philologist to present her evidence. This consists of . . .

— two inscribed liver models
— a legal document
— a new fragment of a known lexical list
— a vase inscription from the 15th-16th centuries with the name of the owner
— an administrative tablet containing a list of proper names
— a letter
— a mathematical text

— Tell Taanak: letters and name lists
— Shechem: a letter and a contract
— Megiddo: a fragment of the seventh tablet of Gilgamesh
— Gezer: a letter recognized as being from the Amarna period
— Tell el-Hesi: a letter

— Finally, among the various inscriptions from Aphek, the glossary no. 8151 … reveals the evolution of the diphthong ay > ê in the noun yênu, “wine,” as well as the preservation of the monosyllabic nominal form in the noun dušbu, “honey” …

These documents are compared with the Egyptian Amarna archive that contains copies of correspondence with Canaanite city states

(Israel, 65-68 — all quoted text from Felice Israel is my translation)

Felice Israel identifies in these sources specific features that become precursors of the two languages that will, following internal evolution, become Hebrew and Phoenicia. (68) (I have copied the technical information below.*)

The definition in Is. 19:18, according to which the language of Canaan and Hebrew are one and the same language, is thus confirmed. (68 – my highlighting in all quotations)

The above relates to the Bronze Age. We next come to the transition addressed by Finkelstein (above) — the end of the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age, the period of transition of settlement especially in the region that later became known as Samaria/Israel. In this period we see both changes and continuities in the languages of Canaan. But before I list the details of those points and for the benefit of readers less interested in delving into the technicalities, here is the conclusion to the philologist’s observation:

At the end of this brief essay, let us take stock of the results. In examining the linguistic documentation from the Bronze Age as a substrate up to that of the first millennium, a few facts have emerged:

. . . . In the Middle [and] Late Bronze Age . . . the first manifestations of the Canaanite linguistic type can be detected. These early manifestations, due to their specificity compared to other Semitic languages, both synchronically and diachronically, compel the specialist to recognize Hebrew as an indigenous language of Palestine, already attested before the events conventionally called the “conquest.” Consequently, for the philologist, the hypothesis of a conquest by a group of external origin is not confirmed. (77)

Changes and continuities in the languages of Canaan from Late Bronze to Early Iron Age (ca 1500-1100 BCE)

(I have omitted the footnotes that far exceed the length of the main text)

Dialectal Fragmentation: The distribution of the different Canaanite dialects⁸⁹ in the first millennium is as follows: on the northern coast of the Levant, various Phoenician dialects are noted, while on the southern coast appears the dialect we have elsewhere called “coastal Canaanite,” which was spoken in the Philistine region.⁹⁰ In the interior of Palestine, however, we find the Hebrew of the kingdoms of Samaria and Judah, Moabite, the Ammonite dialect, and that of the Edomites.
Onomastic Innovations: The disappearance of the Hurrian component in Syro-Palestinian onomastics is observed. This component was well present in the documentation of the substrate or, according to traditional terminology, at the time of the “conquest.“⁹¹ To the data noted by R. S. Hess⁹², we can add Hurrian-derived anthroponyms mentioned especially in CAT 4.635 as coming from Ashdod.
Religious Innovations: The emergence of national or ethnic states is accompanied by the rise of the national god figure⁹³. The history of some of these deities, such as Kamosh or Qaus, has been reconstructed, but for YHWH, as revealed by an investigation conducted by R. S. Hess⁹⁴, all ancient⁹⁵ or recent⁹⁶ attempts to find an attestation of the name outside the Old Testament have been unsuccessful. The only testimony of continuity is the heavenly nature⁹⁷ of his theophanies, which brings him closer to the figure of Hadad. R. Zadok⁹⁸ has highlighted the frequency of texts that mention this deity in relation to Palestine.
Preservation of the Hurrian Substrate: Regarding phonetic conservation, F. W. Bush’s hypothesis⁹⁹ suggests that the double pronunciation of the bgdkpt consonants in Hebrew and Aramaic is due to the influence of the Hurrian substrate. This influence is not necessarily direct, as it reached Hebrew through contact with Aramaic. For now, it can only be noted that the Hurrian substrate/adstrate, which fully exerts its influence in Ugarit, Nuzi, and Emar, has never been thoroughly studied in the documentation of the first millennium. From an onomastic perspective, few proper names of Hurrian etymology¹⁰⁰ have persisted in Old Testament documentation. The most famous of these are Uriah¹⁰¹, the husband of Bathsheba, sent by David to a certain death, and the judge Shamgar ben Anat¹⁰². In the lexicon, one of the few preserved Hurrian elements is the term siryôn and the variant siryôn, “cuirass”¹⁰³.
Conservation of Egyptian Onomastic Elements: In the onomastic documentation of post-exilic Hebrew, Egyptian etymology¹⁰⁴ seems characteristic of priestly proper names.¹⁰⁵
Conservation of Egyptian Lexical Elements: A series of lemmas, which abundantly testify, through their etymology, to the ancient Egyptian presence in the province of Canaan, have been preserved in the Hebrew lexicon. These words can refer to chemical substances, such as neter, “natron”; plants, such as šittâ, “acacia” or gōme’, “papyrus”; semi-precious stones, such as lešem, “carnelian”, aḥlamâ, “jasper”, or šenhabbîm, “ivory”; certain boats, such as ṣî, “type of ship”; or finally, scribal tools like ṭabba‘at, “seal-stamp” or qeset, “scribe’s case.”
Conservation of Egyptian Administrative Practices: The scribes of the two Israelite kingdoms¹⁰⁶ employed and preserved a numerical notation system of a hieratic type¹⁰⁷, rather than a Phoenician-Aramaic type. This is confirmed by the presence in the lexicon of measurement unit names such as lōg, hîn, and ʾêpâ, all of Egyptian etymology.

(That last point, #7, relates to the experience of Canaan under Egyptian hegemony in the Late Bronze era.)

—o0o—

* Common precursors of the two languages Hebrew and Phoenicia that indicate they are both indigenous and related.

(I have omitted the footnotes that far exceed the length of the main text)

The phonetic evolution ā > ō ⁴³: it is attested not only on the coast but also inland, in Galilee and Samaria, extending beyond the Jordan to Pella⁴⁴. The shift from the etymological ā to ō is foreign to Aramaic⁴⁵. Moreover, already in the Amarna documentation, it does not appear in regions that, in the first millennium, will be linguistically occupied by Aramaic. This phonetic evolution is absent from both Amorite⁴⁶ and Ugaritic⁴⁷.
Application of the Barth-Ginsberg law⁴⁸: This law⁴⁹—yiqtal(u) imperfective < Proto-Semitic yaqtal(u)—also applies in Ugaritic⁵⁰ but not in Amorite⁵¹; in Aramaic, it will apply much later than in Hebrew⁵².
The independent personal pronoun of the first person singular anōkî⁵³: The personal pronoun anōkî is a characteristic of Proto-Canaanite⁵⁴, which is not attested in Ugaritic⁵⁵ or Amorite⁵⁶. It anticipates the Hebrew, Phoenician⁵⁷, and Moabite⁵⁸ forms.
The suffix of the perfect first person singular -ti⁵⁹: This element is also considered a Proto-Canaanite characteristic⁶⁰. It differs from Ugaritic⁶¹ but anticipates the usage in Hebrew, Phoenician⁶², and Moabite.⁶³
The independent pronoun ninu⁶⁴ and the first person plural⁶⁶ suffix⁶⁵ pronoun -nu: The appearance of the independent first person plural pronoun ninu is ambiguous because there may be interference between a Canaanite form, which can be reconstructed with a good probability based solely on Hebrew but not Phoenician⁶⁷, and the usual Akkadian form⁶⁸. Regarding this, see the analogous spellings attested in the Giblite dossier: da-na-nu-u₁₆ and ni-nu-u₁₆ in EA 362 = LA 168:16, 27. On the other hand, the use of -nu as the suffix of the first person plural perfect⁶⁹ or as a suffix pronoun⁷⁰ is a Canaanite characteristic because it anticipates Hebrew usage and differs from the Amorite⁷¹ and Ugaritic⁷² form -na and, at a different time, from the similar Aramaic form -na.⁷³
The beginning of the pronominalization of the noun ašar⁷⁴: This transformation of the term⁷⁵ašar, “place”⁷⁶, into a relative pronoun, is not of the Amorite type⁷⁷ but constitutes an innovation that will be common to Canaanite dialects such as Hebrew⁷⁸, Moabite⁷⁹, and Edomite⁸⁰.
The modal system⁸¹: It seems to anticipate the modal system of Biblical Hebrew. The cohortative form yaqtula anticipates, for example, the Hebrew cohortative in an obvious way.⁸²
The use of the internal passive⁸³: It actually anticipates the reduction to only seven verbal conjugations, which will be typical of standard Hebrew and Phoenician.⁸⁴

Coogan, Michael D., ed. The Oxford History of the Biblical World. Oxford University Press, 2001.

Finkelstein, Israel. The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1988.

Horowitz, Wayne. “A Combined Multiplication Table on a Prism Fragment from Hazor.” Israel Exploration Journal 47, no. 3/4 (1997): 190–97.

Horowitz, Wayne, and Aaron Shaffer. “A Fragment of a Letter from Hazor.” Israel Exploration Journal 42, no. 3/4 (1992): 165–67.

Israel, Felice. “La Conquête de Canaan: Observations d’un Philologue.” In Guerre et conquête dans le Proche-Orient ancien: actes de la table ronde du 14 novembre 1998, edited by Laïla Nehmé and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 63–77. Antiquités sémitiques. Paris: Librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient, 1999.

Landsberger, B., and H. Tadmor. “Fragments of Clay Liver Models from Hazor.” Israel Exploration Journal 14, no. 4 (1964): 201–18.

Mander, Pietro. “Les Dieux et Le Culte à Ébla.” In Mythologie et Religion des Sémites Occidentaux. Volume 1, Ébla, Mari, edited by Gregorio del Olmo Lete, 1–160. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta. Leuven: Peeters, 2008.

Tadmor, Hayim. “A Lexicographical Text from Hazor.” Israel Exploration Journal 27, no. 2/3 (1977): 98–102.

Yadin, Yigael, Yohanan Aharoni, Ruth Amiran, Trude Dothan, Immanuel Dunayevsky, and Jean Perrot. Hazor II: An Account of the Second Season of Excavations, 1956. Jerusalem : Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1960. http://archive.org/details/hazoriiaccountof0000jame.

2024-06-10

Archaeological Evidence Behind the Narrative of Josiah’s Reform

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Continuing from the previous post, here are the archaeological finds that Christoph Uehlinger suggests should be considered when deciding whether or not we have evidence outside the Bible for the reforms of Josiah, circa 622 BCE, the last quarter of the seventh century. (The finds at Arad, you will recall, were dealt with in the previous post.)

1. Images on seals

Locally produced glyptic of the eighth and early seventh centuries shows . . . a stark tendency to portray astral symbolism, a tendency that is clearly related to growing Assyro-Aramean influence. (Uehlinger, 292)

‎astral seals.‎001 — Samples of astral seals from Keel & Uehlinger, pp 297, 303, 321

But this imagery is no longer found in the sixth century (Uehlinger, 292).

There is some tricky business involved when surveying all the seals because a number of them have come through the open market so provenance comes with a question mark. I am setting out here a very general picture on the basis of Uehlinger’s chapter.

There is one “family archive recording real estate transactions extending over two or three generations until the city’s conflagration in 587 BCE.

In a family archive [cited as the “House of Bullae”] containing records of transactions “over two or three generations until [Jerusalem’s] conflagration in 587 BCE. These seals . . .

. . . display a conspicuous reservation towards iconic designs and merely use decorative features and space fillers. . . . Clearly … neither iconic design in general nor astral symbolism in particular were en vogue among the literate Jerusalemites represented in the ‘House of the Bullae’ archive. (Uehlinger, p. 293f)

‎later seals.‎001 — Worshiper facing a branch; plant and architectural (tree?) motifs (K&U, pp 356, 358)

Another collection depicts . . .

. . . architectural and vegetal or floral motifs which can be related tentatively to temple and/or fertility symbolism. (Uehlinger, p. 294)

Uehlinger concludes:

. . . from the eighth to the sixth centuries, we may discern a clear evolution of preferences characterized by the rarefaction of iconic and otherwise deity-related seal designs.

(Uehlinger, p. 295)

‎seal types.‎001 — A rough visual outline of the different types of seal collections and their predominant periods — based on my reading of Uehlinger.

2. Epigraphical sources

From the surviving inscriptions from the time of Hezekiah (circa 700 BCE) through to the Babylonian capture of Jerusalem (587 BCE) Uehlinger identifies “an expansion of Yahweh’s divine authority, which eo ipso implies a transfer of authority from other deities or divine entities and thus their relative deprivation of power.” (295) Further,

Hebrew and particularly Judahite inscriptions make it probable that between c. 700 and 587 Yahweh took over specific functions as provider of blessing and salvation from ‘his Asherah’.

(Uehlinger, p. 296)

Recall that “Asherah” is widely understood as a reference to Yahweh’s wife.

Uehlinger further finds significance in the absence of any reference to Yahweh’s Asherah in the greeting formulas appearing in letters from Arad dated from the time after Josiah, from the period 605-587 BCE.

Another epigraphical source is found in the pair of silver amulets from Ketef Hinnom that I discussed in a post not so long ago. Uehlinger notes that their inscription appears to extend Yahweh’s power to the underworld and as such would be a significant expansion of his power from what we know of him in earlier times. Yahweh’s salvation is described by means of a metaphor of restoration of light:

. . . this recalls the common Near Eastern concept of the sun-god who travels through the underworld during the night and literally ‘brings back light’ in the morning. . . .

From the end of the eighth century onwards, Yahweh himself was to a large extent perceived as a royal solar deity. . . . Once the idea developed that Yahweh could be active in the grave and netherworld and preserve the dead from evil, too, some sort of competition between the main deity of Jerusalem and other gods who were traditionally related to the netherworld (among them, mlk?) became inevitable.

If a cult reform ever took place under King Josiah, it must be plausibly situated within the religio-historical context implied by the afore-mentioned developments.

(Uehlinger, p. 297)

Unfortunately, as we saw in the earlier post about these amulets, the preferable date for them is “the late sixth or early fifth century BCE” — a period of Babylonian and Persian dominance and well after Josiah’s time. (But not necessarily “unfortunately” if we interpret the data as a long-lasting effect of Josiah’s reforms.)

Thus concludes my overview of Uehlinger’s discussion of potentially relevant archaeological evidence. (The temple remains at Arad were addressed in the previous post.) The full article is available via the link below.

In the next post I will focus on the literary sources, but even here the net will be cast over additional “facts on the ground”.

Till then, interested readers might like to compare their own responses to the above evidence with a comment by Juha Pakkala:

Several scholars have tried to find external fixed points for 2 Kings 22-23 by using archaeological finds [citation here to Uehlinger’s chapter being discussed in these posts] but so far one has only been able to show possible broader lines of development that could make sense if there were a reform. Clearly, the nature of the archaeological evidence is such that it would be difficult to find direct evidence for a specific event such as a reform. Archaeological evidence cannot distinguish between the reign of Josiah and 587 BCE, or between the reigns of Manasseh and Josiah. Therefore, much of the discussion about archaeological evidence is tied to attempts to validate or disprove what the Bible says. But the dangers and limitations of this approach have to be acknowledged. For example, if seals from Judah are increasingly aniconic towards the end of the monarchy, should we assume on the basis of 2 Kings 23 that iconographical representations of the divine were banned by Josiah? One cannot exclude this possibility, but 2 Kings 23 does not say anything about Yahweh’s iconic representations and it has often been shown that the ban on making an idol or other pictorial representation of Yahweh belongs to the latest editorial phases of Deuteronomy and 1-2 Kings. A cult reform would, for example, not explain why one would not carve a picture of an ibex or a flower, unless one assumes that Josiah’s reform included a systematic iconoclasm. In other words, the tendency to increasingly prefer aniconic seals cannot be directly connected with 2 Kings 23.

The main problem with these attempts is that we still know very little about the historical and religious context of the late 7th century BCE in Judah. Much of what is usually assumed about the religious context of the late monarchic period in Judah has been built on Josiah’s reform, or on an interpretation of what it is thought to have been.

(Pakkala, 218)

Keep in mind that Uehlinger acknowledges that archaeological evidence alone cannot establish the historicity of Josiah’s reforms. It is his “middle way” between “minimalism” and “maximalism” that I hope to address at the conclusion of this series.

Avigad, Nahman, and Benjamin Sass. Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals. 2nd edition. Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1997.

Keel, Othmar, and Christoph Uehlinger. Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel. Illustrated edition. Minneapolis, Minn: Augsburg Books, 1998.

Pakkala, Juha. “Why the Cult Reforms in Judah Probably Did Not Happen.” In One God – One Cult – One Nation: Archaeological and Biblical Perspectives, edited by Reinhard G. Kratz and Hermann Spieckermann, 201–35. Berlin ; New York: De Gruyter, 2016.

Uehlinger, Christoph. “Was There a Cult Reform under King Josiah? The Case for a Well-Grounded Minimum” In Good Kings and Bad Kings: The Kingdom of Judah in the Seventh Century BCE, edited by Lester L. Grabbe, 279–316. London: T&T Clark, 2007. https://www.academia.edu/19958547/Was_There_A_Cult_Reform_under_King_Josiah_The_Case_for_a_Well_Grounded_Minimum_2005_

2024-05-04

Imagine Palestine

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

PaHH 890x1024 — From archive of teol.ku.dk site

The reason my posts relating to Biblical questions so often express a view that is inconsistent with mainstream narratives has nothing to do with wanting to be different (as the moderator on the earlywritings forum has patronizingly insisted) but everything to do with examining the evidence according to the same methods that are accepted as normative best-practice in other fields of history and classical studies. It was for this reason — identifying what I considered a fundamentally sound method of research and interpretation of evidence — that attracted me to the methods of what is sometimes (and dismissively) termed “minimalism” in explorations of the origins of Judaism, Christianity and the Bible.

So I feel a little reassured when I read that the same so-called “minimalist” authors themselves acknowledge that their approach is nothing other than what is considered uncontroversial in other areas of historical studies. It is only controversial, it seems, in the context of biblical studies — for reasons not hard to fathom. It is even more reassuring and encouraging to see that some of the “minimalist” scholars have taken practical steps to change the way Palestine’s history is understood more generally and taught in Palestinian schools and universities. Given the current ongoing slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza by the IDF it is very difficult to conceptualize anything positive for the future in Palestine-Israel, so one does hope that the candle-flame of The Palestine History and Heritage Project (PaHH) will not be fully extinguished.

The methods — doing history the way other historians are expected to do it

The PaHH project follows research principles set forth in the Copenhagen School’s insistence on producing clear methodological and epistemological evidence based historiography, such as is required in classical history writing, and rejecting the biblical-archaeologically designed history of “ancient Israel” most often presented in historiographies of ancient Palestine. (Hjelm 15)

We do use late historical works (e.g. Arrian of the mid-second century CE) to learn about Alexander the Great around 330 BCE, but in that case we know that Arrian was in turn using writings from Alexander’s own time.

In short, the only legitimate method of finding out “what really happened” in the past is to begin with primary evidence, the evidence from the time and place being studied. If we have much later narratives, accounts, myths, we don’t by default reject them as “lies” but we do examine them and try to trace their origins according to the culture that produced them. And that originating culture has to be determined by independent evidence. We cannot simply assume that a story about King David (or King Arthur for that matter) originated in the time of King David or King Arthur. The only legitimate method demands that we do not mix up the two types of sources. We don’t use Homer’s epics to learn about the historical Helen of Troy, nor Walter Scott’s novels to learn about the historical King Richard and Robin Hood, nor should we use the Bible’s stories to inform us about events that are known to have happened centuries before the Bible’s books were written.

The application of what I call normative historical method to the “history of Israel” has led to some considerable heat:

This has even been the case in the non-theological Biblical Criticism & History Forum – earlywritings.com as I mentioned in relation to my own experience there when attempting to discuss the case for the Bible originating later than the Babylonian exile.

The debate cemented the minimalist-maximalist positions with accusations of ‘revisionism’, ‘anti-semitism’, ‘anti-zionism’, ‘anti-biblical’, and ‘nihilism’, on one side, and ‘fundamentalism’, ‘evangelism’[sic] and ‘bad scholarship’ on the other side. Moving from the discussion of methods in history writing which had been the focus of scholarship since the deconstructionist tendencies of the ‘60s-‘80s, the Bible’s role as witness to its own histories, rather than its ancient mental history, became the primary issue. It became almost “illegitimate” not only to deny or criticize the Bible’s historicity, but also to discuss its origin later than the Babylonian Exile, although the Dead Sea Scrolls had made it absolutely evident that no Hebrew Bible existed that early. The approach taken by the so-called “minimalists” is, however, a basic demand in scientific history writing and is called for if biblical scholars are to be included in the guild of historians. Rather than being the ideologically driven program of a small group it has been adopted, to some extent, ‘by a fairly large number of scholars in response to the collapse of “biblical archaeology”, and the absolute necessity of reconsidering the way in which archaeological data and biblical texts are best related in the search for a critical history’. (Hjelm 50)

The content — imagining a non-biblical history of Palestine

Biblical-influenced history of Palestine or Israel is not limited to evangelicals. But I hope by the time interested readers reach the end of this post they will recognize the need to move beyond our common Bible-influenced histories.

Biblically based history does not only feature in histories written by biblical scholars, but is common in writings by archaeologists and historians alike. (Hjelm 15)

Ingrid Hjelm adds examples to demonstrate what that statement covers, some of which no doubt many readers will at least have seen referenced in online discussions:

W. G. Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? What Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001);
Israel Finkelstein and N. A. Silberman, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts (New York: The Free Press, 2001);
P. Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander. A History of the Persian Empire (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2002);
T.C. Mitchell, ‘The Assyrian and Babylonian Empires and Other States of the Near East from the Eighth to the Sixth Centuries’, in J. Boardman et al. (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History. Sec. ed., vol. Ill, Part 2 (1991): 322-460;
A. Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East. Vol. II, (London: Routledge, 1995);
K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: MI, Cambridge, U.K.: Eerdmans, 2003)

There is Israel and there is Palestine. Unfortunately, among many of us who have been immersed in a certain view of the Bible and history the term Palestine can easily conjure up images of the other, the outsider, the crude pagan destined to be supplanted, or other Orientalist visions of “the Arab” or even “Islamism”. But the term Israel is also problematic. As Philip R. Davies pointed out in 1992 we find ourselves with shifting images of three different Israels:

1. Historical Israel:

Historical Israel is the Kingdom of Israel / Bit Humri / House of Omri (9th century -720 BCE) — the kingdom that archaeologists have uncovered in the northern region of Palestine. It is known from Moabite and Assyrian inscriptions.

2. Biblical Israel:

Biblical Israel is the 12 tribe confederation, the United Monarchy, the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and the “Israelites” throughout history and tradition in the 2nd – 1st millennium BCE (Hjelm 16)

3. Ancient Israel:

Finally, the Ancient Israel perspective offers a harmonization of biblical traditions with archaeology and epigraphy and uses the name “Israel” indiscriminately of its historical use and verification. In regard to historical research, such traditional “ancient Israel” histories are oxymoronically neither biblical nor historical, but reductionist conflation of biblical myth and historical fact. (Hjelm 16)

See the above list of titles for examples of that kind of harmonization.

Where is there room for Palestine here? We know that Palestine is even denied as a legitimate name in itself by various extremist pro-Zionists and Islamophobes.

Imagining Palestine

Speaking of the Palestine History and Heritage Project, Hjelm explains:

We have chosen to use the term “Palestine” generally, because it is the most consistent name of the area stretching from as far north as Sidon to the Brook of Egypt and from the Mediterranean into the Transjordan with ever changing borders since the Iron Age. It is testified in inscriptions from Ramses III (ca. 1182-1151 BCE) with increased regional comprehension in the 12^th-10^th cent. BCE. From the neo-Assyrian period (10^th-7^th century BCE) onwards it is the most common etic collective designation, manifested in the Roman period (1^st cent. BCE – 4^th cent. CE), and it has been in continuous use until 1967, whence the name became a modern political term for areas that are not Israel or are occupied by Israel. Our use relates to the various meanings of the name throughout three millennia, in which many polities have co-existed, including the ancient kingdoms of Sidon, Ashkelon, Gaza, Gezer, Israel, Judah, Edom, etc. in addition to later Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine provinces and the imperial polities established from conquests by Sassanid Persians, Arab (peninsular) tribes, crusading Europeans, Mamelukes, Seljuks, Ottoman Turks and the British Commonwealth. (Hjelm 10f)

That image reduces the notion of the above three Israels to passing visions in a kaleidoscope of richly varying histories. Certainly a study of “historical Israel” (the first of the three listed above) is a necessary undertaking for anyone who wants to understand the Bible — if only to come to appreciate that the Biblical Israel cannot be identified with the historical Israel. In other words, before studying the Bible’s view of history one would do well to study history on its own terms first. Instead of seeing cultures and today’s descendants of past eras through biblical lenses we would do well to study those cultures and descendants in their own right first.

Palestine is much bigger than “biblical Israel”. A study of Palestine embraces a study of other great city states that dominated the region at various times yet which the Bible only alludes to with a passing or a negative glance, if at all.

Nor is its history limited to a few centuries in ancient times followed by a “dark age” of early Christian and Islamic domination only to be “liberated” and “revived” in 1948 or especially in 1967 with the seizure of Jerusalem — again as the highlighted portion of the above quotation demonstrates.

The relevance of the PaHH must go without saying though I think it must be said at this time, however hard that saying is.

The Palestine History and Heritage Project (PaHH)

The Palestine History and Heritage Project (PaHH) was formed in 2014 with the twofold aim at producing a trustworthy history of Palestine and of offering this history as a basis for the production of new school textbooks which may reflect Palestine’s multi-vocal and multi-facetted history in a form that is scholarly evidence based rather than rooted in traditional religious interpretation.

PaHH is an international and interdisciplinary project, at present counting some 40 members (half of whom are academically situated in the Middle East or are of Middle Eastern origin) related to or working at academic institutions in Palestine, Europe, Africa, and North and South America.

The initiative to form the project came from Dr. Thomas L. Thompson and Dr. Niels Peter Lemche of the University of Copenhagen; Dr. Hamdan Taha, Former Director of the Department of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage, Palestinian Authority; Dr. Ilan Pappe, Director of the Institute of Palestine Studies, University of Exeter; Dr. Issa Sarie, Head of the Archaeological Department, Al Quds University, Abu Dis; and Dr. Basem Ra’ad, the University of London.

The project has been housed at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Copenhagen, with me as project leader until 2017, Dr. Mahmoud Issa as project coordinator and Thomas Thompson as project developer. Although we are now all retired, the faculty has accepted to keep the relationship and non-economic support. Over the years, the project has been funded by minor Danish and British funds to cover workshop and conference expenses. In addition, many Palestinian educational institutions have graciously hosted parts of our workshops and invited us for lectures and discussions. (Hjelm 9f)

Thompson, Thomas L., and Ingrid Hjelm. The Ever Elusive Past: Discussions of Palestine’s History and Heritage. Ramallah, Palestine: Dar Al Nasher, 2019.

2024-04-20

Comparing Samaria and Judah/Yehud – and their religion – in Persian Times

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Recent posts have focussed on the case for the earliest books of the Bible being composed as late as the Hellenistic era, that is less than 300 years before Christ. The longstanding conventional wisdom has understood the first biblical narratives go back to the time of King David (around 1000 BCE) or at least to the time of the Babylonian captivity (circa 600 BCE) and that much editing of these earlier works and creation of some new ones all took place under the benign rule of the Persians (late 500s through to 330 BCE).

The very idea of the Pentateuch (first five books of the Old Testament covering creation, the patriarchs, the exodus, the giving of law) and later books depicting the conquest of Canaan, the united kingdom of David and Solomon not having at least some roots in the historical past (however much real events may have been mythologized) of the “Near East” is very hard to accept for many of us. A long held assumption has been that the thought of the Near East is in many ways so opposed to Greek or Hellenistic thought and intellectual and ethical culture that it is inconceivable to imagine the early books of the Old Testament being products of Hellenistic times and culture. Recent posts here have attempted to demonstrate that such conventional assumptions need to be questioned. New scholarship has been drawing attention to a symbiosis between Hellenism and Near Eastern cultures and I will be addressing more of that work in future posts.

Meanwhile, it is surely necessary to understand as much as possible about the various settings and cultures that are being proposed as the birthplace of the Bible. In this post I am continuing to write up what I have been learning about Persian era Samaria and Judah (known as the Persian province Yehud). Do we find in either of these places the conditions that make the production of the biblical works likely?

The beginning of Persian era Palestine

The northern kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians in 722 BCE and the southern kingdom appears to have come to its end at the hands of the Babylonians in 586 BCE. The long term results of the respective conquests were very different from each other. Let’s compare how each region fared in the wake of their respective conquests.

Persian era + Kuntillet — I have adapted the Persian era map from Michael Wolffsohn’s *Whose Holy Land?* to include the eighth century BCE site of Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (discussed below), the site of Wadi Daliyeh and the estimated “borders” of Yehud according to archaeological finds (blue line based on article and map by Frevel and Pyschny). The original map shows the Yehud according to Ezra-Nehemiah.

Samaria from Assyrian conquest into the Persian period

In the north, the city of Samaria was made the provincial capital of the new Assyrian province. The entire region of Samaria did suffer significant population decline in the wake of Assyrian deportations of much of the population but the archaeological evidence also informs us that there was significant continuity of settlement. Assyrian destruction was not all encompassing. Large areas remained untouched, perhaps the result of surrendering rather than attempting resistance. New ethnic groups were brought in by the Assyrians but these coexisted with indigenous populations. There was no population replacement. After the Assyrian conquest much of (northern) Samaria continued to increase in population and prosperity (Knoppers 2004). Major recovery for southern Samaria had to await the Hellenistic era (Knoppers 2006).

This growth continued into the Persian period. Newly built major and minor roads no doubt facilitated this expansion:

The Achaemenid [= Persian] Period witnesses an unprecedented number of sites in the northern region, suggesting that this was a time of considerable demographic expansion. . . . Almost all of these Iron Age [= kingdom of Israel before 722 BCE] rural sites exhibit continuity into the Persian Period . . . . The western area of Samaria was intensively settled during the Achaemenid era. (Knoppers 2006: 268)

The city of Samaria itself was in the forefront of this expansion:

In Samaria, unlike in Jerusalem, one finds a fundamental continuity of settlement from the beginning of the Iron III period to the Achaemenid era. . . .

The areas around the town of Samaria were thickly settled during the Achaemenid era. . . .

The city of Samaria prospered and grew during much of the Persian era. . . . Stern (2001: 424) thinks, in fact, that Samaria was one of the most important urban areas in all of Palestine during the Achaemenid era. (Knoppers 2006: 270f)

The city’s population and material growth peaked in the Persian period with descendants of deportees from Assyrian times returning:

Surveys indicate that about half of the Iron II Israelite settlements in Manasseh, including the city of Samaria, continued to exist into the Persian period . . . ; in the Persian Period the area around Samaria was more densely populated than at any other time in history . . .

It also appears that deported Israelites or their descendants later returned to their homeland in significant numbers (Barmash 2005: 229-231). (Leith 273f)

Judah/Yehud from Babylonian conquest into the Persian period

The destruction of Judah by the Babylonians was punitive and “fateful” — in unmistakable contrast with how Samaria fared at the hands of the Assyrians.

The immediate results of the Babylonian conquest of Judah are clear. Much of the country, especially in the west, south, and east and in the immediate environs of Jerusalem, was destroyed by the foreign invaders. Archaeological excavations at many Judean sites show evidence of destruction that scholars have related to Nebuchadrezzar’s campaigns. Evidence for destruction extends from Tell ed-Duweir (Lachish) in the west, to Arad and environs in the south, to En-gedi and Jericho in the east. This is not to suggest, however, that every Judean city was left in ruins. Primarily those cities that served as fortress towns and where anti-Babylonian sentiment was high would have been the most likely targets for the Babylonians. One area, however, is the exception to the rule. Cities north of Jerusalem, in the traditional territory of Benjamin, suffered little or no destruction. . . .

The destruction of most Judean cities meant a disruption in the governmental apparatus as well as in the industry and economics of the country. Because soldiers profited from the spoils of war, plundering was the conqueror’s privilege and the conquered’s fate. Thus one must assume that much of the people’s possessions became Babylonian spoils of war. Many cities, like Jerusalem, that had once been thriving centers were left as depleted, subsistence-level villages if occupied at all. The primary economy of the country was probably reduced to a purely agricultural base.

A significant percentage of the manpower and leadership was killed off. There is no way to estimate the number of casualties who died at the hands of Babylonian troops, but it certainly would have been a sizable portion of the population, even though the Babylonians had no reputation for needless destruction and excessive killing. Nebuchadrezzar had taken a lenient attitude toward the country in 597, but no ancient ruler was very hospitable to a rebellious subject on the second military visit. (Miller and Hayes 479f)

Persian rulers did not improve the situation for Yehud (the name of the Persian province for the erstwhile kingdom of Judah):

The Jerusalem of the Achaemenid era has been described as a village with an administrative center. (Knoppers 2006:272)

Yehud was essentially irrelevant to the major interests of Persia:

One has to face the reduced extent of Yehûd against the background of the broader development in the Southern Levant in the 5th/4th century BCE. The marginal international importance is likewise true for the Persian period, when Yehûd achieved the status of a Persian province (at the latest) in the mid-5th century. . . . At least until the upheavals in Egypt and the loss of the control of Egypt by the Persian authority, the province of Yehûd was politically and economically more or less irrelevant. (Fravel and Psychny 4)

Transition to the Persian period is often unclear

With reference to the archaeological remains. . . .

. . . we are still largely unable to distinguish clearly between material remains of Iron Age III (the period of Babylonian overlordship) and those of the early Persian period (in turn, this might indicate a very smooth transition from one to the other, with Persian administration remaining in fact ‘Babylonian’ for quite some time). (Uehlinger 136)

Most histories of this period focus on Palestine’s relations with Persia and to some extent Greece as the rival power to Persia. The economic impact and cultural influence of Phoenician cities is also recognized. Yet there was evidently a strong Egyptian influence in the area given the number of scarab amulets, Egyptian-style bronze statuettes and Egyptian deity representations on coins in Palestine during this same period.

In this respect, the impact of Egypt on Palestine during the 5th and particularly the 4th century . . . is too often disregarded in historical treatments of the period. (Uehlinger 136)

Evidence of Persian interest (or lack of it) in Samaria and Yehud

Images on seals and coins functioned as imperial propaganda to remind subject populations of Persian power. By comparing the locations of these finds and the particular styles of iconography archaeologists are informed about the areas of main interest to the Persians. Persian royalty appears to have little interest in stridently imposing its presence in Palestine until very late in the Persian period.

The bulk of seals and sealings discussed belongs to the second half or even last third of the Persian period, which makes the potential for Persian impact in the late 6th and earlier 5th centuries BCE even slimmer. . . .

In great contrast to other imperial administrations that had ruled in Palestine during earlier periods (Middle and New Kingdom Egypt and to some extent Assyria), the Achaemenid imperial administration apparently did not interfere in any way in the local seal production, certainly not in the engravers’ choices regarding the composition of their figurative repertoire.

Two main reasons may explain this contrast: basically, Persian interest and involvement must have been much more intense in Asia Minor than in far-off Palestine which was ‘Third World’ to the Achaemenids not worthy for investment. . . . To the extent that the physical presence of people of Persian origin was probably limited to military officers and administrators, Persian culture remained a largely foreign element in Palestine. Granted that we interpreted the incomplete evidence correctly, we could even observe a certain reluctance or reservation on behalf of Phoenician seal engravers to adopt Persian Achaemenid (even royal) figurative models, an attitude which is in strong contrast to the same craftsmen^ openness to integrate schemes from Egypt, Cyprus or Greece. (Uehlinger 171f)

Most of the seals and coins promoting Persian power that do appear come from Samaria, not Yehud.

Achaemenid iconography and other ‘Persianisms’ figure much more prominently on coins from Samaria than from anywhere else in the country. . . . It is striking that except for one item from Jericho, Yehud is not represented at all in our survey on iconographical Persianisms. (Uehlinger 173)

There is little evidence that the Persian administration was interested in interfering with local religious practices as a rule. The indication for this is the absence of specifically Persian religious or cult images on coins and seals.

We may notice in passing the total lack of specifically ‘religious’ subject matter other than ‘heroic combat’ or ‘encounter’, such as cult (worship or offering) scenes, representations of deities, divine symbols or the like, which contrasts neatly with Egyptian, Assyrian and Babylonian glyptic and their respective influence on Palestinian glyptic in earlier periods. This observation confirms the commonly accepted opinion that the Persian administration generally did not interfere with the religious beliefs of their subjects, certainly not by imposing nor even publicizing the worship of Persian deities, but rather aimed at favouring cultic normality in pacified provinces . . . . The one common notion which is emphatically stressed by a great proportion of seals and sealings is the heroic character of Persian kingship. (Uehlinger 175)

When we come to the fourth century BCE (note Persian rule over Palestine commenced in the late sixth century BCE) it is Samaria, the northern province, that is the leading representative of imperial power.

Yehud coinage, generally of rather poor minting quality, shows very few ‘Persianisms’, but also no particular dependency on Phoenician models. . . . In contrast, Samarian coinage is literally full of ‘Persianisms’, surpassing by far any other mint of the region in this respect. This confirms and emphasizes our conclusion based on the glyptic evidence, namely that Persian iconographical models and Achaemenid royal ideology had a particularly strong impact on 4th-century Samaria. (Uehlinger 177f)

Was this because Samarians were inherently more loyal to Persia? Or might the explanation be somewhat more complex?

Obviously these depictions are not all an expression of Samarian loyalty to the Achaemenid king and to the Persian imperial administration. One should rather suspect that the unusual emphasis betrays propaganda which may have intended to cover particular tensions in real life. The many ‘portraits’ of Persian officers point to a strong Persian military presence at Samaria. Many of these issues must have been minted by order of Persian officials stationed in the province, or of some higher authority such as Mazday the satrap. . . .

In sum, one cannot ignore that more than any other repertoire of the area, the coins of Samaria emphatically claim strong allegiance of the province to the Great King and his representatives. (Uehlinger 178f)

Comparing Samaria and Yehud culture and religion

If the archaeological evidence indeed supports such disparity between Samaria and Judah, there is no comparison, only contrast, between Samaria and Yehud (the name of the Persian province) in the Persian era. Yehud became a backwater under Persian rule.

I distinguish between ‘Samarian’ and ‘Samaritan’ studies, the latter having long been a subset of biblical studies, addressing the Jewish sect that continues to worship on Mt. Gerizim to this day. (Leith 268)

The two regions shared a common language and scripts.

The language of the [Samaria] papyri is a conservative version of Official Aramaic. The language used is virtually identical to the language employed in the fifth-century Elephantine papyri . . . .

The hundreds of short inscriptions found in Samaria dating to the late Persian and Hellenistic Periods suggest that the Samarians wrote and spoke the same language as the Judeans did during this time. Aramaic evidently was employed, as it was in other provinces in western Asia, as the language of governance and international diplomacy. Hebrew was employed, but not restricted to, certain official or sacred purposes. The scribes of both communities employed a similar system of scripts, an Aramaic script for diplomatic and commercial activities and a Hebrew script (the so-called palaeo-Hebrew) for certain religious purposes . . . Both the Judeans and the Samarians used the two scripts as late as the Hellenistic era. (Knoppers, 273f)

The names of persons between the two provinces are similar, both pointing to a religious affiliation with Yahweh worship.

The linguistic and religious features of onomastica can be used to provide some indication of their bearers’ religious identities. One may begin by observing the large number of proper names shared with Judah. . . .

In addition to the Yahwistic nomenclature found within the Samaria papyri, Yahwistic names have also been found on the legends of fourth-century Samarian coins. (Knoppers 2006: 275f)

There are also non-Yahwistic names, names with links to other deities, though some scholars would prefer to date these to the early Hellenistic era. Even so, one notes that they are Samarian and not from Yehud.

In contrast with the Samarian coins bearing Yahwistic appellatives, there are a few Samarian coins featuring non-Yahwistic theophorics. One Samarian coin type with the divine name ‘Zeus’ (ΙΕΥΣ) is attested, along with an image of this deity . . . On the reverse of this coin is the name ׳Jeho’anah’ (yhw’nh). On yet another coin one finds the face and short form of the name of the god ‘[Hera]cles’. . . . The appearance of these Greek deities may indicate a stronger western cultural influence in Samaria than in contemporary Yehud . . . . (Knoppers 2006: 277)

But the Yahwistic names are far more numerous:

Neither did Samaria post 722 become a majority non-Yahwistic province; the names of Samarians mentioned in the fourth-century Samaria Papyri in the fourth century are overwhelmingly Yahwistic. (Leith 274)

As for the material evidence of religious developments in these two areas, there is nothing to indicate any difference from the pre-Assyrian and pre-Babylonian monarchic periods of Israel and Judah.

There was no “religious revolution” in Yehûd or in Samaria that can be drawn from the account of the material culture. Even if there was a ‘material otherness’ of the Yehûdite material culture, Judaism was not the outcome of a revolution and a deliberate distinctiveness. (Fravel and Psychny 19)

The message is that there was cultic or religious continuity from the time both regions were independent kingdoms through to the time they became separate Persian provinces.

What did that common and long standing religious life look like?

Yahweh worship in the Kingdom of Israel continues through the Persian era

In the above context one should take special note of the evidence for the continuity of religious practices of the people of the Kingdom of Israel through to the Persian province of Samaria. We had a glimpse of aspects of the Samarian cult in an earlier post so I won’t repeat what I posted there but supplement it a little.

Around 800 BCE an Israelite settlement (from the northern kingdom of Israel) of what appears to have been a group of Israelites sent by the king of Israel to establish within the southernmost borders of the kingdom of Judah. The site is known to us as Kuntillet Ajrud (meaning “the isolated hill of the water sources”). The Kingdom of Judah had earlier established a fortress at Kadesh Barnea but this had been abandoned at the time of the Kuntillet Ajrud settlement.

Evidently, the founders of Ajrud did not want to occupy the fortress because of its Judean identity. They preferred to found a new site, in a less comfortable location with a meagre water source, 15 km off the main road, rather than settle in a place associated with a Judean tradition. (Meshel 67)

How do we know it was a distinctively (northern) Israelite site and not a (southern) Judahite one? Some of the clues:

Inscriptions at the site specifically document “YHWH of Samaria”
the site’s personal names use the Samarian “yw” as opposed to the Judean “yaho” to refer to YHWH
the pottery is Samarian style
the script is Phoenician (as used in Israel)

The site was short-lived, being abandoned by around 750 BCE.

The artwork at Kuntillet Ajrud is clearly related to the images on Samarian coins and therefore throws more light on Samarian religion of the Persian era. The images in the left column are from eighth century Kuntillet Ajrud and their comparable Samarian Persian coin images on the right.

Referring to the second from the top, a pair of ibex flanking a tree, Leith writes:

This motif was a common one throughout the ancient Near East for centuries, but is not a known coin motif anywhere except fourth-century Samaria. The uniqueness of the coin image and the inscribed letters Š-M-R (abbreviation for ‘Samaria’) on the coin reverse suggest this particular coin was specifically designed to communicate Samarian identity. . . . The goat and tree motif is plausibly linked with the goddess Asherah. (Leith 276)

Here is a photo of the original image:

For clarity, here is a sketched outline of that tree:

And here is a copy of Russell Gmirkin’s recent comment:

A key aspect of the Iron II cult of Asherah was a pole or rod. A contemporary representation of this rod appears at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud, where a picture of a stylized sacred tree flanked by ibexes appears on Pithos A where it is thought to represent Asherah as a fertility goddess (Leith 2014: 276; Asherah is associated with flocks of sheep or goats at Deut. 7:13; 28:4, 18, 51). This sacred tree corresponds in great detail to the blooming rod of Aaron, the symbol of his priesthood, with its buds, blossoms and almonds (Num. 17:8), which was laid up in the sacred ark in the tabernacle (Num. 17:10; cf. Heb. 9:4).

“It is difficult to imagine a more precise pictorial representation of the object described verbally in the Pentateuchal account than this drawing. The central element of the drawing plainly resembles a staff. It is adorned with six buds alternating with eight blossoms. And at the top are two elements shaped like almonds in the shell and speckled with dots that match the pockmarks typical of these shells.” (Eichler 2019: 36.)

It would appear that the Priestly author, perhaps along with Ezekiel, did not find the Asherah objectionable, and included this flowering staff among the most precious contents preserved in the sacred ark (Eichler 2019: 40-41). This sacred staff later featured in the account of Moses striking the rock to obtain water in Num. 20:1-13 (Eichler 2019: 41-45). The sacred tree flanked by rampant goats is an image that also uniquely recurs in fourth-century BCE Samarian coinage, along with other imagery also depicted at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (Leith 2014). This seems to indicate the persistence of the Asherah as revered sacred tree at a late date in Samaria.

It would appear that if we are looking at a Hellenistic provenance for the Hebrew Bible, the biblical tropes themselves go back much earlier.

Eichler, Raanan. “The Priestly Asherah.” Vetus Testamentum 69, no. 1 (January 21, 2019): 33–45.

Frevel, Christian, and Katharina Pyschny. “A ‘Religious Revolution’ in Yehûd? The Material Culture of the Persian Period as a Test Case: Introduction.” In A “Religious Revolution” in Yehûd?: The Material Culture of the Persian Period as a Test Case, edited by Christian Frevel, Katharina Pyschny, and Izak Cornelius, 1–22. Fribourg: Academic Press, 2014.

Knoppers, Gary. “In Search of Postexilic Israel: Samaria After the Fall of the Northern Kingdom.” In In Search of Pre-Exilic Israel: Proceedings of the Oxford Old Testament Seminar, edited by J. Day, 150–80. JSOTSup 406. London: T. & T. Clark Continuum, 2004.

Knoppers, Gary N. “Revisiting the Samarian Question in the Persian Period.” In Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period, edited by Oded Lipschits and Manfred Oeming, 265–90. Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 2006.

Leith, Mary Joan Winn. “Religious Continuity in Israel/Samaria: Numismatic Evidence.” In A “Religious Revolution” in Yehûd?: The Material Culture of the Persian Period as a Test Case, edited by Christian Frevel, Katharina Pyschny, and Izak Cornelius, 267–304. Fribourg: Academic Press, 2014.

Meshel, Zeev, Shmuel Aḥituv, and Liora Freud. Kuntillet ʻAjrud (Ḥorvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah-Sinai Border. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2012.

Miller, J. Maxwell, and John H. Hayes. A History of Ancient Israel and Judah. 2nd edition. Louisville, Ky. London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006.

Uehlinger, Christoph. “‘Powerful Persianisms’ in Glyptic Iconography of Persian Period Palestine.” In The Crisis of Israelite Religion: Transformation of Religious Tradition in Exilic and Post-Exilic Times, edited by Bob Becking and Marjo C. A. Korpel, 134–82. Brill, 1999.

2024-04-15

Samaria in the Persian Period

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Our quest is to test the thesis that the earliest books of the Bible were written or at least heavily redacted and supplemented in the Persian period. To that end we have been trying to understand what Persian era candidate “biblical” societies were like. We’ve looked at Judeans in Persian times according to the evidence in both the Persian province of Yehud and their “brethren” in Egypt, so for the next stop we will have a look at the “Samarians”. Samarians may seem unusual against our more familiar Samaritans . . .

The Samarians (no “t”) of the Persian period are not to be confused with the Samaritans of the first century CE. (Betlyon 27)

We are talking about the people who inhabited the “biblical northern kingdom of Israel” after the biblical united kingdom of David and Solomon divided between “Israel” in the north and “Judah” in the south. After the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom they established in its place the province of “Samerina”, but in subsequent Persian times we speak of the Samarians.

Samaria, though subservient to imperial overlords, continued to be a major administrative centre.

When Persia conquered Babylon in 539 BCE, Cyrus and his successors retained Samaria as the administrative center in the “Province Beyond the River [Euphrates]” and placed it under the governorship of Sanballat. Excavators have discovered a large garden area (.25 m-thick; 45 x 50 m) that surrounded the district governor’s palace there. A fifth-century Athenian coin, three Sidonian coins from the reign of Abdastart I (370-358 BCE), fourteen Aramaic ostraca, plus significant quantities of pottery imported from Aegean centers during the late sixth to late fourth centuries BCE . . . all attest to the solvency of the Ephraimite economy . . . . (Tappy 583)

Coins

Ancient coinage in general can provide significant information not only about the economic, but also the political, cultural and religio-historical state of affairs of a city or province. Coins were commissioned by those in power, were often used to communicate specific values and ideas and served as mass medium in Antiquity. Accordingly, the images appearing on them were not randomly chosen but selected with great precision and reflect a certain ‘spirit’. (Wyssmann 222)

The sampling here is taken from Wyssmann’s study and were selected on the basis of having been more probable than not minted in the province of Samaria itself. The inscriptions on Samarian coins were in Aramaic, Paleo-Hebrew and Greek letters. Greek gods appear along with names of Persian satraps and Samarian governors.

These images have been selected from Wyssmann, Patrick: “The Coinage Imagery of Samaria and Judah in the Late Persian Period” 2014.

bird-man — Man wearing Persian dress with bird’s tail and two pairs of wings. A “human-headed bird deity”?

zeus — Crowned bearded man on throne reminds us of the Persian king. But the adjacent inscription ZEYΣ (=ZEUS). Some scholars claim ‘Zeus’ refers to the Greek name of Baal or Baalshamen and Yhwh respectively who were already equated in Samaria in pre-Persian times.

Screenshot 2024-04-14 at 8.42.56 pm — Draped bearded man on throne holding blossom. This is an adaptation of Baal of Tarsos. The name behind him is Hananyah. A Samarian governor with a theophoric name (including Yah [=Yahweh]) thus had no trouble being associated with Baal.

The inscription between the two figures = Jeroboam (a Samarian governor). Some scholars have interpreted the scene as Jeroboam (right) being blessed by the (naked) god on the left. Or it might be a scene of worship of a local god (Yhwh?)

aphrodite — Some interpret the woman to be Aphrodite, others a city goddess, Tyche.

medusa — Common female heads were Athena, Arethusa and Gorgo Medusa.

heracles — Heracles, who was connected with the Phoenician god Melqart.

The Wadi Daliyeh finds

The Samaria papyri from Wadi Daliyeh provide us with precious information regarding some of the inhabitants of Samaria, including some of its officials. (Dušek 2020, 2)

The cache of papyri, coins, jewelry, pottery were deposited in a cave in Wadi Daliyeh by people fleeing from Samaria as Alexander the Great was on his way back there after the city had rebelled against his recent conquest by burning his appointed governor alive (according to Josephus). Those who hid in the cave were probably found and suffocated by a fire Alexander’s troops lit at the cave’s entrance.

‎Wadi Daliyeh.‎001 — Wadi ed-Daliyeh in relation to Samaria: From researchgate

The following notes are taken from Dušek 2007:

Names on the papyri contain theophoric elements relating to Yahweh (mostly) but also El, Ab, Nabu, Shamash, Sahar, Šalman, Bel, Baga, Sîn, Baal, Isis, Ilahi et Qôs.
Clay seals include images of Hermes, Heracles and Perseus.

The following images are from Lapp, Paul W., and Nancy L. Lapp, eds. Discoveries in the Wadi Ed-Daliyeh. American Schools of Oriental Research, 1974.

seal 42 — Heracles, nude, with club on the left and fighting a lion.

scarab — Scarab with goddess wearing crown of Egyptian goddess Hathor, incense altar, Horus hawk, papyrus flower.

According to the onomastics of the Wadi Daliyeh manuscripts, the population of the province of Samaria would have been quite diverse: most of the names are Yahwist; in the other names, the theophoric elements El, Ab, Šamaš, Sahar, Bel, Baga, Sîn, Nabu, Šalman, Ba’al, Isis, Ilahi and Qôs refer to West Semitic, North Arabic, Aramaic onomastics, Hebrew, Babylonian, Phoenician, Egyptian, Persian and Idumean. We also identified a possible Assyrian name and a name expressing ethnic origin. As we have suggested, not all of these people were likely inhabitants of the province of Samaria; in certain cases it may have been merchants who were traveling, or slaves sold in Samaria, but originating from other provinces. The variety of the population of the province of Samaria can be explained on the one hand by the great prosperity of the region and by political stability which favored settlement in the territory of the province, and on the other hand by the deportations of populations in the province of Samaria before the Persian era. (Dušek 2007, 601 – translation)

Mount Gerizim

One of the most astonishing discoveries was unearthed by a team of archaeologists led by Yitzhak Magen, who excavated a site in Samaria at Jabal al-Tur, one of the three peaks of Mount Gerizim, from 1982–2006. They identified a Yahwist sacred precinct active from the 5th century BCE until its destruction in the mid–late 2nd century BCE.⁴

⁴ It is unclear if this sacred precinct included an actual temple building, despite the suggestions of the excavators in Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations Volume II . For further discussion, see Pummer, “Was There an Altar?”. (Economou 155)

That’s another topic, though.

Betlyon, John W. “A People Transformed Palestine in the Persian Period.” Near Eastern Archaeology 68, no. 1/2 (2005): 4–58.

Dušek, J. Les Manuscrits Araméens Du Wadi Daliyeh Et La Samarie Vers 450-332 Av. J.-C. Leiden ; Boston: BRILL, 2007.

Dušek, Jan. “The Importance of the Wadi Daliyeh Manuscripts for the History of Samaria and the Samaritans.” Religions 11, no. 2 (January 29, 2020): 63. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11020063.

Economou, Michael. “The Aramaic Inscriptions from Mount Gerizim: Production, Identity, and Resistance.” Journal of Ancient Judaism 15, no. 1 (October 16, 2023): 154–73. https://doi.org/10.30965/21967954-bja10032.

Lapp, Paul W., and Nancy L. Lapp, eds. Discoveries in the Wadi Ed-Daliyeh. American Schools of Oriental Research, 1974. http://archive.org/details/discoveriesinwad0041delb.

Lemche, Niels Peter. “Samaritans in History and Tradition.” In Samaritans and Jews in History and Tradition, by Ingrid Hjelm. Taylor & Francis, 2024.

Tappy, Ron E. The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria. Volume 2: The Eighth Century BCE. Brill, 2001.

Wyssmann, Patrick. “The Coinage Imagery of Samaria and Judah in the Late Persian Period.” In A “Religious Revolution” in Yehûd? The Material Culture of the Persian Period as a Test Case, edited by Christian Frevel, Katharina Pyschny, and Izak Cornelius, 221–66. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 267. Fribourg: Academic Press, 2014. https://www.academia.edu/9216977/The_Coinage_Imagery_of_Samaria_and_Judah_in_the_Late_Persian_Period.

2024-04-12

No Evidence Jerusalem/Judea had a “Writing Culture” in Persian times — Israel Finkelstein

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

I have transcribed the last ten minutes of the archaeologist Israel Finkelstein’s December 2022 Conference presentation because it dovetails with my recent posts and discussion points about the evidence relating to the composition of biblical texts in the Persian era.

If Jerusalem — nor the whole of Judea — had a “Writing Culture” in Persian times, we need to take a few steps back from the conventional view in biblical studies that it was in the Persian period that our principle biblical books were taking shape.

Scholars have long relied upon the texts of Ezra-Nehemiah and some chapters of the prophets to conclude that priests and scribes connected to the Jerusalem temple were busily shaping the biblical material (especially the Pentateuch) during this time.

Next to the biblical sources that are set explicitly in the Persian period, scholarship generally dates several other writings or parts of biblical books to this period. From the plethora of the material we will simply look at one (significant) example: the completion of the Jewish law in the form of the Pentateuch, the Torah of Moses, a document of which more than half was written or composed in the post‐monarchial period, i.e. during neo‐Babylonian, Persian, and Hellenistic times. Especially the multiple‐layered literary stratum, commonly called “Priestly Writing”, is best explained in reference to the second temple period. (Kratz, Biblical Sources 141)

Do archaeological finds support or cast doubt on that scenario? To ask a disturbing question: Is it more likely that the biblical narratives were completely unknown until after the conquests of Alexander the Great opened the way to Greek cultural domination of the “Near East”? But Israel Finkelstein does not broach that question. His conference presentation was limited to what the archaeological evidence can tell us about Jerusalem and Yehud (the Persian province name for Judea) in the Persian time slot.

The minute-and-second markers are approximate. I have used square brackets and dots to substitute for words I could not pick up from the soundtrack of the video. The images I have added were used by Finkelstein in his slide presentation but I have taken them from other publications where possible. The video presentation is available at the University of Haifa’s Yahwism under the Achaemenid empire site – scroll down to select the Prof. Israel Finkelstein (University of Haifa) : Archaeology’s Black Hole: Jerusalem and Yehud/Judea in the Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods link.

My transcript:

23 min:40 sec

As I have already suggested, Yehud was ruled from the small temple village in Jerusalem which was located on the temple mount and which had a limited population. Still, its status as the capital of the province . . . I mean we have to admit it’s clear from the Elephantine papyrus, from the seal impressions, and seemingly also from the high level of silver in the Yehud coins which seems to be related to the role in the temple economy.

Based on the interpretation of the literary sources, the population of Persian period Yehud had been estimated to have numbered up to 150,000 souls.

24:30

More reasonable archaeology-based studies have estimated a population of the province to have been between 20 and 30,000 people. Yet the latter number, too, seems to be somewhat inflated. Scholars use too big density coefficients, that is to say people per built up hectare, to be estimates for the population of Jerusalem that is not realistic archaeologically, and too big estimates for the extension of Yehud.

I repeat, my own figures are based on scrutiny of the archaeological data per se yet limiting it to the area from north of Beth Zur to Mizpeh and from the Dead Sea to the border between the Highlands and the Shephalah.

table 1 territorial extent 1024x385 — Finkelstein, Israel. “The Territorial Extent and Demography of Yehud/Judea in the Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods.” Revue Biblique (1946-) 117, no. 1 (2010): 39–54.

As far as I can judge, and you can see on the screen, the total bit of area in Yehud is estimated around 60 hectares.

25:30

Employing a density coefficient of about 200 people to one built-up hectare the population of the entire province of Yehud in the Persian period including Jerusalem would be about 12000 people, comparable to the population of Jerusalem alone in the late Iron II [i.e. the period of the presumed biblical kingdoms of Israel and Judah before the Babylonian captivity in 586 BCE] and the late Hellenistic period.

This comes to about 15%, only, of the population of the Highlands part of Iron IIB and C Judah. These demographic estimates work against scholars who tend to belittle the scope of the catastrophe that befell Judah in 586 BC. At the same time they contradict the notion of massive waves of returnees to Yehud. They also seem to lessen the importance of the population of Yehud relative to the elite deportees in Babylonia. In the production of exilic and post-exilic biblical texts and in shaping the nature of early post-exilic Judaism.