Pilgrims and tourists can get their feet wet in the Siloam Tunnel, carved by order of King Hezekiah to bring water inside the walls of the city (2 Kings 20:20). The Western Wall Tunnel, excavated in the late 20th century, traces a first-century street from the Western Wall to the path that Jesus is traditionally thought to have walked to his crucifixion. Archaeologists are currently excavating another street that pilgrims used in Jesus’ day to go from the Pool of Siloam (John 9:7) up to the Temple Mount. 

But other parts of the city’s 5,000-year history are harder to get to—if not impossible. Practical and political problems prohibit access, even for the experts trying to do research. 

Now, however, physicists have come up with a new way to dig without digging: muography.

Muons are tiny subatomic particles that are everywhere on earth, according to physicists. They are created when cosmic rays smash into the Earth’s atmosphere, showering the surface of the planet with about 10,000 of the particles per square meter. 

In recent years, scientists have figured out how to use muon detectors to map inaccessible subterranean cavities, creating images of rooms inside Egyptian pyramids and magma chambers deep in volcanoes. Now they’re using them to map the streets Jesus once walked in ancient Jerusalem. 

Last year, a team of Tel Aviv University archaeologists and physicists shoehorned an unwieldy homemade muon detector—you can’t buy one from a store—into a rocky cavern close to the Gihon Spring in the Kidron Valley. They placed another detector behind a rocky bulwark called the Stepped Stone Structure. Then they pointed them both toward the Temple Mount and turned them on.

Here’s how they work: Muons have about 10,000 times the energy of a typical x-ray. They can easily pass through rock and earth—and anything less dense, like plants and people—but the denser the material they pass through, the quicker they lose their energy. 

When muons hit the detectors with different energy levels, an image can be created of the density of the matter through which they passed. Empty spaces are easily distinguished. And archaeologists can “see” underground.

Eventually the Tel Aviv team hopes to have 10 or more detectors near the Temple Mount, the contested holy site where traditional digging would create an impossible uproar.  

“Jerusalem would seem to me to be as good a place as you could ever have for exploring this new technology,” said John Monson, professor of Old Testament and Semitic languages at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. 

Monson grew up in Jerusalem, where his father taught at the Institute for Holyland Studies (now Jerusalem University College). 

He can tell hundreds of stories about the biblical sites he visited as a child and later as a student and professor. He loves the history of archaeology and the evolution of archaeological methods. In many cases, Monson said, new discoveries have come through the development of new tools, which open up new ways of exploring.

“When you look at Jerusalem, exploration has been pushed forward by whatever technology has been available across the generations,” he told CT. “This looks to me to be a very, very promising tool.”

At the same time, Monson acknowledges that every technology has downsides. And there are always limitations. 

That’s a caution echoed by Jodi Magness, author of the new book Jerusalem Through the Ages.

Magness, professor of early Judaism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says any kind of new technology will yield new information. But it may not be very much or very useful. 

Archaeologists are already aware they won’t work in every situation. Muon detectors need to be placed beneath the areas they are imaging, which limits where they can be used. Also, each detector costs about $100,000 to build.

The new tool has other obvious limitations. Archaeologists may be able to see an image of a cavern, but the muon detector “won’t tell you what it is, or what its date is,” Magness said. “It can be used in conjunction with other methods, but it’s not going to be a substitute for them.”

It still may, however, lead to significant new discoveries. Israeli archaeologists have been peeling back the layers of history underneath what was once the Givati Parking Lot, just outside the Temple Mount area. 

Their digging has discovered remains of palaces and other significant buildings, identified the location of the mysterious Acra fortress of the Maccabees, and revealed a previously unknown moat that defended the city, perhaps as far back as the time of David.

The opportunity to excavate such a comparatively large space in a city like Jerusalem is rare.

“Usually you’re just excavating one little part and trying to figure out what the rest is,” Magness said. “When you get the opportunity to excavate in a large area like this, you’re able to get a much bigger picture—a broader and more accurate picture.”

The muon detectors, as they’re currently deployed, are pointed toward an area next to the Givati excavation. Perhaps they will help answer some of the questions raised by the archaeologists digging in the parking lot. Perhaps they will show the length of the newly discovered moat. 

Or perhaps archaeologists will make altogether new discoveries with muon detectors.

Wherever the technology leads, though, scholars are glad to have more options. It’s good, too, to have ways to see under the surface of the city that are less invasive than traditional means of uncovering the past. 

“What we are doing in archaeology is essentially destructive when we dig,” Monson said. “Maybe muography offers … something that’s not destructive.” 

Gordon Govier writes about biblical archaeology for Christianity Today, hosts the archaeology radio program The Book and The Spade, and is the editor of Artifax. 

The post Biblical Archaeology Gets Subatomic Help appeared first on Christianity Today.

The truly important discoveries of 2023, of course, may not be known for years, as it takes time for archaeologists to carefully study the results of their research and then publish their findings in scientific journals. But these are some of the stories that generated headlines for biblical archaeology in 2023.

10. Lost graves in Gaza

Near the end of September, archaeologists in Gaza announced the discovery of graves in a Roman-era cemetery. Crews working under French archaeologist René Elter uncovered important information about the lives of inhabitants along this coastal trade route 2,000 years ago. They found two extremely rare lead coffins—one decorated with ornate grape leaves, the other with images of dolphins—suggesting social elites had been buried there.

“An inconspicuous construction lot—surrounded by a grove of nondescript apartment buildings—has become a gold mine for archaeologists,” the Associated Press reported.

Two weeks later, Hamas militants from Gaza attacked Israel, precipitating a costly war that has probably leveled those nondescript apartment buildings, displacing and perhaps killing their inhabitants. The fate of those working on the site and the site itself is currently unknown. Elter responded to a query about his safety but did not elaborate on the excavation.

The war, of course, disrupted the work of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) across Israel. Some IAA archaeologists with expertise acquired studying ancient disasters found their skills needed for a different kind of work. They were called in to Jewish communities attacked by Hamas to help discover and identify the human remains.

“It is one thing to expose 2,000-year-old destruction remains, and quite another thing—heart-rending and unfathomable—to carry out the present task searching for evidence of our sisters and brothers in the settlements,” the IAA said.

They discovered evidence that helped identify at least 10 dead people previously considered missing.

9. Ancient Israelite DNA

Almost lost in news of war was the early October announcement of the recovery of ancient Israelite DNA from the First Temple period. Genetic material was extracted from two individuals whose remains were found in a family tomb west of Jerusalem, dating to around 750–650 B.C.

The achievement was described as “a Holy Grail in the study of lost civilization” that “promises to pave the way for further research on longstanding questions about the origins of the ancient Israelites.”

The preliminary results were to be discussed at a conference on new archaeological discoveries, but the gathering was postponed due to the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

8. Earliest evidence of ancient warfare

The Bible describes wars going back to the time of Abraham in Genesis 14. Now archaeologists have uncovered evidence of armed conflict from several thousand years earlier, in the Early Chalcolithic period, about 5800–4500 B.C.

Hundreds of sling stones—smoothed into a uniform, aerodynamic shape—were uncovered at two different sites in Israel. This indicates organized preparation for battle. The size of the two prehistoric sites in Lower Galilee and the northern Sharon plain show that many people were required for war preparation.

Metal-Detecting Brits Unearth Medieval Church Artifacts

David I. Klein – Religion News Service

7. The leveling of Antioch

In 2022, Turkish archaeologists began work for the first time in the residential areas of Antakya, the site of the ancient city of Antioch, where followers of Jesus were first called Christians. The excavation raised hopes about the possibility of many new discoveries about life in Antioch. But then an earthquake struck Turkey and Syria on February 6.

Antakya was one of the most devastated cities, with more than 35,000 dead. The old part of the city, including monuments to its diverse history going back to the first century and earlier, was left in rubble. Plans for excavation are permanently on hold.

6. The disappointment of Siloam

For almost two decades, visitors to Jerusalem have been shown the steps that lined one side of the Pool of Siloam in New Testament times. The pool was a place for ritual cleansing for Jewish pilgrims before they ascended to the temple. In John 9, Jesus heals a blind man and tells him to go wash in the Pool of Siloam.

The steps were accidentally uncovered during a 2004 sewer repair. But the excavation was limited to preserve an orchard. Archaeologists and local authorities were tantalized by the possibility of finding more, though, and decided to raze the orchard for a fuller dig. Nothing was found. The steps were apparently preserved when a road was built over them, but the rest of the stones of the pool are not there. They were likely taken in ancient times for other building projects.

5. Psalm 86 found atop a desert mountain

Archaeologists hiked to Hyrcania, a fortress atop a desert mountain overlooking the Dead Sea, for a first season of excavations. The fortress was built by the Hasmoneans, then used as a prison by Herod the Great, and then as a Byzantine monastery. Amid a layer of collapsed building stones, archaeologists discovered, painted in red, a simple graffiti cross with an inscription underneath. It was a prayer quoting, in part, Psalm 86: “Jesus Christ, guard me, for I am poor and needy.”

The inscription has been dated to the sixth century A.D., judging by the epigraphic style.

4. David and Solomon regain stature

Dismissed as minor chieftains by biblical minimalists for several decades, the Israelite kings of 3,000 years ago showed remarkable resilience in 2023. A mid-year article by Hebrew University archaeologist Yosef Garfinkel reviewed excavations at five sites surrounding Jerusalem and concluded that their similar fortifications and other urban features matched the biblical description of a centralized kingdom in that timeframe.

“These cities aren’t located in the middle of nowhere,” he wrote. “It’s a pattern of urbanism with the same urban concept.”

The archaeologists, who had excavated Tel Gezer for a decade, published radiocarbon test results in November that located the construction of Gezer’s famous six-chambered gateway in the first half of the 10th century B.C. This seems to lend support to 1 Kings 9:15, which describes Solomon conscripting labor to work on Jerusalem, Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer.

“This puts David and Solomon back on the table for being involved in at least some of the monumental architecture in the area,” said Lyndelle Webster of the Austrian Archaeological Institute, the lead author of the study.

How Archaeology Affirmed the Historic Stature of a Biblical King

Gordon Govier

3. Mud brick arch mystery at Tel Shimron

An extraordinarily well-preserved mud brick arch has been carefully uncovered at the acropolis of a Canaanite city overlooking the Jezreel Valley in northern Israel. The arch leads from a vaulted corridor deep into the tel, a layered archaeological mound. Its end has not yet been uncovered.

The purpose of the arch is not yet known, though some have speculated it has cultic significance. The arch appears to have been preserved by being re-buried shortly after construction.

Shimron, little mentioned in the Bible, was largely overlooked by archaeologists until the current dig started in 2017. The city covered 48 acres at its height in the Middle Bronze period, 4,000 years ago.

2. Identifying Bethsaida on the Galilee shore

Archaeologists have been carefully digging into the remains of a Byzantine basilica near the Sea of Galilee, convinced that they are uncovering the true site of Bethsaida. Last year, they found a mosaic inscription referencing “the chief and commander of the heavenly apostles,” which suggests this ancient church may have been built to commemorate Peter. According to tradition, the Church of the Apostles was built over the house of the apostles Peter and Andrew. That find was number 6 on our list of 2022 archaeology stories.

This year the excavation receives top billing for the discovery, deep under the apse, of the remains of a first-century wall. The find adds more weight to the argument that this is the historic Bethsaida and not et-Tel, a site several miles inland.

Continued excavation could tell us more about the lives of the early apostles. John calls Bethsaida the city of Andrew and Peter. Mark, however, suggests he lived in Capernaum. Did Peter live in two different fishing villages? An excavation in the mid-20th century claimed to have unearthed Peter’s home. The site is now occupied by an ultra-modern, flying-saucer–shaped church. Perhaps clarity will come with more archaeology.

1. Jerusalem’s mysterious moat

Archaeologists were mystified by channels dug into the bedrock in the oldest part of Jerusalem. Could they have been designed for some kind of industrial liquid production? Experts ventured various guesses and even called in a CSI team from the Jerusalem Police Department to try to solve the mystery.

Then they figured out it was part of a moat dating to the ninth century. According to a report, published this fall, the moat separated the Temple Mount from the older, lower City of David area when Jerusalem was the capital of Judah, and possibly hundreds of years earlier.

"In all our reconstructions of what Jerusalem looked like back then, we just have a continuous urban landscape from the Temple Mount down to bottom of the City of David,” excavation co-director Yiftah Shalev said. “This discovery completely changes that picture."

The moat, almost 100 feet wide and at least 20 feet deep, had been seen in Kathleen Kenyon’s earlier excavations further to the east, but experts thought it was a natural feature of the landscape, not part of the architecture of the city. But Shalev and his team have concluded that the moat created a barrier between the temple, the palace, and the area where the rest of the people lived. In an earlier era, before the temple and palace were built, it may have protected the city from a northern attack.

This particular excavation, known as the Givati Parking Lot excavation, has produced many amazing discoveries since it began in 2007, including a hoard of gold coins from the Byzantine era and ceramic roof tiles dating to the Hellenistic period. Dig co-director Yiftah Shalev estimates another year of work is still to be done.

Bonus: One of the most exciting finds announced in Israel this year was not technically from the biblical period. Archaeologists entered a cave near the Dead Sea to get a better look at a previously spotted stalactite inscription. In the upper part of the cave, they spotted a shafted pilum, a spear-like weapon. On further inspection, they found a cache of well-preserved Roman swords, apparently taken from soldiers during the Bar Kokhba revolt, A.D. 130–135. The swords were still in their wooden and leather scabbards.

Gordon Govier writes about biblical archaeology for Christianity Today, hosts the radio program The Book & The Spade, and is the editor of the biblical archaeology newsmagazine ARTIFAX.

How Bible Scholars and Treasure Hunters Unearthed Modern Jerusalem

Andrew Lawler

What Evangelical Scholars Found Looking at a Tiny Piece of Papyrus

Daniel Silliman

The post Biblical Archaeology’s Top 10 Discoveries of 2023 appeared first on Christianity Today.

In archaeologists’ minds, the record is not so clear. Some experts, looking at the evidence from excavations across modern-day Israel, have argued that the Bible greatly exaggerated David’s historical significance. Some have gone so far as to suggest David was a myth, a heroic fiction, and a nationalist folk tale.

“We obviously have in David a figure built substantially of romance, legend and literary elaboration,” wrote British scholar Philip R. Davies. Danish scholar Niels Peter Lemche claimed “it is rather likely” that “the tales about him are as historical as the legends are about King Arthur.”

But after decades of debate, new discoveries are affirming David’s historic stature. The expanded evidentiary record—from monumental inscriptions to the remnants of ancient construction—supports the biblical account.

“We now have a completely different picture than we did 50 years ago,” said Michael Hasel, professor of Near Eastern studies and archaeology at Southern Adventist University, pointing to the mounting pile of archaeological evidence.

The first breakthrough came in 1993 with the discovery of the Tel Dan Stele near the Syrian border. An inscription on a stone slab, written by an Aramean king celebrating a military victory, names the defeated kingdom the “House of David.” The stele dates to about 140 years after David’s death, making David the earliest biblical person named in the archaeological record and, by the standards of the field, an established historical person.

Part of the challenge with establishing extrascriptural evidence for David is that he sits on a historical fault line.

“He’s right on the cusp of where the Bible doesn’t have a lot of external sources to affirm persons and events and the period where we do have sources,” said Kyle Keimer, adjunct professor at Jerusalem University College and coeditor of the textbook The Ancient Israelite World. The Tel Dan Stele, however, firmly placed David on the “sourced” side.

A few years after the discovery, though, a fierce academic fight broke out in Israel over whether David really had an empire. Was the kingdom, the House of David, a real political and military force? Israel Finkelstein, a highly regarded Israeli archaeologist, said No, not really. In a landmark paper, he claimed David was not a significant monarch, but maybe a kind of warrior-chief. The kingdom known as the House of David happened later—and was really only a vassal state of the Omride kingdom in northern Israel.

“Someone for whom the Bible represents the word of God views what I have to say with complete shock,” Finkelstein later told The New Yorker. “The description is of a glorious kingdom, a huge empire, authors in the king’s court, a huge army, military conquests—and then someone like me comes along and says, ‘Wait a minute. They were nothing but hillbillies.’”

It wasn’t just commitment to the Bible that prompted scholarly objections to Finkelstein’s “low chronology” argument, though. His interpretation of evidence—and claims based on lack of evidence—raised a lot of questions. He also seemed to be making broad assumptions about what a 10th-century B.C. empire would look like.

Keimer told CT the lack of monumental architecture dating to David’s rule turned out to be a straw man. It is easily knocked down by looking at what the Bible actually said about David’s kingdom, instead of using modern ideas about political power.

“The ancient world has its own cultural milieu,” Keimer said. “Allowing the text to speak for itself puts us in tune with the political and social details we have preserved there.”

In the era, monuments were only one way to express power. Kings also used relational and charismatic authority, showing their strength by getting people to obey them. Patrimonialism—the sort of power that might be exerted today by a mafia boss—doesn’t leave the same record, but that doesn’t mean it’s not powerful or not an empire.

The biblical accounts of King David don’t emphasize his construction projects. They do highlight his relationships, which are why his son Absalom mounted an almost-successful coup—by undermining his relational authority. Absalom didn’t erect a stele; he “stole the hearts of the people” (2 Sam. 15:6).

Keimer suggests that David’s kingdom might have stretched from Dan to Beersheba (24:2), while his influence could have been felt much farther away, even as far as Egypt or the Euphrates River. There would be less archaeological evidence of that kind of power.

Erez Ben-Yosef, a professor at Tel Aviv University, has recently argued that there’s an architectural bias in biblical archaeology. He suggests that many more people than previously realized still lived in tents 3,000 years ago.

“This is a society that is not building large cities,” said Dan Pioske, a theology professor at University of St. Thomas. “We have to watch our assumptions about what capital cities or kingdoms looked like.”

Archaeologists have also found more evidence from this period that Jerusalem was significant, even if it didn’t have the monumental architecture to rival other kingdoms of that era. Pioske points to the Amarna Letters, a series of communications from various Canaanite cities to an Egyptian pharaoh, which describe Jerusalem as a city of some standing.

“If you add up all of the little pieces—which you have to do because Jerusalem is an inhabited city and it’s not easy to do archaeology there—it’s actually a pretty impressive site,” he said. “We have lots of examples from antiquity where a small place has a large influence.”

Archaeologists, however, have also found some monumental architecture near the Temple Mount. The late Eilat Mazar discovered the foundation walls of a large public building, which neatly corresponds with an account of a construction project mentioned in 2 Samuel 5:17. She was able to date it conclusively to the 10th century B.C. Mazar, who died in 2021, told CT she was not religious but was an effective archaeologist because she read the Bible as a historical document.

Wanted: More Christians to Dig in Israel

Gordon Govier

“This is Jerusalem, which we know best from the Bible,” she said, which “contains within it descriptions of genuine historical reality.”

Outside of Jerusalem, archaeologists have found more evidence that points to the power and influence of the early Israelite kings. Hasel, from Southern Adventist University, excavated a site called Khirbet Qeiyafa with Israeli archaeologists Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor. Qeiyafa overlooks the Valley of Elah, where David confronted Goliath.

The archaeologists discovered massive fortifications in their excavation, with walls built of several hundred thousand tons of stone.

“This wasn’t somebody building a pen for their sheep at night,” Hasel said. “It gives us new data for the debate.”

There’s no evidence that the structure was Canaanite or Philistine, so the best explanation is that it was built by the growing Israelite political power in the Judean hills.

Hasel noted that in earlier years, arguments about David’s empire were typically based on excavations in northern Israel. Now that more sites are being excavated in the foothills between the Judean highlands and the coast, archaeologists are discovering artifacts that Finkelstein said shouldn’t exist.

Hasel believes the results from Qeiyafa and two other sites where his team has worked have solidly reestablished the traditional “high chronology” and established an archaeological record for the significance of David.

And it’s good to have him back.

“If you don’t have David, you don’t have a lot of things,” Hasel said. David is mentioned around 1,000 times in the Bible. He’s credited as the author of 73 psalms. His history is tied with Jerusalem becoming Israel’s capital and the site of the temple. And through the line of David, the Messiah is promised.

“Without David, that is all put into question,” Hasel said. “He is a very significant figure not only for Israel but for the history of Christianity and Judaism. They all draw their identity back to that one person.”

Archaeologists aren’t done, either. They may well find more extrabiblical evidence of David’s reign.

In 2017, the excavation of what appears to be a citadel in Tel Abel Beth Maacah, in northern Israel, turned up a glazed ceramic head, a “faience,” two inches tall that some think could depict King David. More scholars think it’s King Ahab or King Hazael of Aram-Damascus, but there’s no way of knowing.

“All we can say for sure about the faience head is that it was found in a late-ninth-century context and represented an elite—military commander, governor, king, et cetera,” said Robert Mullins, professor of biblical and religious studies at Azusa Pacific University, who is codirecting the excavation. “I would never rule out David as a possibility since Abel was also a large city at that time … maybe it originated in the 10th century but someone found the broken head on the ground and kept it as a souvenir.”

In 2022, a team of researchers used new technology to read a stele set up in modern-day Jordan by a Moabite king more than 800 years before Christ was born. The stone had been damaged, but these scholars were able to reconstruct the writing with a 3D rendering. It just has 34 lines, but on line 31 they saw the words House of David.

David’s political significance and the accuracy of the scriptural record were affirmed again, in testimony of stone.

Gordon Govier writes about biblical archaeology for Christianity Today, hosts the archaeology radio program The Book & The Spade, and is the editor of Artifax.

Correction: In an earlier version of this article, Niels Peter Lemche was identified as Dutch. He is Danish.

The Shepherd Boy Who Wasn’t

Jordan K. Monson

Biblical Archaeology’s Top 10 Discoveries of 2022

Gordon Govier

The post How Archaeology Affirmed the Historic Stature of a Biblical King appeared first on Christianity Today.

Para los arqueólogos, sin embargo, el registro no es tan claro. Al observar la evidencia de las excavaciones en el Israel moderno, algunos expertos han argumentado que la Biblia exageró enormemente el significado histórico de David. Algunos han sugerido incluso que David es solo un mito, una ficción heroica y un cuento popular nacionalista.

«Obviamente, en David encontramos una figura construida sustancialmente de romance, leyenda y una buena elaboración literaria», escribió el erudito británico Philip R. Davies. El erudito danés Niels Peter Lemche afirmó que «es bastante probable» que «las historias sobre él sean tan históricas como las leyendas sobre el Rey Arturo».

Pero después de décadas de debate, hay nuevos descubrimientos que están afirmando la historicidad de David. Este creciente número de evidencias, que van desde inscripciones monumentales hasta restos de construcciones antiguas, respalda con solidez el relato bíblico.

«Ahora tenemos una imagen completamente diferente a la que teníamos hace 50 años», dijo Michael Hasel, profesor de estudios y arqueología del Cercano Oriente en la Southern Adventist University, refiriéndose a la creciente pila de evidencias arqueológicas.

El primer avance se produjo en 1993 con el descubrimiento de la estela de Tel Dan cerca de la frontera con Siria. Una inscripción en una losa, escrita por un rey arameo que celebra una victoria militar, nombra al reino derrotado como la «casa de David». La estela data de unos 140 años después de la muerte de David, lo que convierte a David en el primer personaje bíblico nombrado en el registro arqueológico y, según los estándares del campo, en una persona histórica establecida.

Parte del desafío de establecer evidencia para David fuera del recuento bíblico es que él se ubica en una línea de falla histórica.

«Está justo en el punto de transición entre el periodo en que la Biblia no tiene muchas fuentes externas para confirmar eventos y personas, y el período en el que sí tenemos fuentes», dijo Kyle Keimer, profesor adjunto en Jerusalem University College y coeditor del libro de texto The Ancient Israelite World. La estela de Tel Dan, sin embargo, colocó firmemente a David del lado para el que sí hay fuentes.

Sin embargo, unos años después del descubrimiento, estalló una feroz lucha académica en Israel sobre si David realmente tuvo un imperio. ¿Era el reino, la casa de David, una verdadera fuerza política y militar? Israel Finkelstein, un arqueólogo israelí de gran prestigio, dijo: «No, en realidad no». En un artículo emblemático, afirmó que David no era un monarca importante, sino tal vez una especie de jefe guerrero. Según Finkelstein, el reino conocido como la casa de David fue establecido más tarde, y en realidad era solo un estado vasallo de la casa de Omri en el norte de Israel.

«Alguien para quien la Biblia representa la palabra de Dios ve lo que digo con total sorpresa», dijo Finkelstein más tarde a The New Yorker. «La descripción habla de un reino glorioso, un gran imperio, autores en la corte del rey, un gran ejército, conquistas militares, y luego aparece alguien como yo y dice: “Espera un momento. No eran más que unos pueblerinos”».

Sin embargo, no fue solo la fe lo que provocó que otros eruditos objetaran el argumento de la «baja cronología» de Finkelstein. Su interpretación de las evidencias y las afirmaciones basadas en la falta de pruebas generaron muchas preguntas. También parecía estar haciendo suposiciones muy amplias sobre cómo sería un imperio en el siglo X a. C.

WikiMedia Commons

Keimer le dijo a CT que el argumento en torno a la falta de arquitectura monumental que date del gobierno de David resultó ser una proposición tergiversada intencionalmente, la cual es fácilmente derribada al mirar lo que la Biblia realmente dice sobre el reino de David, en vez de usar ideas modernas sobre el poder político.

«El mundo antiguo tiene su propio entorno cultural», dijo Keimer. «Permitir que el texto hable por sí mismo nos pone en sintonía con los detalles políticos y sociales que hemos preservado allí».

En esa época, los monumentos eran solo una forma de expresar el poder. Los reyes también usaban la autoridad carismática y relacional, mostrando su fuerza al hacer que las personas los obedecieran. El patrimonialismo, es decir, el modelo en el que todo el poder fluye directamente del líder, no deja el mismo registro de evidencias; sin embargo, eso no significa que no sea poderoso o que no sea un imperio.

Los relatos bíblicos del rey David no enfatizan sus proyectos de construcción; resaltan más bien sus relaciones, razón por la cual su hijo Absalón montó una rebelión casi exitosa cuando buscó socavar la autoridad relacional de su padre. Absalón no erigió una estela; él «fue ganándose el cariño del pueblo» (2 Samuel 15:6).

Keimer sugiere que el reino de David podría haberse extendido desde Dan hasta Beerseba (24:2), mientras que su influencia podría haberse extendido mucho más lejos, incluso hasta Egipto o el río Éufrates, donde habría menos evidencia arqueológica de ese tipo de poder.

Erez Ben-Yosef, profesor de la Universidad de Tel Aviv, ha argumentado recientemente que existe un sesgo arquitectónico en la arqueología bíblica. Sugiere que muchas más personas de las que se pensaba anteriormente todavía vivían en tiendas de campaña hace 3000 años.

«Esta era una sociedad que no estaba construyendo grandes ciudades», dijo Dan Pioske, profesor de teología en la Universidad de St. Thomas. «Tenemos que vigilar nuestras suposiciones sobre cómo se veían las capitales o los reinos».

Los arqueólogos también han encontrado más evidencia del periodo en el que Jerusalén fue importante, incluso si no tenía la arquitectura monumental para competir con otros reinos de esa época. Pioske señala las Cartas de Amarna, una serie de comunicaciones de varias ciudades cananeas a un faraón egipcio, que describen a Jerusalén como una ciudad de cierto prestigio.

«Si sumas todas las pequeñas piezas —algo que tienes que hacer ya que Jerusalén es una ciudad habitada actualmente y no es fácil hacer arqueología allí—, en realidad es un sitio bastante impresionante», dijo. «Tenemos muchos ejemplos de la antigüedad donde un lugar pequeño tuvo una gran influencia».

Sin embargo, los arqueólogos también han encontrado algo de arquitectura monumental cerca del Monte del Templo. La difunta Eilat Mazar descubrió los cimientos de un gran edificio público, lo que corresponde claramente con el relato de un proyecto de construcción mencionado en 2 Samuel 5:17. Ella lo pudo fechar en el siglo X a. C. de forma concluyente. Mazar, quien murió en 2021, le dijo a CT que no era religiosa, pero que era una arqueóloga eficaz porque leía la Biblia como un documento histórico.

«Esta es Jerusalén, misma a la que conocemos mejor por la Biblia», dijo, «y contiene en su interior descripciones de una realidad histórica genuina».

Fuera de Jerusalén, los arqueólogos han encontrado más pruebas que apuntan al poder y la influencia de los primeros reyes israelitas. Hasel, de Southern Adventist University, excavó un sitio llamado Khirbet Qeiyafa con los arqueólogos israelíes Yosef Garfinkel y Saar Ganor. Qeiyafa domina el Valle de Elah, donde David se enfrentó a Goliat.

Los arqueólogos descubrieron fortificaciones masivas en su excavación, con muros construidos con varios cientos de miles de toneladas de piedra.

«No se trataba de alguien que estaba construyendo un corral para sus ovejas por la noche», dijo Hasel. «Esto nos da nueva información para el debate».

No hay evidencia de que dicha estructura fuera cananea o filistea, así que la mejor explicación es que fue construida por el creciente poder político israelita en las colinas de Judea.

Hasel señaló que en años anteriores, los argumentos sobre el imperio de David generalmente se basaban en excavaciones en el norte de Israel. Ahora que se están excavando más sitios en las faldas de las montañas entre las tierras altas de Judea y la costa, los arqueólogos están descubriendo artefactos cuya existencia Finkelstein había negado.

Hasel cree que los resultados de Qeiyafa y otros dos sitios donde su equipo ha trabajado han restablecido sólidamente la «alta cronología» tradicional, y constituyen un registro arqueológico de la importancia histórica de David.

Y es bueno que así sea.

«Si no tienes a David, no tienes muchas cosas», dijo Hasel. David se menciona alrededor de 1000 veces en la Biblia. Se le acredita como el autor de 73 salmos. Su historia está ligada al hecho de que Jerusalén se convirtió en la capital de Israel y en la sede del templo. Y Dios prometió al Mesías a través de la línea de David.

«Sin David, todo eso está en duda», dijo Hasel. «Es una figura muy significativa no solo para Israel sino para la historia del cristianismo y el judaísmo. Todas estas entidades remontan su identidad de vuelta a esa persona».

Los arqueólogos no han terminado aún. Es probable que encuentren más evidencia extrabíblica del reinado de David.

En 2017, la excavación de lo que parece ser una ciudadela en Tel Abel Beth Maacah, al norte de Israel, arrojó una cabeza de cerámica vidriada, una «fayenza» de dos pulgadas de alto que algunos creen que podría representar al rey David. Otros eruditos piensan que es el rey Acab o el rey Jazael de Aram-Damasco, pero no hay forma de saberlo.

Associated Press

«Todo lo que podemos decir con seguridad sobre la cabeza de fayenza es que se encontró en un contexto de finales del siglo IX [a. C.] y representaba a un personaje de élite: un comandante militar, gobernador, rey, etcétera», dijo Robert Mullins, profesor de estudios bíblicos y religiosos en la Universidad Azusa Pacific, quien codirige la excavación. «Nunca descartaría a David como una posibilidad, ya que Abel también era una gran ciudad en ese momento… tal vez se originó en el siglo X [a. C.], pero alguien encontró la cabeza rota en el suelo y la guardó como recuerdo».

En 2022, un equipo de investigadores usó nuevas tecnologías para leer una estela instalada en la actual Jordania por un rey moabita más de 800 años antes del nacimiento de Cristo. La piedra había sido dañada, pero estos eruditos pudieron reconstruir la escritura con una resultado 3D. Solo tiene 34 líneas, pero en la línea 31 vieron las palabras casa de David.

La importancia política de David y la precisión del registro de las Escrituras fueron afirmadas nuevamente, en un testimonio de piedra.

Gordon Govier escribe sobre arqueología bíblica para Christianity Today, presenta el programa de radio de arqueología The Book & The Spade y es el editor de Artifax.

Traducción por Sergio Salazar.

Edición en español por Livia Giselle Seidel.

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The post Cómo la arqueología afirmó la importancia histórica de David appeared first on Christianity Today en español | Cristianismo hoy.

Israel’s Tourism Ministry has launched a new initiative aimed at getting Christian tourists involved in excavations. And a group affiliated with the American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR), the largest organization for professional American archaeologists working in Israel, is starting a 13-day tour with visits to 27 sites.

American archaeologists working in Israel welcome the new programs. Encouraging “archaeotourism” is good for archaeology—boosting the local economy, cultivating interested in the ongoing academic work, and supplying archaeologists with a steady flow of volunteers.

“We couldn’t get anything accomplished without them,” said Steve Ortiz, director of the Lanier Center for Archaeology at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee. Ortiz co-led a 10-year excavation at Tel Gezer, and is now a codirector of the Tel Burna Archaeological Project.

Getting tourists involved in archaeology isn’t a new idea. Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin sought out and recruited volunteers for the excavation of the famous site of Masada in the 1960s. Ever since, a stream of people have paid their own way to the Holy Land to dig, haul, and sift dirt, spending part of a vacation contributing to the grunt work of scholarship and the chance to touch a little bit of biblical history.

Every year, until travel was halted for COVID-19, hundreds of tourists visited archaeological sites in Israel. Archaeotourism is also promoted in neighboring Jordan and Turkey.

Cynthia Shafer-Elliott, a religion professor at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, first went to Israel as part of a college class. The class connected students to a program called Dig for a Day, which promises “authentic archaeology adventures.” For Shafer-Elliott, it sparked a passion that became a career.

Now she leads Israel tours in the summer that go to archaeological sites such as Abel Beth Maacah in northern Israel. Some in her groups are students getting class credit for digging. Others are people passionate about archaeology. Some are just curious about the physical remnants of biblical history.

“Most digs, I think, are happy to have volunteers from any kind of background,” Shafer-Elliot said.

John DeLancey, of Pittsburgh-based Biblical Israel Ministries and Tours, has been leading Israel tours with an archaeological component for years. (Disclosure: The author has co-led three archaeology-focused tours with DeLancey.) Recently, DeLancey took three volunteers to Tel Dan, in northern Israel, where they spent a week helping with the excavation.

DeLancey brings years of experience, but the volunteers were newer to the process of careful digging. All were welcome on the site.

“We enjoyed having them as part of the dig,” said Jonathan Greer, visiting professor of archaeology at Grand Valley State University in Michigan and codirector of the excavation. “They worked hard.”

Some of DeLancey’s tours also give people hands-on experience at the Temple Mount Sifting Project in Jerusalem. The project has relied on tens of thousands of volunteers since it began in 2004, including schoolchildren, who sift through dirt removed from the Temple Mount. Most work for an hour or two—enough time to get a feel for it and sometimes make important discoveries.

“People come in, they have a short training session, [and] they have supervisors watching them, so they're able to participate and contribute to the project," said Ortiz, at Lipscomb.

Not all of Ortiz’s experiences with volunteers at excavations have been positive, however. Sometimes, people don’t take the experience seriously.

“That doesn’t help archaeological research,” he said. “Normally, we put them in areas where they’re not going to do damage. But we’re still for it, because people have a great time.”

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There are also occasional conflicts between volunteers and archaeologists. Some of the Christians who show up to help have a narrow view of archaeology and are only interested in a dig if they think it confirms a particular view of the Bible.

Greer, at Grand Valley State, says he has had to push Christians to embrace a broader view of what we learn from archaeology. It’s too simple to say excavations always just confirm Scripture.

“Archaeology illuminates the world of the Bible,” he said. “Archaeology oftentimes clarifies or complements our understanding of the Bible. But there are other times it complicates our understanding of the Bible…. We don’t have to have this narrow view.”

There can also be political issues, as tourists find themselves interacting with Israelis and Palestinians who have different views of the disputes that have roiled the region for generations. For Christians, though, the experience of interacting with the people who live around biblical archaeology can be very rewarding, Greer said. The ASOR initiative, he noted, included a wide variety of viewpoints among its participants, and included visits to Jewish, Christian, and Muslim sites.

Despite the occasional conflicts, most archaeologists are happy to have more volunteers. Over the years, they’ve even come to admire these tourists who give part of their vacation to an excavation.

“A lot of these tourists are lifetime learners,” said Shafer-Elliott. “They want to learn how this all interacts with the Bible, with history, with archaeology. I think it's an untapped market, and I think it's a great idea.”

Gordon Govier is editor of Artifax, a quarterly biblical archaeology newsmagazine, and hosts a weekly biblical archaeology podcast The Book & The Spade.

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The post Wanted: More Christians to Dig in Israel appeared first on Christianity Today.

Here are 10 of the most important archaeological finds that made news this year:

10. A papyrus in Montana

A scrap of papyrus framed and hung on the wall of a home in Montana was identified as one of a handful of Hebrew texts older than the Dead Sea Scrolls. The text is a little larger than a postage stamp, with four short lines of ancient Hebrew, including the name Ishmael. The unnamed owner said his mother was given the papyrus when she visited Israel in 1965. Israeli authorities believe it dates to around 700 B.C.

The owner agreed to donate the historic object to the Israel Antiquities Authority, so that it can be properly preserved and studied. Experts do not know where the papyrus came from originally, but they do think it’s genuine. Radiocarbon tests matched the paleographic dating of the writing style. Ishmael was a common biblical name going back to the time of Abraham.

9. Farm life in Galilee

Rural life in Galilee came into sharper focus when work on a water project uncovered remains of a farmstead. The farm was abandoned for unknown reasons about a century and a half before Jesus’ lifetime. The workers left behind implements and equipment, including pieces of a loom and large storage vessels, giving scholars insight into the average day at the time the Hasmonean kingdom, during the Hellenistic period, was expanding north from Jerusalem.

The dig director called the discovery “a time capsule, frozen in time.”

8. A Tel Aviv tomb

An accidentally opened tomb south of Tel Aviv revealed treasures that had been sealed away for 3,300 years. A digging machine fell through the roof of the tomb of an unknown Canaanite. When archaeologists entered, they realized they were looking at a burial chamber dating to 1300 B.C. A video of the entry records them saying, “Wow, wow,” over and over.

Because the tomb was never disturbed and the items buried with the important person are still intact, archaeologists believe they will be able to learn a great deal from the excavation of the Palmahim Beach Tomb, which is now being planned. They immediately identified numerous pots from as far away as Cyprus, indicating a lively trading network around the time the Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt, or perhaps 100–150 years after.

7. A monument to Hezekiah

Hezekiah is back in the news after the king of Judah’s name has been confirmed in an inscription excavated near Jerusalem’s Gihon Spring. Haifa University professor Gershon Galil has concluded that a piece of limestone, dug up in 2007, is the first known monumental inscription celebrating a great achievement in ancient Israel or Judea. These were very common in other ancient cultures but did not appear to exist in Israel or Judea. According to Galil, however, there is now evidence they did.

He has deciphered the partial text as saying, “Hezekiah made pools in Jerusalem,” which echoes the phrase in 2 Kings 20:20, “He made the pool and the tunnel by which he brought water into the city.” According to the biblical account, the pool was one of Hezekiah’s great works, created to defend Jerusalem against potential sieges.

6. Peter’s home

A prayer to the apostle Peter adds evidence that el-Araj is the true location of the New Testament town of Bethsaida. A mosaic at a Byzantine church uncovered near the shore of the Sea of Galilee includes a petition to “the chief and commander of the heavenly apostles,” a phrase commonly used by Christians of that time to refer to Peter.

Archaeologists believe the inscription comes from the Church of the Apostles, which according to tradition was built at the historic home of Peter and Andrew. If so, that’s strong evidence that the site they’re excavating, el-Araj, is Bethsaida, the biblical hometown of Peter and Andrew. Some experts think another excavated site, nearby but farther from the Sea of Galilee shore, is Bethsaida.

5. Magnetic dating

Scholars have discovered a new way of dating the destruction left by military conquests, giving them another tool to use alongside carbon dating, ceramic chronology, and epigraphy. In a joint Tel Aviv University-Hebrew University study, more than 20 researchers from different countries and disciplines were able to accurately date 20 destruction layers by reconstructing the direction and/or intensity of the earth’s magnetic field left in the burnt remnants of 17 archaeological sites.

They were able to identify the destruction date of the Philistine city of Gath and several other cities by Hazael, king of Damascus, around 830 B.C. They subsequently discovered that the destruction of Beth-shean and two other sites in northern Israel, which had been associated with Hazael, actually occurred 70–100 years earlier, possibly at the hands of the Egyptian Pharaoh Shoshenq.

“I think that it’s going to become part of the toolbox of archaeologists here in Israel,” the lead researcher said.

4. Reading Elamite

Scholars have cracked the code of an ancient language and say they will now be able to decipher Linear Elamite. A team of academics used a bilingual inscription naming several ancient Mesopotamian rulers, written in Linear Elamite and Akkadian cuneiform 4,000 years ago, to figure out more than 90 percent of the Elamite symbols.

The writing system is believed to be a little younger than cuneiform, and about 40 known texts in Linear Elamite exist today, all found in what is now Iran. While cuneiform was deciphered in the 19th century, Linear Elamite had remained unreadable.

The Elamites are mentioned a few times in the Bible. They were conquered by Cyrus the Great and became part of the Persian empire. The story of Esther takes place in a Persian palace at the Elamite capital of Susa. “Elamites” are also mentioned in Acts 2, when the Holy Spirit empowered the apostles to proclaim the gospel in other tongues.

3. Ivory fragments

Ivory was more precious than gold in ancient times, but many tiny pieces have been found in the ongoing excavation of a parking lot just outside the Temple Mount area of Jerusalem. These fragments—discovered over a period of several years—are the first bits of ivory ever found in excavations of the city. Through careful cleaning and restoration, archaeologists have determined the ivory was used in furniture inlays, decorated with rosettes, flowers, and geometric patterns.

The ivory was found in the ruins of a large building that was devastated by fire, probably in the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. It could have come from Solomon’s throne, which is described in 1 Kings 10:18, or the bed that the prophet Amos condemned in Amos 6:4.

2. Curses on Mount Ebal

Archaeologists missed a tiny lead tablet when they excavated a site on Mount Ebal 40 years ago, but it was found during the wet sifting process in the reexcavation of a dump pile. And folded inside the tablet was a message that scholars say they have been able to reveal with a CAT scan.

According to Scott Stripling, the head of the team from Associates for Biblical Research, the tablet has Hebrew writing that reads, “Cursed, cursed, cursed—cursed by the God YHW. You will be cursed. Cursed you will surely die. Cursed by YHW—cursed, cursed, cursed.” The two uses of the divine name and the chiastic structure are remarkable, and the text could also be the oldest existing example of Hebrew writing by several hundred years. The curse tablet appears to date from 1200 to 1400 B.C., which would link it roughly to the time that Joshua built an altar on Mount Ebal and pronounced a curse on those who turn from God and worship idols (Josh. 8:30).

The interpretation of the text and identification of the artifact is disputed. Images of the inscription have not yet been peer reviewed.

1. A first sentence

Dafna Gazit/ Israel Antiquities Authority

An inscription on a tiny ivory comb excavated at Tel Lachish in southern Israel tops our list for 2022. The comb was dug up in 2016 but it wasn’t until earlier this year that one of the excavation team members, Madeleine Mumcuoglu, noticed scratches that turned out to be words. She sent a photo to an epigrapher, who determined the marks not only were words, but they formed a complete sentence.

The inscription is Canaanite—the first alphabetic language—and it’s the earliest complete sentence that has been found written in the language. Based on the shape of the letters, it was written around 1700 B.C., about 100 years after alphabetic writing developed first developed. The comb had big teeth on one side and smaller teeth on the other side—an early example of the kind of lice comb that can still be purchased today. The sentence says, “May this tusk root out the lice of the hai[r and the] beard.”

Archaeologist Michael Hasel, who co-directed the excavation at Tel Lachish where one of his students found the comb, told CT that the discovery provides new evidence for the development of the alphabet.. “Prior to this time everything was written in either hieroglyphics in Egypt or in the cuneiform script by various languages in Mesopotamia,” he said, “so to have this complete sentence found at this early stage is quite remarkable."

Writing on a common object also suggests that literacy in 1700 B.C.—centuries before the time of Moses—was not uncommon in the biblical world. The Canaanite alphabet was used to write the first books of the Bible in Hebrew.

Gordon Govier writes about biblical archaeology for Christianity Today, hosts the archaeology radio program The Book & The Spade, and is the editor of Artifax.

The post Biblical Archaeology’s Top 10 Discoveries of 2022 appeared first on Christianity Today.

The huge 100-acre city located at what is today called Tall el-Hammam east of the Jordan River was destroyed, along with a dozen other smaller cities and multiple small villages. They were abandoned and uninhabited for hundreds of years.

The highly technical report—published this week in Scientific Reports, an online peer-reviewed journal, and already accessed more than 100,000 times—noted in conclusion the similarity to the biblical account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah: “There are no known ancient writings or books of the Bible, other than Genesis, that describe what could be construed as the destruction of a city by an airburst/impact event.”

However, amid the wave of headlines, the unofficial peer reviews on social media from a number of archaeologists with varying degrees of familiarity with the Tall el-Hammam excavation were highly skeptical. As Christianity Today reported seven years ago, few archaeologists outside of those working on the excavation team believe that Tall el-Hammam is Sodom.

“In my opinion, this is an example of evidence being marshaled to support the identification of the site as Sodom, as opposed to letting the site speak for itself and then—if the evidence supports it—put forth a proposal of it as Sodom," archaeologist Robert Mullins told CT. Chair of the Department of Biblical Studies at Azusa Pacific University, he currently codirects the excavation at Abel Beth Maacah, a site in northern Israel. He is also listed on the Tall el-Hammam excavation website as a ceramic consultant.

Mullins, along with other evangelical archaeologists and Bible scholars, cite chronology as a major issue with the Sodom identification. The Bible’s internal chronology places Abraham and the events in his life, including the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, three to four centuries earlier. At 1650 BC, the Israelites were in Egypt, with the Exodus still 200 years in the future.

Pottery is a key tool for archaeological dating. Mullins, reviewing Tall el-Hammam pottery, saw a lot of 16th-century BC pieces, which seems to indicate the city was destroyed after the date of the airburst fireball described in the article.

Archaeologists Steve Ortiz, director of Lipscomb University’s Lanier Center of Archaeology, agreed that while Tall el-Hammam is an important site, its destruction date is too late to fit the Sodom scenario. He dismissed the fireball hoopla to CT. “[Their] destruction does not look any different than any other destruction,” he said. “We have Assyrian and Egyptian destructions at Gezer that looks just as dramatic.”

Israeli archaeologist Aren Maeir of Bar Ilan University noted a lack of citations to other studies of the archaeology of destruction and thought the destruction the report described was not that unusual. “I see some things that remind me of phenomena that we have in the Iron Age IIA (1000–925 BC) destruction at Tell es-Safi/Gath (e.g. vitrified or “melted” bricks, ultra-high temperatures, and other things)—a destruction that is most likely caused by the conquest and destruction of the site by Hazael of Aram,” he said. Hazael’s attack on Gath is reported in 2 Kings 12:17.

The archaeological disagreement over Sodom centers not only on the chronology but also on the location. Sodom is conventionally located more to the south end of the Dead Sea.

Steven Collins, the codirector of the Tall el-Hammam excavation, often quotes Genesis 13, where Abraham and Lot camped between Bethel and Ai and looked down on Sodom, which seems to favor its location north of the Dead Sea. But Mullins said Collins dismisses Genesis 18:16. “Abraham is at Mamre looking down at Sodom; one cannot see Hammam from the Hebron area,” he observed.

Whether it’s a fireball that destroys a city, a mighty wind that holds back the waves of the Red Sea, an ark that landed on a mountain after a global flood, or celestial events that herald a royal baby’s birth, there’s a tendency to look for naturalistic explanations for biblical miracles—as if that would prove the Bible to skeptics.

The scientists who wrote this report on the Jordan River Valley fireball state, “An eyewitness description of this 3600-year-old catastrophic event may have been passed down as an oral tradition that eventually became the written biblical account about the destruction of Sodom.”

If the Bible is just a collection of oral traditions that were puzzled together centuries later, perhaps the fireball would fit. But a century and a half of increasingly detailed archaeological investigation shows time and again that the historical framework of the biblical story holds up back to the time of Abraham.

“There is no question that this is an amazing site,” Mullins concluded. All of the archaeologists would agree with that. “But they are going to have to put forth more evidence that it’s Sodom.”

Gordon Govier is host of The Book and The Spade podcast and editor of ARTIFAX magazine.

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The post Sodom Destroyed by Meteor, Scientists Say. Biblical Archaeologists Not Convinced. appeared first on Christianity Today.

From the breaking archaeological news of 2021, here are the top 10 stories:

10. Herod the Great’s green thumb

King Herod—best known in the Bible for ordering the deaths of any infants who might be Jesus’ age—turns out to have had a gardening hobby. Soil samples from excavations at his Jericho palace, taken almost a half century ago, were recently analyzed, and the pollen particles revealed sophisticated horticulture.

Miniature pine, cypress, cedar, and olive trees grew in clay pots that were originally recovered by archaeologist Ehud Netzer. Many of the tree species would not typically have grown in the desert around Jericho, making the garden a demonstration of Herod’s greatness, a horticultural feat to impress guests and subjects.

9. Herod’s seaside entertainment complex

The Israel Antiquities Authority announced the rediscovery and preservation of Herod the Great’s basilica in Ashkelon. Herod was known in his time for the dramatic locations of his palaces and fortresses, and this Roman-style construction, a public building for community activities, was no exception.

The huge edifice, larger than a football field, was first excavated over a century ago but is now being reexcavated and developed to attract visitors to the Tel Ashkelon National Park. The final reconstruction will include a small ancient theater called an odeon, marble pillars and capitals, and huge marble statues of pagan deities.

8. A biblical pharaoh’s border monument

Discovered in a farmer’s field in northeastern Egypt, this inscribed monument bears the name of one of the few pharaohs actually named in the Old Testament. Hophra led an Egyptian army into Judah to help King Zedekiah resist an invasion by Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar. The ploy was only temporarily successful, and true to the prophecy in Jeremiah 44:30, the pharaoh was killed by his enemies after a disastrous foray into Libya.

The stele contains 15 lines of hieroglyphics, so far untranslated. Mostafa Waziry, secretary general of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, described it as a border stele which “the king erected during his military campaigns towards the east.” This raises the intriguing possibility that it might describe Hophra’s campaign to support Zedekiah.

7. An unknown Egyptian city

Archaeologists announced the discovery of a previously unknown city on the west bank of the Nile near Luxor. Believed to be one of the largest Egyptian cities ever unearthed, it dates to the reign of Pharaoh Amenhotep III. This pharaoh was the grandfather of Tutankhamun but, more importantly perhaps, the grandson of Amenhotep II, believed by many evangelical scholars to be the pharaoh of the Exodus.

The city appears to have been suddenly abandoned. The inhabitants may have been driven out of their homes when Amenhotep IV, better known as Akhenaten, rounded up workers to build him a completely new capital city in central Egypt. What remains today may reveal many details of daily life in Egypt around the time of Moses.

6. A crucifixion foot

The Roman practice of crucifixion is well known from ancient sources, including the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ death. But up until this month, the only archaeological evidence of crucifixion had been found in a burial cave in Israel in 1986. In early December, it was announced that a skeleton had been excavated from a grave at Fenstanton in Cambridgeshire, England. The remains had a nail driven into the back of the right foot. The burial dates to around A.D. 400, during the Roman occupation of England.

5. More Dead Sea discoveries

The Israel Antiquities Authority announced the results of a four-year excavation project in hard-to-reach caves overlooking the Dead Sea. Finds included arrowheads, coins, combs, the mummified remains of a young girl, and dozens of scraps of biblical texts. The scroll fragments, containing passages from Zechariah and Nahum, are unrelated to the texts produced by the Qumran community, known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. They nonetheless shed light on the long work of translating and transcribing Scripture.

For archaeologists, the most amazing discovery was a 10,500-year-old basket.

The basket, complete with intact lid, dates to the pre-pottery Neolithic period, making it the oldest basket in existence. It is reminiscent of the biblical baskets, such as the one that held the baby Moses in Exodus, the ones that carried the leftovers when Christ fed the multitudes in the Gospels, and the one that helped the apostle Paul escape persecution, when he was lowered over the wall of Damascus.

4. Yavne, just Yavne

The modern city of Yavne, located between Tel Aviv and Ashdod, has been a prolific site for archaeological discoveries in 2021. The city is growing quickly, and as a large tract of land is prepared for new housing construction, archaeologists are uncovering amazing artifacts.

About 1,500 years ago, Yavne was an industrial center for wine production, producing approximately a half million gallons of wine per year. Archaeologists uncovered five huge winepress production areas, each over half the size of a basketball court, along with four huge warehouses and kilns for firing wine storage jars. They also found an older winepresses from the Persian period, dated to around 300 B.C.

In the decades after the destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, Yavne became a spiritual center, the home of many rabbis and the Sanhedrin. A building identified with that period has been excavated and a beautiful large mosaic from 1,600 years ago is being restored.

Perhaps the rarest Yavne discovery was an intact chicken egg from 1,000 years ago, found in the remains of a privy.

3. A Temple Mount banquet hall

A luxurious public building located next to the Temple Mount has been excavated and opened to public tours. Part of the building was first discovered by British archaeologist Charles Warren in 1867, and the site was partially excavated in 1966. Now that the excavation is complete, archaeologists have dated its construction to A.D. 20—during the lifetime of Jesus.

The building contained two identical chambers, separated by an elaborate fountain. The luxurious nature of the facility and its adjacency to the Temple Mount indicates it was probably used by the elite members of the first-century Jewish community, the families of the high priests, and other leading religious figures.

Archaeologists say it was damaged by an earthquake in A.D. 33, then later rebuilt and reconfigured into three vaulted halls. The destruction date suggests possible evidence of the earthquake recorded in the Gospel accounts at the crucifixion of Jesus.

2. Gideon’s jug

“Jerub-baal” is the nickname given to Gideon in Judges 6:31–32 after Gideon destroyed an altar to the pagan god Baal. It means “Let Baal contend with him.” It’s also the name found written on a pottery jug fragment excavated at Khirbat er-Ra'i, a site near Tel Lachish in southern Israel.

It is unlikely the jug belonged to Gideon himself. Khirbet er-Ra'i is located about 100 miles south of the Jezreel Valley, where the Bible says Gideon took a tiny army and routed a much larger force of Midianites. The archaeologists excavating at Khirbat er-Ra'i dated the stratum where the pottery was found to 1100 B.C., the period of the judges, but likely about a century after Gideon, based on the internal chronology of the Bible.

There is little archaeological record of this period, though, so the discovery linking a biblical name to the era is notable.

Archaeologists also say the discovery provides evidence for the spread of the alphabetic writing first developed by Canaanites living in Egypt around 1800 B.C. Nearby Lachish, where a few other Late Bronze Age Canaanite alphabetic inscriptions have been found, may have been a center for the preservation of alphabetic writing. The discovery of an alphabetic inscription at Lachish, dated to the 15th century B.C., was also announced in 2021.

The level of literacy in the Old Testament is still a matter of debate among scholars. Interestingly, the story of Gideon references a young man who “wrote down the names of the 77 elders of Sukkoth”(Judges 8:14).

1. A second synagogue in Magdala

The University of Haifa announced the discovery of another first-century synagogue at Magdala in late December, located on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee. The first Magdala synagogue, discovered a dozen years ago, was notable because it was in use before the destruction of Jerusalem, when worship was still centered at the temple. Now there are two.

Only a handful of first-century synagogues have been excavated in Israel. Of those, these are the ones most likely visited by Jesus during his ministry (Matt. 4:23) because of their location near the Nazareth-to-Capernaum road and their association with the hometown of Mary Magdalene.

This second synagogue, located less than 200 yards from the first, was discovered while preparing for a road-widening project. It “is now changing our understanding of Jewish life in this period,” according to the Israel Antiquities Authority. Many scholars had thought synagogues flourished and took on a more religious function only after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. This new evidence seems to indicate that synagogues, which were more like community centers in their early days, included more religious activities.

Bonus: Philistine bananas

We know that King Solomon fed his guests beef, lamb, venison, and poultry, in addition to bread, cakes, dates, and other delicacies. But … bananas?

The amount of water needed to grow bananas makes them an unlikely fruit in ancient Israel, but a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported some unexpected remains were scraped off the teeth of Canaanites and Philistines who died in the late second millennia B.C., the period of Solomon’s reign. Teeth don’t lie: They ate bananas.

The dietary evidence indicates “a dynamic and complex exchange network connecting the Mediterranean with South Asia,” according to the report. Christina Warinner, a Harvard anthropologist and one of the lead investigators, said the imported fruit may have been dried, like modern-day banana chips.

Gordon Govier is the editor Artifax, a quarterly biblical archaeology newsmagazine, and host of the podcast The Book & The Spade.

Read the rest of CT’s 2021 Top 10 lists, including US news, international news, obituaries, testimonies, book reviews, podcasts, translations in eight languages, and more.

The post Biblical Archaeology’s Top 10 Discoveries of 2021 appeared first on Christianity Today.

Me senté en un banco y levanté la vista hacia las paredes de piedra. Según el relato bíblico, Jeremías comenzó a hundirse en el barro.

Aunque quizá no fue en este lugar. ¿Quién podría asegurar que esta era la cisterna, misma que se había desenterrado en 1998, y no otra que no se había encontrado aún? O quizá nunca se encontraría. Podía imaginar al profeta atrapado en aquel lugar exacto, preguntándose si Dios lo rescataría, pero, sin encontrar «Jeremías» escrito en la pared, nadie podía asegurarlo.

Desde la época en la que yo estuve allí se han planteado varias preguntas acerca de esa cisterna, arrojando dudas sobre su papel en el drama de Jeremías. Sin embargo, no es un yacimiento que la gente visite estos días.

La arqueología puede acercarte muchísimo al mundo bíblico y, aun así, hacerte desear que ojalá alguien hubiera dejado una firma.

Pero cuando la gente sí encuentra firmas, es algo importante. En los últimos años, de hecho, los arqueólogos han venido encontrando impresos muchos sellos de arcilla que los antiguos israelitas utilizaban para asegurar el nudo de la cuerda que ataba un rollo.

En 2005, la arqueóloga israelí Eliat Mazar [enlaces en inglés] dirigió una excavación en la parte más antigua de Jerusalén. Su equipo encontró un sello impreso, y en ese sello de arcilla había un nombre: Jucal, el hijo de Selemías, uno de los hombres que arrojó a Jeremías a la cisterna.

Tres años después, Mazar anunció el descubrimiento de otro «bulla», como se llaman los sellos. Este también tenía un nombre: Gedalías (Guedalías), hijo de Pasur, otro de los oficiales de la historia de Jeremías 38.

Los dos villanos bíblicos parecieron volver a la vida con estos descubrimientos. Ellos habían tocado estos sellos, dejando sus nombres como evidencia física para ser descubiertos miles de años más tarde.

«Nada es más emocionante en una excavación que el descubrimiento de un sello o bulla», dice Scott Stripling, director del Instituto Arqueológico en el Seminario Bíblico de Katy, Texas. «A menudo hay huellas dactilares parciales o completas, lo que nos recuerda la conexión humana. Estas eran personas reales».

Los sellos de arcilla son difíciles de encontrar, pero se han vuelto más frecuentes desde 2005. Son pequeños, a menudo solo del tamaño de la yema del dedo. Y están hechos de arcilla, básicamente el mismo material que los arqueólogos están excavando, lo que los hace muy difíciles de distinguir. En los archivos de la revista de arqueología bíblica que yo edito, Artifax, he encontrado muy pocas menciones de los bullae desde principios de los 1990 hasta 2005.

Desde entonces, sin embargo, ha habido tantos descubrimientos de sellos de arcilla impresos que las noticias se han vuelto bastante comunes. Y algunos de los descubrimientos son tan destacables —incluyendo uno con el nombre del rey Ezequías y otro que puede que perteneciera al profeta Isaías— que a menudo conforman mi lista anual de los diez mejores descubrimientos [enlaces en inglés] en arqueología bíblica para Christianity Today.

El cambio se puede remontar hasta el inicio del desarrollo de la técnica arqueológica del cribado con agua.

Innovación en el valle de Cedrón

Comenzó con nueve mil toneladas de tierra arrojadas sin ningún cuidado en el valle de Cedrón. En 1999 las autoridades musulmanas a cargo del Monte del Templo de Jerusalén decidieron construir una tercera mezquita en el lugar sagrado de los «establos de Salomón» bajo tierra. Excavaron una entrada y retiraron una enorme cantidad de tierra sin supervisión arqueológica.

Las evidencias históricas que se podrían recuperar de ese espacio son de interés vital para los eruditos, así como para muchos cristianos y judíos. Sin embargo, en Israel, donde los reclamos ancestrales se contienden de manera agresiva, la arqueología también tiene un matiz político.

Los eruditos quedaron estupefactos por la escala de este delito contra la arqueología. Algunos, sin embargo, también se dieron cuenta de que era una oportunidad única. Podían mirar dentro de cuatrocientos camiones de tierra. Esto podría suponer una oportunidad de obtener una visión muy poco común del Monte del Templo a una distancia segura de la política incendiaria.

«Se ha perdido el noventa por ciento de su valor científico», dijo el arqueólogo israelí Gabriel Barkay a sus colegas. «Nos queda el diez por ciento. Pero eso es mucho más que el cero por ciento».

En 2004, Barkay y el arqueólogo Zachi Dvira comenzaron el Proyecto de Cribado del Monte del Templo (TMSP, por sus siglas en inglés), para usar la técnica del cribado con agua y ver lo que quedaba entre la tierra.

El proceso funciona así: se vuelca un cubo de tierra en una malla rodeada de un marco de madera que se sostiene a la altura la cintura. Un voluntario toma una manguera y rocía agua, obligando a la tierra a atravesar la malla y dejando pequeños objetos sobre la malla: cerámica, huesos, monedas y otros trozos de metal, cristal, teselas de mosaico y bullae.

«Se nos ocurrió la idea durante los primeros días», contó Dvira a CT, «puesto que era muy difícil diferenciar entre piedras naturales y fragmentos de cerámica. Esto se debe a que el terreno está lleno de polvo… que recubre los objetos».

Dvira y su equipo pronto desarrollaron un método que podían enseñar a los voluntarios. Durante los siguientes diecisiete años, más de 170.000 voluntarios arrojaron cubo tras cubo de material del Monte del Templo en los coladores, se deshacían de la tierra con agua y observaban todo lo que quedaba.

Imagen cortesía de Eilat Mazar.

Encontraron miles de artefactos originarios de la Edad de Piedra en adelante. Se han recuperado más de seis mil monedas judías, islámicas, romanas y medievales.

También hubo otro importante descubrimiento: un sello de tres mil años de antigüedad del rey Salomón. Los expertos dicen que puede cambiar las teorías de los minimalistas arqueológicos que aseguran que las Escrituras exageran la edad y la importancia del templo de Jerusalén.

«Por esto es por lo que la arqueología es tan fascinante», me contó Mazar una década antes de su muerte en mayo. «Está escrito en la Biblia, y después encontramos estos sellos impresos. Demuestra que esta historia bíblica es muy exacta».

Mazar estaba impresionada por el potencial del cribado con agua y comenzó a mandar tierra de las excavaciones que ella supervisaba al TMSP. Ahí fue donde, en 2004, los voluntarios descubrieron los bullae con los nombres de los oficiales que trataron de matar a Jeremías.

«Los sellos y los bullae han probado en repetidas ocasiones ser un tipo de evidencias muy importante fuera de la Biblia», escribió Larry Mykytiuk, profesor emérito de la Universidad de Purdue, cuya investigación se centra en la historicidad de las Escrituras, en un correo electrónico para CT. «Son extremadamente valiosos porque confirman la existencia y la posición oficial de reyes, sumos sacerdotes y oficiales reales que se mencionan en la Biblia hebrea o el Antiguo Testamento, y los títulos de algunos sellos y bullae muestran que estaban en el cargo que la Biblia dice que tenían».

Los no entendidos a menudo no se dan cuenta de que los textos escritos que han sobrevivido desde tiempos bíblicos son muy escasos. Las Escrituras se preservaron a través de la duplicación, pero subsisten muy pocas de las copias más antiguas de los libros de la ley, los profetas, la poesía y la historia. Comparado con los cientos de papiros jeroglíficos egipcios y las miles de tablas cuneiformes mesopotámicas excavadas en los dos últimos siglos, el corpus de textos judíos antiguos es minúsculo.

«Los sellos y las impresiones son la parte más grande de los objetos con inscripción que hemos descubierto», dice Robert Deutsch, experto y comerciante que ha publicado información sobre numerosos bullae en revistas académicas.

Deutsch ha sido criticado por los arqueólogos por comprar y vender sellos en el mercado de antigüedades. El comercio crea incentivos para los saqueadores y sirve para encubrir a los falsificadores.

Deutsch responde que ignorar todos los objetos que hay en colecciones privadas significa condenarlos a la no existencia. Él defiende que los arqueólogos se benefician de saber acerca de ellos, aunque tengan una historia dudosa.

En 1997, por ejemplo, él publicó información en una revista académica acerca de un sello que llevaba la impresión del rey Ezequías. No se sabía la procedencia y podía tratarse de una falsificación. Pero en 2015 Mazar descubrió un bulla idéntico en Jerusalén. El descubrimiento ya era importante en sí mismo, pero el bulla de la colección privada le añadía contexto.

Hay tan pocos ejemplos de hebreo antiguo, dice él, que todos ellos deben considerarse importantes.

Todavía no es una práctica estandarizada

A pesar del obvio valor del cribado con agua, su uso no se ha convertido en práctica común en los yacimientos de excavación en Israel.

Stripling, que trabajó como supervisor del TMSP en 2008 y 2009 y dirige excavaciones en Khirbet el-Maqatir y Tel Shiloh, piensa que la Autoridad de Antigüedades de Israel debería hacer obligatorio el cribado con agua. Le preocupa lo que los arqueólogos están perdiendo cuando no hacen el cribado con agua en la tierra. En Tel Shiloh hizo que los voluntarios revisaran una pila de tierra que había quedado tras una excavación realizada en la década de 1980. Ahí encontraron cinco amuletos con forma de escarabajo de Egipto.

Hicieron lo mismo en una antigua excavación en el monte Ebal. Stripling encontró una hoja de cuchillo de bronce y una tabla que se podía haber usado para una maldición ceremonial. Se dio cuenta que el monte Ebal se describe como una montaña de maldición en Deuteronomio 27.

«Las pilas de tierra de las excavaciones pasadas contienen una tremenda cantidad de material. Estos son la clase de descubrimientos que se desechan en la mayoría de las excavaciones porque no realizan un cribado con agua», dijo en 2020 durante una presentación en la reunión de la Sociedad Arqueológica de Oriente Próximo.

«El cribado con agua tiene el potencial de revolucionar lo que estamos descubriendo en los yacimientos arqueológicos».

Imagen cortesía de Gordon Govier.

Otros arqueólogos que trabajan en excavaciones en Israel dicen que el proceso no debería ser obligatorio. Es una labor muy intensiva y gasta mucha agua. Puede requerir un gran número de voluntarios, los cuales no están disponibles para todas las excavaciones, y muchísima agua, que no está disponible en el desierto. Algunos dicen que es mejor usar el método con discreción.

Robert Mullins, director del Departamento de Estudios Bíblicos y Religiosos de la Universad Azusa Pacífico, dice que él utiliza el cribado con agua cuando es determinante para interpretar un yacimiento. En la excavación que él dirige en Aber Beth Maacah, en el norte de Israel, el equipo realizó el cribado con agua en la tierra de un almacén que contenía docenas de jarrones de 2800 años de antigüedad. De ese modo encontraron todo lo que se había dejado dentro de los jarrones o en el suelo.

Daniel Master, que actualmente está dirigiendo una excavación en el valle de Jezreel, dijo que es cuestión de identificar «el método correcto para el contexto correcto».

«Yo tiendo a pensar que usar un método en particular como garantía de una “buena” excavación es no entender de qué se trata todo esto», afirma. «Un arqueólogo, al igual que cualquier investigador, necesita un repertorio de técnicas, herramientas y necesidades para saber cuándo usar cada una de ellas».

Sin embargo, todos los arqueólogos conocen historias de descubrimientos hechos, no por la experiencia, sino por la casualidad, el accidente o la suerte del principiante. Jimmy Hardin, codirector de la excavación de un pequeño yacimiento llamado Khirbet Summeily en el extremo norte del desierto del Néguev, recuerda que hace varios años algunos voluntarios encontraron ocho o nueve sellos de arcilla. No estaban haciendo cribado con agua, y los bullae no se diferenciaban de la tierra que los rodeaba, pero la mirada aguda de los estudiantes los detectó.

Ocurre tan a menudo que hace que los arqueólogos más experimentados se pregunten qué han pasado por alto.

«Una vez has excavado esto, ya está», dijo Hardin. «Es tu responsabilidad recoger todos los datos que puedas».

Los datos sobre los bullae, descubiertos ahora de manera tan habitual con el cribado con agua, son especialmente emocionantes. Portan la autoridad de los antiguos nombres, impresos en arcilla y preservados durante milenios. Hay uno que dice: «Nathan-Melech, siervo del rey Josías». Y otro descubrimiento reciente es un bulla que pertenece a la familia sacerdotal de Immer.

«Cada sello e impresión trae a una persona de vuelta a la vida», dijo Deutsch. «La Biblia cobra vida».

Un tercer bulla, roto casi por la mitad y encontrado en un antiguo vertedero , puede ser que diga: «perteneciente a Isaías el profeta». No está claro, sin embargo, porque la palabra que podría ser «profeta» está rota. Sin el aleph final, ¿quién puede estar seguro?

Es fácil imaginar al profeta presionando su marca en la arcilla, tocando aquel objeto exacto, marcándolo con su nombre. Pero puede ser que no. La arqueología puede acercarte muchísimo al mundo bíblico y, aun así, dejarte con el deseo de que ojalá alguien hubiera dejado una firma.

Gordon Govier es editor de la revista Artifax y escribe sobre arqueología para Christianity Today.

Traducción por Noa Alarcón.

Edición en español por Livia Giselle Seidel.

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I sat on a bench and looked up at the stone walls. Jeremiah sank into the mud, according to the biblical account.

But maybe it wasn’t at that spot. Who’s to say it was this cistern, which was dug up in 1998, and not another one that has yet to be found? Or perhaps it will never be found. I could imagine the prophet trapped in that exact place, wondering if God would rescue him, but short of finding “Jeremiah” scratched on the wall, no one could say for sure.

In the time since I was there, questions have been raised about that cistern, casting doubt on its role in the Jeremiah drama. It’s not a place people visit these days.

Archaeology can take you so close to the biblical world and still leave you wishing someone had left a signature.

When people do find signatures, it’s a very big deal. In the past few years, in fact, archaeologists have been finding a lot of the impressed clay seals that ancient Israelites used to secure the knot on the string that tied up a scroll.

In 2005, Israeli archaeologist Eilat Mazar was directing an excavation of the oldest part of Jerusalem. Her team found the imprint of a stamp, and on that clay seal was a name: Jehukal, the son of Shelemiah, one of the men who threw Jeremiah into a cistern.

Three years later, Mazar announced the discovery of another “bulla,” as the seals are called. This one also had a name: Gedaliah, son of Pashur, another official from the story in Jeremiah 38.

The two biblical villains seemed to spring to life with these discoveries. They had touched these seals, leaving their names as physical evidence to be discovered thousands of years later.

“Nothing is more exciting at an excavation than the discovery of a seal or bulla,” said Scott Stripling, director of the Archaeological Institute at The Bible Seminary in Katy, Texas. “Often, there are partial or complete fingerprints, which remind us of the human connection. These were real people.”

Clay seals are rare finds, but they’ve become more common since 2005. They are small—often just the size of a fingertip. And they’re made out of clay, basically the same stuff that archaeologists are digging up, which makes them hard to spot. In the archives of the biblical archaeology newsmagazine that I edit, Artifax, I see very few mentions of bullae from the early 1990s until 2005.

Since then, however, there have been so many discoveries of impressed clay seals that the news has become almost common. And some of the finds are so remarkable—including one with the name of King Hezekiah and another that may belong to the prophet Isaiah—that they often make my annual list of top 10 biblical archaeology discoveries for Christianity Today.

The change can be traced to the development of the archaeological technique of wet sifting.

Innovation in Kidron Valley

It started with 9,000 tons of dirt, dumped unceremoniously in the Kidron Valley. Back in 1999, Muslim authorities in charge of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount decided to build a third mosque on the holy site in the underground “stables of Solomon.” They excavated an entrance and removed a massive amount of earth without archaeological supervision.

The historical evidence that could be recovered in that space is of vital interest to scholars and many Christians and Jews. But in Israel, where ancestral claims are aggresively contested, archaeology is also political.

Scholars reeled at the scale of this crime against archaeology. Some, though, also realized it was a unique opportunity. They could look through the 400 truckloads of dirt. This could be a way to get some rare insight into the Temple Mount at a safe distance from the incendiary politics.

“It has lost 90 percent of its scientific value,” Israeli archaeologist Gabriel Barkay told his colleagues. “We have 10 percent left. But that’s much more than zero percent.”

In 2004, Barkay and archaeologist Zachi Dvira launched the Temple Mount Sifting Project (TMSP), using wet sifting to see what still remained in the dirt.

The process works like this: A bucket of dirt is dumped onto a screen held at waist level by a wooden frame. A volunteer takes a hose and sprays water, forcing the dirt through the screen and leaving small items behind: pottery, stones, bones, coins, other bits of metal, glass, mosaic tesserae, and bullae.

“We came up with the idea on the first days,” Dvira told CT, “since it was very difficult to differentiate between natural stones and potsherds. That is because the soil is full of ashy dust… which coats the objects.”

Dvira and his team soon developed a method they could teach to volunteers. Over the next 17 years, more than 170,000 volunteers dumped bucket after bucket of Temple Mount material into sieves, sprayed away dirt, and scrutinized everything left.

Photo Courtesy of Eilat Mazar

What they found was thousands of artifacts from the Stone Age on. More than 6,000 Jewish, Islamic, Roman, and medieval coins have been recovered.

Another important discovery: a 3,000-year-old seal from the time of King Solomon. Scholars say it may challenge the theories of archaeological minimalists who claim the Scriptures exaggerated the age and significance of the temple in Jerusalem.

“That is why archaeology is so fascinating,” Mazar told me a decade before she died in May. “It’s written in the Bible, and then we find these seal impressions. It demonstrates that this biblical story is so accurate.”

Mazar was impressed with the potential of wet sifting and started sending dirt from the excavations she supervised to TMSP. That’s where volunteers in 2004 uncovered the bullae with the names of the officials who tried to have Jeremiah killed.

“Seals and bullae have repeatedly proven to be a very significant category of evidence outside the Bible,” wrote Larry Mykytiuk, a Purdue University professor emeritus whose research focuses on the historicity of the Scripture, in an email to CT. “They are extremely valuable, because they confirm the existence and official positions of kings, high priests, and royal officials who are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, and the titles in some seals and bullae show that they were in a position to do what the Bible says they did.”

Laypeople often don’t realize how few written texts have survived from biblical times. Scripture was preserved through duplication, but few of the older copies of the books of law, prophets, poetry, and history remain. Compared to the hundreds of Egyptian hieroglyphic papyri and thousands of Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets excavated in the past couple centuries, the corpus of ancient Jewish texts is miniscule.

“Seals and seal impressions are the largest part of inscribed items which we have discovered,” said Robert Deutsch, a scholar and dealer who has published information about numerous bullae in academic journals.

Deutsch has been criticized by archaeologists for buying and selling seals on the antiquities market. The trade creates incentives for looters and cover for forgers.

Deutsch counters that ignoring the many objects in private collections means banishing them to nonexistence. He argues that archaeologists benefit from knowing about them, even if they have a dubious history.

In 1997, for example, he published information in an academic journal about a seal bearing the impression of King Hezekiah. It has no known provenance and could have been forged. But in 2015, Mazar discovered an identical bulla in Jerusalem. The find would have been significant on its own, but the privately owned bulla added context.

There are so few examples of ancient Hebrew, he says, that they all have to be seen as important.

Still not standard practice

Despite the obvious value of wet sifting, its use has not become standard at excavation sites in Israel.

Stripling, who worked as a supervisor with TMSP in 2008 and 2009 and directed excavations at Khirbet el-Maqatir and Tel Shiloh, thinks the Israel Antiquities Authority should make wet sifting mandatory. He worries what archaeologists are missing when they don’t wet sift through the dirt. At Tel Shiloh, he had volunteers sift through a dump pile left by an excavation done in the 1980s. They found five scarabs, beetle-shaped amulets from Egypt.

He did the same thing at an old excavation site at Mount Ebal. Stripling found a bronze knife blade and a tablet that may have been used for ceremonial cursing. He noted that Mount Ebal is described as a mountain of cursing in Deuteronomy 27.

“Dump piles of past excavations contain a tremendous amount of material. These are the types of finds that are being thrown away by most excavations because of a failure to wet sift,” he said during a 2020 presentation at the meeting of the Near East Archaeological Society.

“Wet sifting holds the potential to revolutionize what we are finding from archaeological sites.”

Photo Courtesy of Gordon Govier

Other archaeologists working on Israeli excavations say the process shouldn’t be mandated. It’s very labor intensive and uses a lot of water. It can require a lot of volunteers, which are not available for every dig, and a lot of water, which is not available in the desert. Some say the method is best used with discretion.

Robert Mullins, chair of the Department of Biblical and Religious Studies at Azusa Pacific University, says he uses wet sifting when it’s critical for interpreting a site. At the dig he directs at Abel Beth Maacah in northern Israel, the team wet sifted the dirt from a storeroom containing dozens of 2,800-year-old jars. That way they found anything that had been left inside the jars or on the floor.

Daniel Master, who is currently directing excavation in the Jezreel Valley, said it’s a matter of knowing “the right method for the right context.”

“I tend to think that using one particular method as a proxy for ‘good’ excavation is entirely missing the point,” he said. “An archaeologist, like any researcher, needs a repertoire of techniques and tools and needs to know when to use each one of them.”

But every archaeologist knows stories of discoveries made not by expertise but by chance, accident, or beginner’s luck. Jimmy Hardin, codirector of the excavation of a small site called Khirbet Summeily at the northern edge of the Negev Desert, remembers several years ago when some volunteers found eight or nine clay seals. They weren’t wet sifting, and the bullae looked just like the dirt around them, but the sharp-eyed students spotted them.

It happens often enough to make the most experienced archaeologists wonder what they might have missed.

“Once you excavate this stuff, it’s gone,” Hardin said. “It’s your responsibility to collect as much data as you can.”

The data on the bullae, now so commonly discovered with wet sifting, are especially compelling. They carry the authority of ancient names, committed to clay and preserved for millennia. There’s one that says “Nathan-Melech, servant of King Josiah.” And another recent discovery is a bulla belonging to the priestly family of Immer.

“Each seal and seal impression brings to life a person,” Deutsch said. “The Bible comes to life.”

A third bulla, broken almost in half and found in an ancient rubbish pit, may say “belonging to Isaiah the prophet.” It’s not clear, though, because the word that could be “prophet” is broken off. Without the final aleph, who is to say for sure?

It’s easy to imagine the prophet pressing his mark into the clay, touching that exact object, marking it with his name. But maybe not. Archaeology can take you so close to the biblical world and still leave you wishing someone had left a signature.

Gordon Govier is the editor of Artifax magazine and writes about archaeology for Christianity Today.

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