Life In New Testament Galilee Being Revealed At Yodfat
2, 000 years ago a town was razed. Today, archaeologists are excavating the site and finding new information about Jesus’ life and times.
Blood ran through the streets of the town. Virtually every man and child was massacred and the women and babies were captured to be sold into slavery. Such was the end of Yodfat, the first Jewish city to fall to Vespasian’s legions during the Great Revolt of AD 67 against Roman domination – a futile struggle that culminated three years later in the destruction of Jerusalem.
For thousands of years, the town and evidence of the carriage remained buried in this rocky hilltop, with its peaceful and scenic view of the Galilean countryside. Now, a team of archaeologists led by the University of Rochester and Israel’s Antiquities Authority are excavating the site, untouched since Roman times. The excavations, in their fifth year, are yielding new insights into the practice of Judaism in Galilee at the time Jesus lived and preached, as well as the tensions that led to the revolt against Roman rule.
The picture emerging at Yodfat is of a devout community that clung to Jewish observance despite its poverty and distance from the center of Jewish worship, the Temple in Jerusalem, says University of Rochester religion professor William Scott Green, educational director of the archaeological team. Yodfat is only seven miles from Nazareth, in northern Israel, where Jesus grew up, suggesting that Galilee in the time of Jesus may have been more Jewishly observant than some historians of early Christianity have assumed, Green says.
Yodfat was never resettled after the massacre nearly 2, 000 years ago, leaving the town fossilized in time. “It’s a pristine site. When you walk here you are in AD 67 just 35 years after Jesus was crucified,” notes Green.
“Yodfat will fill out some of the features of ordinary Jewish life in the Galilee at the time of Jesus,” says Peter Richardson, professor at the Center for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto and another key collaborator in the Yodfat dig. “This becomes terribly important for understanding Jesus, since His home was in the Galilee, His main activity was in the Galilee, and His closest followers were from the Galilee. So the origins
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of Jesus and His upbringing are going to be extensively influenced by how rigorously Judaism was practiced there.”
Scholars caution that Yodfat is only one town, and despite its proximity to Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth no absolute generalizations can be made about Galilean lifestyles. Larger and more affluent towns in the region like Sepporus, Tzipoori and Caesarea Phillipi were heavily influenced by Greek culture. They featured a mixed religious makeup, amphitheaters and large temples dedicated to the Roman emperor. Still, the dig at Yodfat suggests that the level of popular Jewish piety in Galilee was far greater than what may have been present in the larger Roman provincial outposts, says Green.
In Jewish history, the era in which Jesus lived is known as the Second Temple period. At that time the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem – which had been built by the Biblical King Solomon, was destroyed and rebuilt again – still dominated Jewish religious life. The Temple was the focus both for the ceremonies of animal sacrifice, and the thrice-annual pilgrimages by Jews from around the land of Israel.
Conversely, Jews scattered in the hills of Galilee far from the routine of Temple worship were sometimes viewed as less obedient to their ancient religion: its single, invisible deity; stern code of ethics; and stringent rules of daily life. Greco-Roman culture – with its adulation of physical prowess, its amphitheaters for entertainment and its cult of idol worship – was promoted by provincial Roman governors, and competed for the allegiances of Jews living in far-flung districts.
“In some ancient texts, Galilee is referred to as the Galilee of the Gentiles, suggesting that the region was heavily Hellenized and Romanized, and not terribly Jewish,” observes Richardson. It is against such regional tensions that some scholars have sought to explain the unconventional religious message of the Galilean Jesus. “You have several choices in trying to understand Jesus,” says Richardson. “You can interpret Him as a kind of radical Jew, relative to legal observance and ordinary Jewish piety, and that’s the way a lot of Christian scholars would want to see Him. Another way of interpreting Him would be to argue, as I would, that He is relatively observant, and that He tends to share many features of Jewish piety, and differs in relatively few.”
The findings at Yodfat support the latter view, Richardson believes. Excavations have unearthed numerous stoneware pots and mikvaot, or ritual baths. Both items indicate that the Galilee Jews of Yodfat observed stringent laws regarding ritual purity, a dominant concern of Temple Judaism. Stoneware, unlike the more porous earthen pottery, was used by devout Jews for eating because they believed it did not transmit ritual impurity, notes Green. Ritual baths, while expensive and difficult to build, were constructed inside a number of Yodfat homes, even though the town was not particularly wealthy and other architectural embellishments were lacking.
The use of Jewish coins bereft of Roman idols, evident in the types of money unearthed at Yodfat, was another symbol of ordinary piety, says
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Richardson. Some New Testament stories, such as the incident in which Jesus overturns the money changers’ tables in the Temple, are better understood in light of the revelation that the Jews of Galilee used such coins, Richardson maintains. The story has popularly been understood as Jesus’ protest against the commercialization of a house of worship. But Richardson believes that Jesus was probably staging a much more limited protest – against the exchange of the Jewish coins for Roman mint, which featured religiously forbidden images of idols. “That, in a sense, makes Him more conservative than the Temple priests, rather than more radical,” observes Richardson.
— BW
(Religion News Service, October 16, 1996.)
Important Finds At Hazor
Canaanite Hazor was a huge city, extending over 200 acres. The book of Joshua refers to it as the “head of all these kingdoms” (Jos 11:10). The size of the site, the largest in Israel, supports this description. More specific hints come from the archives of Mari, a major Amorite city, in Syria on the Euphrates river. There, scores of cuneiform tablets have been found which refer to trade connections with Hazor. By the 18th century BC, the time of the Biblical patriarchs, the city, located along the major trade route between Egypt and Babylon, had become a major center for commerce in tin, silver, gold and precious stones. Its conquest by the Israelites under Joshua’s leadership is seen as the final episode in the Israelite conquest of Canaan. After Hazor, “Joshua took this entire land. .. from Mount Halak, which rises toward Seir, to Baal Gad in the Valley of Lebanon below Mount Hermon” (Jos 11:16–17). Hazor was later defeated by Deborah and Barak as described in the book of Judges (chaps. 4–5).
In the book of Kings we learn that Hazor rose from the ashes in the days of King Solomon, who fortified it (1 Kgs 9:15). Israelite Hazor, however, was much smaller. It covered a mere 15 acres, roughly the same size as Jerusalem in the days of the United Monarchy. Hazor was no longer the most important city in the country. In this phase it was replaced by Jerusalem, and later also by Samaria. Still, it ranked among the major cities in the country along with such sites as Megiddo, Dan and Lachish. Israelite Hazor was finally destroyed by the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III in 732 BC (2 Kgs 15:29).
Thus, there were two major chapters in Hazor’s history: Canaanite Hazor and Israelite Hazor. In the tenth century BC, Israelite Hazor was part of the United Monarchy; in the ninth-eighth centuries BC, it was in the northern kingdom of Israel. Because of its importance in the history of the Israelite settlement in Canaan and in understanding the transition from Canaanite to Israelite hegemony, who destroyed Hazor and when have been major issues in Biblical archaeology. Large-scale excavations in the 1950s and 60s under the direction of the late Yigael Yadin and the renewed excavations
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carried out at the site since 1990 under Amnon Ben-Tor have confirmed the city’s importance. Recent discoveries bear on much mooted subjects regarding ancient Canaan and Israel. Bible, art history, cult and the history of architecture are examples.
Last, but not least, there is a very good chance that the royal archive of Canaanite Hazor might be found in the ruins of the magnificent Canaanite palace currently under excavation. Although archives of the second millennium BC have been unearthed in a number of Near Eastern sites, none has yet been discovered in Israel. The importance of such a discovery – and the light it could shed on life and culture in the country at that time – can hardly be overestimated.
In recent years, the historicity of the period called the United Monarchy, i.e., the tenth century BC, has become a hot issue among both historians and archaeologists. “Revisionist” scholars claim that such figures as David and Solomon are fictitious creations of a later period, and that indeed the entire period we call the United Monarchy is nothing but a figment of the imagination. According to these scholars, archaeological assemblages dated thus far to the tenth century BC should be dated to the ninth century BC, while the poor archaeological remnants thus far dated to the 11th century, should be dated to the tenth century.
Inscriptions on tablets more than 3000 years old list multiplication tables and describe civil disputes, giving archaeologists clues to life in the Canaanite period.
Yadin excavated a massive gate and city wall at Hazor in the 1950s that he dated to the tenth century BC and attributed to King Solomon, in accordance with 1 Kings 9:15: “.. . Solomon imposed forced labor to build. .. and fortify Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer.” Yadin’s dating has been disputed by several scholars who prefer a date in the ninth century BC. The renewed excavations under Amnon Ben-Tor, however, have clearly verified Yadin’s dating: the fortification system belongs to the tenth century. The implications this date has on the “revisionist” theory are evident: these fortifications indicate state initiative.
A second example. A huge Canaanite palace is currently being excavated. Thus far only a small part of it has been uncovered, but even that is enough to demonstrate its size and splendor. It is truly a palace fit for a king who was “head of all these kingdoms.” Walls still standing to a height of 2 m have been exposed. So far an area of the palace 30×40 m has been excavated; its full dimensions are still unknown. Thick walls indicate that the building had more than one story. The throne room has been found, with pillar bases 2 m wide.
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In 1996 four palm-sized clay tablets inscribed in Akkadian cuneiform were recovered from one of the rooms. Ben-Tor deems them to be “the most important of all documents found in this country.” Two of the tablets date to the 18th century BC; the other two to the 14th century BC. Thus, there may be not one, but two archives in the palace! One of the 18th century tablets contains multiplication tables, while the other is a list of goods sent from Hazor to Mari. The list represents the first time the name Hazor has been found in an inscription at the site, confirming its Biblical identification. Two other tablets, dating from around the 14th century BC, are a commercial list and a legal document in which, according to Ben-Tor, “A tells B that C is a liar.” “This shows that nothing has changed,” he commented wryly.
In another room in the palace several works of art, including statues of stone and bronze, were found. Some are of kings, others of deities. One of the statues, that of a finely-detailed seated Canaanite deity 30 cm tall, is the largest ever found. All these statues were deliberately smashed in the massive destruction of Canaanite Hazor. Were they smashed by those who conquered the city? And when was the city destroyed? These are questions the excavators hope to answer.
Another interesting find is a toga pin. Normally such items are about the size of a modern safety pin. This one, however, is silver and 25 cm long. Ben-Tor surmises that it belonged to the king of Hazor himself. Hundreds of pieces of a coat of mail have been unearthed, an extremely rare find. Restoration experts are attempting to put it together. Other finds include a collection of armaments including an Egyptian battle ax, daggers and arrowheads, and a ceremonial sickle-shaped sword worn by kings or generals.
— BW
(Associated Press release July 30, 1996; Amnon Ben-Tor, Unearthing the Ancient City of Hazor, Religious Studies News 11.4 [1991]:1, 4.)
Bronze Canaanite god figurine uncovered at Hazor.
Bible and Spade 10:4 (Autumn 1997)