Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Japanese first as ancient Roman coins found in Okinawa ruins

Article found here


By SHUNSUKE NAKAMURA/ Senior Staff Writer
September 27, 2016 at 17:05 JST

  • Photo/Illustraion
  • Photo/Illustraion
URUMA, Okinawa Prefecture--Ancient Roman coins have been discovered in Japan for the first time at the ruins of Katsuren Castle here, where they are thought to have arrived via the maritime trade in the 14th to 15th centuries with other parts of Asia.
 
Ten copper coins were excavated at the site, the city education board announced Sept. 26.
“This significant discovery will contribute to the study of world history including west Asia and the West,” said a city education board official.
Four of the coins, which bear what appear to be the faces of Roman emperors and Roman letters, are believed to have been minted in the fourth century.
The ancient coins, which measure from 1.6 to 2 centimeters in diameter, were found at a geological layer dating to the 14th to 15th centuries, which also contains Chinese ceramics.
One of the other pieces, found in another geological layer, bears Arabic letters and is believed to be an Ottoman Empire coin likely made in the 17th century. Five other coins are under analysis.
Registered as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2000, Katsuren Castle was built around the 12th to 13th centuries.
The maritime intermediate trade thrived in Okinawa from the 14th to the 16th centuries, when the Kingdom of Ryukyu traded with China and realms in Southeast Asia.
“People involved with Katsuren Castle might have obtained these coins somewhere in Asia that had contact with the West,” said the education board official.
They added that the Ottoman coin was likely to have been brought to Okinawa a long time after the Roman coins in the haul.
Yasuhiro Yokkaichi, a researcher at Waseda University’s Institute for Central Eurasian History and Culture, urged a cautious stance on the discovery.
“Roman coins were also found in Southeast Asia, so the coins are likely to have arrived in Okinawa through trading with Southeast Asia," he said. "I want those who conduct an investigation of this discovery to closely examine different possibilities including that the coins came to be mixed in after much time had passed.”

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Sabbath as Model for Restoration

article from here
Restored normalcy is a human goal for anyone who feels his or her life has been upset by family breakup, disease, economic crisis, natural disasteror any disruption large or small. Yet seeking this homeostasis in the midst of our daily routines is not easy. God foresaw this reality and established an oasis in time, a place of communion with him. How could all humans, from all walks of life and from anywhere in the world, gain equal access to such a temple? Only through God’s establishment of a temple in time: the Sabbath.
The Sabbath is a weekly appointment between God and human, a respite from turmoil. It can take place in the confines of incarceration or a hospital bed just as well as in the liberty of health and freedom. In its ideal rendition it is shared with the family of God at home and at church, and through outreach to society. This article will explore several attributes of the Sabbath as it contributes to the restoration of our relationship with God, family, others, our churches, and with our world.
RESTORING HOLINESS THROUGH SABBATH
Evil is pervasive and seemingly ever-present. How can humans avoid evil and find holiness when we are so fragile and full of sin? There are those who seek justice by keeping the law and showing their good deeds as a sign of holinesssalvation by works. The heart of the law, however, makes this evident: We pursue holiness when we take 24 hours every week for personal rest as an act of worship to God. Even from the time of the Old Testament, the key to holiness was not salvation by works but, instead, was made clear in a commandment to rest in God.
The fourth commandment demands that we include all family members in this rest, but it does not stop there. We are also required to seek out our neighbors, to embrace the employees under our care in this rest and, in addition, to be ecologically minded and include the natural world in this rest with God! The words of Exodus 20:8–11, in effect, expand the rest promoted by this commandment into ever more encompassing concentric circles: from self (in the text, the male head of household), to family (male and female), to employees (slaves in the Old Testament context), to neighbors (the “alien” within our spheres), to the animals in our care.
Sabbath-keeping is about restoring justice in the home, within our families, within our communities, and within the church. A superb presentation of what is expected of Christians today was developed by John in the fourth chapter of his first epistle: “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen” (1 John 4:20). Many evangelicals have tied holiness with morality because in demanding particular behaviors, the Bible seems to tie them together. How then shall we best help one another to remember the Sabbath as a holy time for worship?
Perfect justice, if there is any on earth, comes through time distribution. Since we all get the same number of hours in a day and the same number of days in a week, we are all accountable to the same demand to devote our time toward Sabbath and cultivating holiness. In a cycle of seven days, we are called to one 24-hour period for Sabbath rest and worship. Of course, I am not talking about those who are trapped in any kind of indentured service, who do not control their time. But as evangelical churchgoers living in freedom, most of us control our time and what we do with it. It may feel like we do not control our time when we are obligated to complete assignments for school or tasks at work. But fundamentally, we are in control of our time. Sabbath keeping is about resistance, confronting the economics of work and accomplishments with the outlook of peace and rest.1
What shall we do with our time within the inner circles where we exercise most control in order to resist evil and promote justice at home, family, and church? We must make it a priority in our lives to keep the Sabbath, and in so doing, to seek holiness through rest and restoration.
SABBATH AS TESTIMONY
As the church seeks to follow Jesus Christ as Lord, it finds itself in an oppositional place vis-à-vis the world and the government of its land and country. It was so declared by Jesus:
If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world—therefore the world hates you. (John 15:18–19)
On the other hand, as he prayed for the church, Jesus said, “I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one” (John 17:15). Evangelicals are thus in opposition to the world but should not seek to leave the world. Instead, they must seek to avoid the sins of the world while engaging with the world through the sharing of their testimony. One of the testimonies to be shared is the way one spends his or her time, by radically setting aside a holy time for God, to be in communion with him.
God calls all his followers to set aside this weekly temple in time to come and rest in him—rest that is the very opposite of working for one’s salvation. Sabbath is a weekly 24-hour reminder of the righteousness by faith that comes from a God who is both creator and liberator. These two roles of God are enshrined in the fourth commandment as recorded in Exodus and Deuteronomy, while the New Testament book of Hebrews marries the Sabbath to righteousness by faith. To more fully understand the Christian Sabbath as expressed in the New Testament we must read the epistle to the Hebrews, specifically chapters three and four.

Bubbles Illustration by Denise KlitsieRESTORING SABBATH
Lauren Winner
Mudhouse Sabbath: An Invitation to a Life of Spiritual Discipline
But there is something in the Jewish Sabbath that is absent from most Christian Sundays: A true cessation from the rhythms of work and world, a time wholly set apart, and perhaps above all, a sense that the point of Shabbat, the orientation of Shabbat, is toward God.

SABBATH AS A SIGNPOST OF FAITH
In the book of Hebrews, Sabbath becomes the anti-works commandment: salvation is by rest in faith! In this book the Israelites’ Sabbath is presented as a signpost of faith, with rest afforded to those who are saved by the grace of God. The author of the epistle indicates that the Israelites who left Egypt died in the desert and did not enter into God’s rest in the promised land because they lacked faith: “And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, if not to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief” (Heb 3:18–19). The argument that Sabbath rest can only come to those who have faith and can only be experienced in grace is brought to its climax in chapter four:
Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest is still open, let us take care that none of you should seem to have failed to reach it. For indeed the good news came to us just as to them; but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. For we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said, “As in my anger I swore, ‘They shall not enter my rest,’” though his works were finished at the foundation of the world. For in one place it speaks about the seventh day as follows, “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.” And again in this place it says, “They shall not enter my rest.” Since therefore it remains open for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again he sets a certain day“today”saying through David much later, in the words already quoted, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not speak later about another day. So then, a Sabbath rest still remains for the people of God; for those who enter God’s rest also cease from their labors as God did from his. Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one may fall through such disobedience as theirs. (Heb 4:1–11)
These passages from Hebrews define Sabbath rest as only achievable by those who have faith in the gospel message of Jesus as Savior of the world. Faith allows you to enter his rest; Sabbath is about rest, not about obedience to the law as a way of salvation.
We are invited to enter Sabbath rest, so do not harden your hearts, says the author of Hebrews. There is a Sabbath rest for us all: Will I enter that rest, or continue to work away at my salvation? Contrary to those who seemingly sought to achieve their salvation by seeking good works, God invites us every week to show that we are saved by faith and to embrace the righteousness Jesus offers us by keeping Sabbath rest in our community of faith.

Bubbles Illustration by Denise KlitsieRESTORING SABBATH
Mark Buchanan
The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul By Restoring Sabbath

Sabbath is both a day and an attitude to nurture such stillness. It is both a time on a calendar and a disposition of the heart. It is a day we enter, but just as much a way we see. Sabbath imparts the rest of Godactual physical, mental, spiritual rest, but also the rest of Godthe things of God’s nature and presence we miss in our busyness.

RESTORING SABBATH THROUGH RELATIONSHIP, NOT CONFRONTATION
As Eusebius documented, Romanus, a deacon martyr in AD 302, was a zealous Christian seeking to dismantle the Roman Empire through his own power.2 This type of power fixes its eyes on what we can do, on what worldly propositional logic can accomplish with a righteous view of the Christian God. Romanus sought to force God into action through his own might, attempting to stop the daily pagan sacrifices of the Roman Emperor Diocletian by erupting into a verbal diatribe condemning Diocletian during a popular Roman festival at the public plaza. Romanus was arrested and a year later he was executed.
Today we evangelicals have a similar choiceone made clear by theologian Robert E. Webber: “Thus creation has the power to choose to be in union with God, to work in harmony and in concert with God, or to break away from God and to move in a direction that asserts independence.”3 Webber further indicates that there are epistemological differences between the old traditional and the new contemporary evangelical leaders and missionaries. The propositional logic of past evangelical missionaries and church leaders often focused on confrontational approaches that separated the church from the world—like Romanus going to the public square and decrying the Roman emperor’s pagan sacrifices as rituals offensive to the true God.
Many accomplishments came about historically through the work of evangelical missionaries following propositional truth, and for these undertakings we salute and celebrate them; we indeed stand today on the shoulders of giants. But the age of propositional logic they inhabited is gone. Says Webber, “Because the younger evangelical is turning away from theology as ruled by reason and scientific method toward theology as a reflection of the community on the narrative of Israel and Jesus,” new questions are emerging as central.4
The three questions proposed by Webber are all seemingly central to the Sabbath rest commandment: “(1) How are we to interpret the Genesis account? (2) How are we to view the stewardship of creation? (3) How is truth known?”5 A “new normal” has emerged for evangelicalsa normal that accounts for the limitations of historical models of doing church based on more of a rational approach. Youth now demand a logic of “doing”: how does it work, what does it do for me, how does it feel? This is radically different from the propositional truth of the old paradigm of Christendom, but it is nevertheless full of new possibilities.
The Sabbath commandment helps us respond to Webber’s first question about our interpretation of Genesis. Instead of addressing evolution-creation paradigms, Sabbath rest addresses the more fundamental question of “so what?” As creator, God provides for a relational rest that builds a community of faith interested in the ecological issues of the day. We’re not to fall into an “us versus them,” evolutionist-versus-creationist argument, but instead, as believers, to follow a God who calls on the powers of modernity to stop in its tracks once a week and acknowledge him as redeemer of our mess.
Sabbath Illustration (Denise)
I dream of a community of faith that takes it further, impacting not only a renewed day of rest, but also impacting a way of living the other six days; the oikos of God being transformed one household at a time, one church institution at a time. It is a change that makes the kingdom of God on earth a kingdom based on love, not greed. This is the invitation of stopping in your tracks for 24 hours—moving toward a whole life of living out love as a community. Why 24 hours? Because the liturgy of God in Scripture invites us to be radical, and as difficult as this may be, the failure of our human efforts are overturned with the blood of Christ. “Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one may fall through such disobedience as theirs” (Heb 4:11). This is the rest that comes from accepting our failures by submitting to the love of the gospel, a gospel that wants to change society. I call it the gospel message of a Sabbath rest, a Sabbath of the blood of our Saviora paradigm to live and see the world as God does. We find ourselves in an ecological and personal mess that only a relational God can address to satisfactiona mess that’s never addressed satisfactorily by declarations of dogma among ourselves.
The question proposed by Webber about creation’s stewardship can also be addressed by the only one of the ten commandments that involves the environment. The ecological niche we inhabit is to rest with us once a week; animals within our oikos (household) are to rest. The Sabbath thus forces a weekly accounting of our relationship with nature, even one as simple as how we view our pets. This kind of posture is not about the propositional truth of a set of commandments, but about a relational God who placed us in a web in which we are intertwined with nature, others, and God himself.
The last of Webber’s questions deals with a new definition of truthone that points to Truth with a capital “T,” as in the person of Jesus: “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’” (John 14:6). Truth in a relational epistemology is about a triune God relating within the human web of relations, a personal God who defines Truth as a person. It is a Truth that came to be human and meets with us daily, particularly during our Sabbath rest. Are we keeping the appointment with him and with the natural world he created?
We humans live in a web of relations that cannot be disowned. The worldwide web of irreducible, inscrutable relational approach- es for accomplishing the missio Dei has replaced the propositional approaches of the past in the Christian West. The South comes to evangelize the North; the West comes to convert to Christianity the East; and, in the words of Walter Brueggemann, we all are now “irreducibly, inscrutably interrelated.”6
Remember the invitation in Hebrews: “So then, a Sabbath rest still remains for the people of God; for those who enter God’s rest also cease from their labors as God did from his. Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one may fall through such disobedience as theirs” (Heb 4:9–11). The justice we are seeking in this world will come via our resta sabbatical rest of faith and grace, of Jesus as Lord of the Sabbath.
Legalistic Sabbath-keeping places the emphasis on practices; God-fearing Sabbath-keeping places the emphasis on our relationship with Jesusa relationship based on embrace: acknowledging his embrace and embracing one another, even those who offend us.
When we make space in our week to celebrate a narrative of creation, ecology, redemption, and faith in an irreducible, inscrutable relational community, then, as Brueggemann expresses it, the Sabbath commandment “provide[s] for rest alongside the neighbor. God, self, and all members of the household share in common rest on the seventh day; that social reality provides a commonality and a coherence not only to the community of covenant but to the commandments of Sinai as well.”7 We follow this commandment in fulfillment of God’s mission: to restore in all humans whom he loves an attitude of embracing rest for self and the other for life!
ENDNOTES
1. Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistance (Westminster John Knox, 2014).
2. Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, History of the Martyrs in Palestine, trans. William Cureton (Fort Worth, TX: RDMc Publishing, 2015).
3. Robert E. Webber, The Younger Evangelicals Facing the Challenges of the New World (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2002), 85.
4. Ibid., 87.
5. Ibid.
6. Walter Brueggemann, “Irreducibly, Inscrutably Relational,” from Fuller Seminary Payton Lectures, May 1, 2015, unpublished manuscript, p. 14.
7. Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistance, 1.

article from here

Friday, September 16, 2016

Ancient city unearthed where David battled Goliath



Posted on September 9, 2016 by JNS.org 
By Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman/JNS.org
Archaeologists believe they have found evidence of King David’s footprints in a mysterious two-gated city from 3,000 years ago, mentioned in the Bible’s story of David and Goliath
The site is known by its modern name, Khirbet Qeiyafa, in Israel’s Elah Valley.
After nearly seven years of excavations, the public can now explore the archaeological findings of Qeiyafa through “In the Valley of David and Goliath,” a new Bible Lands Museum exhibition that opened earlier this week in Jerusalem. The Qeiyafa findings have sparked debate and intrigued historians and archaeologists since they were first revealed. 
 
The site's casemate walls are reminiscent of the type of urban planning found only in Judah and Transjordan. Credit: Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman.

The city was discovered between Sokho and Azekah, on the border between the Philistines and the Judeans, in the place where David and Goliath battled. It’s mentioned in the Torah in 1 Samuel 17: 1-2.
Carbon-14 dating of some 28 charred olive pits found during excavations date the city as existing around the end of the 11th century BCE, until the early 10th century, in the days of Saul and David.
“No one can argue with this data,” said Prof. Yosef Garfinkel, Yigal Yadin Chair of Archeology at the Institute of Archeology at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He, along with Sa’ar Ganor from the Israel Antiquities Authority and Prof. Michal Hazel of Southern Adventist University of Tennessee, led the excavations.
Among the site’s highlights are its two gates: the western gate, which faced Philistia, and the southern gate, which faced Judah. Having two gates for a relatively small city of 5.7 acres is unusual, according to Bible Lands curator Yehuda Kaplan. Gates are the weakest part of any city. The two gates are what led excavators to identify the site with Sha’arayim (Hebrew for “two gates”), a city mentioned in the David and Goliath story in the Book of Samuel, which reads, “…And the slain Philistines lay along the way of Sha’arayim, as far as Gath and Ekron.” (1 Samuel 17:52) It’s also in Judges 16:5 and in Jeremiah 17:19-20.
The gates were corroborated by additional evidence of Jewish activity at Qeiyafa, including thousands of sheep, goat, cow and fish bones, and the absence of non-kosher pig bones, Kaplan said.
Evidence of cultic activity throughout the city was also unearthed, as well as two inscriptions written in the Canaanite script. One was incised on a jar and contains the Hebrew name Eshbaal, son of Beda. The second was inscribed on a pottery shard with only a few identifiable words, including “king” and “judge.” Many of the letters seem to reflect Hebraic writing.  Garfinkel suggests this is the earliest writing documentation of the Hebrew language discovered to date.
Among the pottery on the site, less than 2 percent was typical Philistine pottery. Kaplan said if the community had been Philistine, a minimum of 20 percent of Philistine design should have been found. Of the 24 weapons and tools discovered, 67 percent were made from iron and 33 percent from bronze. Use of iron during this period by other sites in Judah, such as Arad and Beersheva, helped archeologists identify Qeiyafa as a Judean site.
Bible Lands curator Yehuda Kaplan. Credit: Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman.

Finally, casemate walls - two thinner, parallel walls with empty space in between and a belt of houses abutting the casemates, incorporating them as part of the construction - are reminiscent of the type of urban planning found only in Judah and Transjordan.
Garfinkel explained that before the period of King David, people lived in small farming communities. Around 11th BCE, these agrarian communities became urban societies.
“In this, the biblical tradition has historic memory,” Garfinkel said. “If we ask, ‘Where is archaeology starting to support biblical tradition, Khirbet Qeiyafa is the beginning.”
There’s only one other archaeological reference to King David found in Israel, the Aramaic inscription from the mid-9th century BCE found at Tel Dan. This inscription, on display as part of the new exhibit, is attributed to Hazel, king of Damascus, who boasts about killing a king of Israel and a king of Judah, the latter of which is referred to in the inscription as “King of the House of David.”
While the site stirs the biblical imagination, it also serves a political role.
Biblical Minimalists, a band of biblical scholars and archaeologists trying to eradicate the connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel by claiming there’s not reliable evidence for what had happened in ancient Israel, can be negated by some of Qeiyafa’s findings. Within 10 days of his publishing the first paper on Qeiyafa, another article claimed the site as Palestinian, Garfinkel said.
“This happens a lot,” said Jacob L. Wright, associate professor of Hebrew Bible at Emory University in Atlanta. “In no other area of the world do you have such a connection to biblical imagination.”
Wright said there’s likely a middle ground. While he believes Garfinkel has placed Qeiyafa in the right time period and that it’s likely a Judean community, experts aren’t certain that King David had anything to do directly with the site.
“One has to separate the bible and archaeology,” Wright said. “The minimalists want to deny the state of Judah and Israel; they are politically driven and have a loose agenda. … But it does not help when the maximalists try to connect everything they find on the ground with Jesus or King David.”
Bible Lands’ Kaplan is confident in the exhibit and the story it’s telling of Qeiyafa.
“Everything you touch at Khirbet Qeiyafa brings you to this biblical period,” he said.

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Tuesday, July 12, 2016

First-Ever Philistine Cemetery Unearthed at Ashkelon

Found here


Discovery brings us face to face with the Israelites’ archenemy

ashkelon-philistine-cemetery-1
Kathryn Marklein articulates a 10th–9th century B.C.E. burial in Ashkelon’s Philistine cemetery, the first ever to be discovered by archaeologists.Photo: Megan Sauter.
The first and only Philistine cemetery ever discovered has been found outside the walls of ancient Ashkelon. As one of the major Philistine city-states during the Iron Age, Ashkelon was a significant Mediterranean port and boasted a thriving marketplace. Excavations at Ashkelon have revealed many details about how the Philistines lived: the kind of houses they built; the food they ate; the plates, bowls, cups, pots and jars they made; the tools and weapons they used; the jewelry they wore; the imports they bought; the way they made clothes; and much more.
Now Ashkelon has yielded the Philistines themselves.
Directed by Lawrence E. Stager, Dorot Professor of the Archaeology of Israel, Emeritus, at Harvard University, and Daniel M. Master, Professor of Archaeology at Wheaton College, the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon discovered the Iron Age cemetery in 2013 and began excavating it extensively in 2014. Three seasons of significant investigation have revealed previously unknown details of the Philistines in death—and life. First of all, the cemetery provides a window into Philistine burial practices.
“Ninety-nine percent of the chapters and articles written about Philistine burial customs should be revised or ignored now that we have the first and only Philistine cemetery found just outside the city walls of Tel Ashkelon, one of the five primary cities of the Philistines,” said Lawrence E. Stager.
Various theories have been proposed about Philistine burial practices: Some thought that the Philistines were burned at death, like Patroclus and other figures in Homer’s Iliad. Others connected late 13th-century B.C.E. Egyptian anthropoid ceramic coffins with the Philistines. While a cemetery has been found at Azor (dated to the Iron Age 1), located at the northern boundary of Philistia, Ashkelon’s cemetery is the first to be found in the heartland of Philistia—and the first to be indisputably Philistine. As such, it is the standard for measuring all other burials claimed to be Philistine, such as the tombs found at Tel Farah (South) and near Tel Eitun, which were found beyond the limits of Philistia but argued by some to be Philistine. All of these “Philistine” burials and practices must be reevaluated in light of Ashkelon’s cemetery—as should perhaps the cemeteries found at Ruqeish (dated to the Iron Age 2) and Erani (Iron Ages 1–2), located at Philistia’s southern and eastern boundaries, respectively.
ashkelon-cemetery-skeleton
Senior staff Adam Aja, Sherry Fox and Daniel Master discuss a 10th–9th century B.C.E. burial from Ashkelon’s cemetery. Photo: ©Tsafrir Abayov/Leon Levy Expedition.
More than 210 individuals have been excavated from Ashkelon’s cemetery. Their burials have varied from simple pit internments and cremations in jars to interments in ashlar-built tombs—with the most frequent being pit internments. Grave goods dated from the 11th–8th centuries B.C.E. accompanied some of the Philistine burials. The most common items included in Philistine burials are small juglets. Storage jars, bowls and juglets have been found next to many individuals; these installations consist of a storage jar standing upright with a bowl sitting on its top opening and a juglet resting inside the bowl.
ashkelon-philistine-cemetery-2
Ashlar-built tomb chambers from Ashkelon’s cemetery. Photo: Megan Sauter.
Many of the decorated juglets from the cemetery were imported from Phoenicia. This is not surprising since the Philistines had close ties with Phoenician cities of the central Lebanese coast, such as Tyre, Sidon and Byblos. This close relationship is reflected in the Hebrew Bible (see, e.g., Jeremiah 47:4). From other excavated areas at Tel Ashkelon dated to the 12th–7th centuries B.C.E. (the Iron Age), we see that the largest portion of Ashkelon’s imports came from Phoenicia.
In addition to the many ceramic vessels from Ashkelon’s cemetery, jewelry, amulets and weapons have also been discovered. Individuals were found wearing delicate silver earrings, as well as bronze necklaces, bracelets, earrings and rings. A few bracelets with alternating bronze and carnelian beads and necklaces with alternating carnelian beads and cowrie shells were found; although the strings that originally connected these beads had long deteriorated, the beads themselves stayed in their original positions.
ashkelon-aja
Cemetery excavation supervisor Adam Aja examines a 10th–9th century B.C.E.burial during the excavation of the Philistine cemetery by the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon. A small juglet rests on the Philistine’s cheek. Photo: ©Tsafrir Abayov/Leon Levy Expedition.
Amulets and scarabs were found with some individuals, as were weapons. Notably, one warrior was buried with a quiver full of bronze arrows. This discovery was made by Adam Aja, Assistant Curator of Collections at the Harvard Semitic Museum and the Expedition’s Assistant Director, who supervised the excavation of Ashkelon’s Philistine cemetery. Although the cemetery has produced a large quantity of grave goods, the majority of the Philistines were buried without personal items.
The difference between Philistine burials and other burials in the region is compelling. The earlier Canaanites, as well as the Israelites and Judahites of the Iron Age, buried their dead in two steps. They first laid out their dead—usually on a bench in a tomb—and waited for the corpses to deflesh. Then about a year later, they gathered the deceased’s bones into niches in the tomb—repositories—where the bones were mixed with those of their ancestors. This process is not seen in Ashkelon’s Philistine cemetery, which has instead yielded many fully articulated skeletons. Sometimes burial pits would be dug again, and new individuals would be laid on top of previous burials—with their own grave goods—but the earlier burials were not intentionally disturbed. Relationships between those buried in the same pits and tombs are currently being investigated.
Not only does Ashkelon’s cemetery shed light on Philistine burial practices, but it also illuminates the Philistines as a people group.
“After decades of studying what the Philistines left behind, we have finally come face to face with the people themselves,” said Daniel M. Master, Co-Director of the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon. “With this discovery we are close to unlocking the secrets of their origins.”
The Bible records that the Philistines, Israel’s archenemy, came from Caphtor (see, e.g., Amos 9:7). Many correlate Caphtor with the island of Crete. An Aegean heritage for the Philistines lines up well with the archaeological finds from Philistia. Modern excavations at the Philistine sites of Ashdod, Ekron, Ashkelon, and Gath (Tell es-Safi)—four city-states of the Philistine Pentapolis—have demonstrated that the Philistines brought their own distinctive types of pottery, building styles, weapons, jewelry and weaving with them when they settled on the southern coast of Israel around the 12th century B.C.E.
Ashkelon’s cemetery supports the Philistines’ distinctness from their neighbors and may be able to connect the Philistines to related populations in the Aegean world. Bone samples of the cemetery’s population are undergoing DNA testing, radiocarbon dating and biological distance studies (the degree of genetic relatedness). The results of these investigations may give us a better picture of the Philistines’ heritage, when Ashkelon’s cemetery was in use, and how the population of the cemetery was related to one another.
ashkelon-skull
Skull from a Philistine burial from Ashkelon’s cemetery dated to the 10th–9th century B.C.E.Photo: ©Tsafrir Abayov/Leon Levy Expedition.
Sherry Fox, the head forensic anthropologist analyzing Ashkelon’s Philistine burials, has already identified some of the illnesses and traumas that plagued the Philistines. Her team’s study of the material is sure to yield many other insights into the Philistines, such as common traits and average life span. Although their investigations are just beginning, Fox and her team have noted a curious phenomenon: The vast majority of the individuals from Ashkelon’s cemetery are adults. Just a small percentage is children and infants. In a culture that surely experienced high rates of infant mortality, this is surprising. Where did the Philistines bury all of their babies? This question warrants further investigation.
The discovery of Ashkelon’s cemetery was announced today, July 10, 2016, at a press conference in Jerusalem and coincides with the opening of Ashkelon: A Retrospective, 30 Years of the Leon Levy Expedition, an Israel Museum exhibition at the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem. The exhibit features discoveries from the Philistine cemetery, as well as artifacts uncovered from recent excavations at Tel Ashkelon that are representative of the site’s long, diverse occupational history from the Chalcolithic period through the Crusades. Highlights include the famous Canaanite silver calf (dated to the 16th century B.C.E.) that was found in a shrine on Ashkelon’s ramparts and beautiful imported Greek pottery from Ashkelon’s Philistine marketplace that was well-preserved due to Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of the city in 604 B.C.E.
2016 marks the final season of the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon, which began excavating the site in 1985. The discovery of the Philistine cemetery is a nice addition to 30 years of extraordinary finds at Ashkelon.
 

 
megan-sauterMegan Sauter is the Associate Editor at Biblical Archaeology Review. She holds an M.A. in Biblical Archaeology from Wheaton College. This is her fifth season excavating with the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon.
 




Found here

Thursday, July 7, 2016

BAR Interview with Elie Wiesel and Frank Moore Cross

found here

In Memoriam: Elie Wiesel (1928–2016)

elie-wiesel
Elie Wiesel (1928–2016).Photo: David Shankbone’s photo is licensed under CC BY 3.0.
Elie Wiesel, a world-renowned author, human rights advocate, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor, died on July 2, 2016, at the age of 87. Wiesel’s best-known work is his memoirNight, based on his experience as a teenager with his father in the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz, Buna and Buchenwald in 1944–1945 toward the end of World War II.
Wiesel wrote over 10 profiles of Biblical figures for the Biblical Archaeology Society magazine Bible Review in a series calledSupporting Roles.
The July/August 2004 issue of Biblical Archaeology Reviewpublished an interview BAR Editor Hershel Shanks conducted with Wiesel and Frank Moore Cross, then the Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages Emeritus at Harvard University (Cross died in 2012). It is republished in full  here