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Love Your Neighbor: Only Israelites or Everyone?

BAS Staff — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 12:00:10 +0000

Rembrandt, Moses with the Tablets of the Law, public domain.
Moses, pictured here in a painting by 17th-century Baroque artist Guido Reni, is one of the most iconic figures in the Hebrew Bible. Despite Moses’ obvious Semitic heritage, the name “Moses” is actually Egyptian, like that of other Biblical figures (Phinehas, Hophni, Hur, Merari). All of them are referred to in the Bible’s Levite sources (E, P and D of the Documentary Hypothesis). Levites like Moses fled Egypt to form a new nation of Israelites who were to “love your neighbor.”

It’s one of the most famous lines in the Bible: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18).

Impressive. Fascinating. Inspiring. Capable of a thousand interpretations and raising 10,000 questions. A remarkable proposition coming out of ancient Judah, which was embedded in the Near Eastern world of wars, slavery, class and ethnic divisions and discriminations of all kinds.

One interpretation of this verse that has been making the rounds for years turns this grand idea on its head: The claim is that the verse means to love only one’s fellow Israelites as oneself. Instead of being inclusive, it’s actually exclusive. Is there anything to this claim?

We have to start by going all the way back to the Exodus, which the combination of archaeology and text has led me to argue was historical; it actually happened. Ninety percent of the arguments against its historicity are not about the event itself but about the size of the event: All of Israel! Two million people (as suggested by Exodus 12:37–38)! Impossible!

But the evidence of a real but smaller exodus is a different matter. The earliest Biblical sources—the very early Song of Miriam (Exodus 15) and the text known in critical Biblical scholarship as J—don’t mention any numbers.

Moreover, there is good evidence that only the Levites were in Egypt; it was they who left and then merged with the rest of Israel. Note that only Levites have numerous Egyptian names (e.g., Phinehas, Hophni, Hur, Merari, Moses). The Levites alone reflect Egyptian material culture: Their Tabernacle has parallels with the battle tent of Pharaoh Rameses II.¹ Their ark has parallels with Egyptian sacred barks.² The Levite sources alone require circumcision, which was practiced in Egypt. There is much more. For the whole picture, see my presentation at a recent conference titled Out of Egypt held last year at the University of California, San Diego, which BAR has put online at https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/exodus/video-the-exodus-based-on-the-sources-themselves/.

FREE ebook: Ancient Israel in Egypt and the Exodus.

One more mark of the Levite sources is crucial and will bring us back now to the interpretation of “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Is neighbor exclusive or inclusive?

Of the four sources of the Torah or Pentateuch that critical scholars refer to as J, E, P and D,^a three—E, P (the Priestly source) and D (the Deuteronomistic source)—are Levite sources. In these Levite sources, the command to treat aliens fairly comes up 52 times! (How many times does this come up in the non-Levite source, J? Answer: None.)

The first occurrence of the word torah in the Torah is: “There shall be one torah for the citizen and for the alien who resides among you” (Exodus 12:49, from the Levite source P).

Why this frequent concern for aliens? We might reasonably guess that it was a matter of geography. Israel lay at the point where Africa, Asia and Europe meet. People of all backgrounds regularly passed through. So we can imagine a nation at that fulcrum of ancient trade routes having a policy of welcome to all those valuable aliens. Still, not all countries that have desired the benefits of trade have emphasized this principle. Again and again, all three Levite sources of the text (E, P and D) rather give this reason:

And you shall not persecute an alien, and you shall not oppress him, because you were aliens in the land of Egypt.

Exodus 22:20

And you shall not oppress an alien — since you know the alien’s soul, because you were aliens in the land of Egypt.

Exodus 23:9

You shall not persecute him. The alien who resides with you shall be to you like a citizen of yours, and you shall love him as yourself, because you were aliens in the land of Egypt.

Leviticus 19:33–34

So you shall love the alien, because you were aliens in the land of Egypt.

Deuteronomy 10:19

You shall not abhor an Egyptian, because you were an alien in his land.

Deuteronomy 23:8

You shall not bend judgment of an alien … You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and YHWH, your God, redeemed you from there. On account of this I command you to do this thing.

Deuteronomy 24:17–18

Why should we be good to aliens? Because we know how it feels. We know the alien’s soul. So we won’t persecute foreigners; we won’t abhor them; we won’t oppress them; we won’t judge them unfairly; we’ll treat them the same as we treat ourselves; we’ll love them.

Indeed, one possible meaning of the word Levi in Hebrew is “alien.”³

It is certainly true that there are also some harsh passages toward foreigners in the Bible: Dispossess the Canaanites, destroy Jericho, etc. But the evidence in the ground, discussed and debated many times in BAR’s pages, indicates that most of that (the so-called Conquest of the land) never happened.^b Moreover in far more laws and instances, the principle of treatment of aliens is positive.

For example: Don’t rape a captured woman in war (Deuteronomy 21:10ff).

Don’t abhor an Edomite (Deuteronomy 23:8).

If you happen upon your enemy’s ox or donkey straying, bring it back to him.

If you see the donkey of someone who hates you sagging under its burden, and you would hold back from helping him: You shall help him (Exodus 23:4–5).

The Bible permits a violent response to those who threaten Israel’s existence, but it still forbids a massacre if they surrender.

The very fact that the Bible’s sources start off with the creation of the earth and all of humankind instead of starting with Israel itself is relevant here. If any of us were asked to write a history of the United States, would we start by saying, “Well, first there was the Big Bang, and then …”? The Biblical authors saw Israel’s destiny as being to bring good to all those foreign nations and peoples—to the earth. It is not a minor point. It appears in God’s first words to Abraham, in God’s first words to Isaac, and in God’s first words to Jacob: Your descendants’ purpose is to be that “all the nations/families of the earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3; 26:2–4; 28:10–14).

Which brings me back to the opening question: Is “Love your neighbor as yourself” meant exclusively or inclusively? Does this admonition refer only to your Israelite neighbor or to all humankind?

When the text already directs every Israelite to love aliens as oneself, what would be the point of saying to love only Israelites—in the very same chapter! Now my friend Jack Milgrom, of blessed memory, wrote that it is precisely because the love of the alien is specifically mentioned there that love of “neighbor” must mean only a fellow Israelite.⁴

I see his point, but his position would have been more likely if the verse about love of aliens had come first in the text and the love of neighbor had came later. But the instruction to love aliens comes after we’ve already had the instruction to love your neighbor as oneself. That is, if you tell people first to love their aliens and then give a second instruction to love their neighbors, that second instruction really does sound like an addition because the first group, aliens, obviously doesn’t include the second group, neighbors. But if you tell people first to love their neighbors, then a second instruction to love aliens a few verses later can make sense as a specification for anyone who would have thought that love of neighbor didn’t include loving others as well.

Watch full-length lectures from the Out of Egypt: Israel’s Exodus Between Text and Memory, History and Imagination conference, which addressed some of the most challenging issues in Exodus scholarship. The international conference was hosted by Calit2’s Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego in San Diego, CA.

Did the Biblical authors think that the specifications referring to aliens were necessary? We know that they did because they said it 52 times in the Torah! And, in any case, Milgrom and I would both recognize that the bottom line is that one is supposed to love both, alien and neighbor, whether they overlap or not.

So from where did the idea come, that the Hebrew word for neighbor in this verse, re‘a, means only a member of one’s own group? We can get a better idea of what the Hebrew word for neighbor, re‘a, means by looking at other places in the Bible where this word is used.

The first occurrence of re‘a is in the story of the tower of Babel (Babylon). It is the Bible’s story of the origin of different nations and languages. It involves every person on earth: “And they said each to his re‘a …” (Genesis 11:3). That is, the term refers to every human, without any distinctions by group.

Now, one might say, though, that the word might still refer only to members of one’s own group because, at this point in the story, all humans are in fact still members of a single group. So let’s go to the next occurrence of the word. In the story of Judah and Tamar, Judah has a re‘a named Hirah the Adullamite (Genesis 38:12, 20). Hirah is a Canaanite! He comes from the (then) Canaanite city of Adullam. He cannot be a member of Judah’s clan because, at this point in the story, that clan, namely the Israelites, consists only of Jacob and his children and any grandchildren.

In Exodus 11:2 the word appears in both the masculine and feminine in the account of how the Israelites are instructed to ask their Egyptian neighbors for silver and gold items before their exodus from Egypt. The word there refers quite precisely to non-Israelites. In Exodus 2:13, on the other hand, in the story of Moses’ intervention between two “Hebrews” who are fighting, he says to the one at fault, “Why do you strike your re‘a?” So in that episode it refers to an Israelite.

Snark/Art Resource, NY
TEACHING THE LAW. In this ninth-century illustration from the Bible of Charles the Bald, Moses explains the law to the Israelites. Fifty-two occurrences in the Bible’s Levite texts (E, P and D) refer to the importance of treating foreigners fairly—no distinction between an Israelite and a non-Israelite. “Love your neighbor as yourself” is also from a Levite text. Considering this pervasive Levite stress on the fair treatment of the alien, why would a Levite text then say you only need to love an Israelite “neighbor”? Our author believes it doesn’t—“neighbor” includes all humankind.

In short, the word re‘a is used to refer to an Israelite, a Canaanite, an Egyptian, or to everyone on earth.

And still some people say that “Love your re‘a as yourself” means just your fellow Israelite. When the Ten Commandments include one that says: “You shall not bear false witness against your re‘a” (Exodus 20:16; Deuteronomy 5:17), do they think that this meant that it was okay to lie in a trial if the defendant was a foreigner (even though elsewhere, as we saw, the law forbids Israel to “bend the judgment of an alien”)? When another of the Ten Commandments says not to covet your re‘a’s wife (Exodus 20:17; Deuteronomy 5:18), do they think that this meant that it was okay to covet a Hittite’s wife (even though elsewhere the Bible condemns King David for doing just that)?

Those who contend that “neighbor” refers only to one’s neighbors of your own people frequently cite its context. They quote the sentence that precedes the sentence about loving one’s neighbor. Looking at the two together, it reads like this:

You shall not take revenge, and you shall not keep on at the children of your people.
And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Since the two sentences were put together into a single verse when verse numbers were added to the Bible, some interpreters have assumed that the “love your neighbor as yourself” line must also be just about “the children of your people.” Why? No reason at all. Read Leviticus 19, carefully. Coming near the very center of the Torah, it is a remarkable mixture of laws of all kinds. It goes back and forth between ethical laws and ritual laws: sacrifice, heresy, injustice, mixing seeds, wearing mixed fabrics (shaatnez), consulting the dead, gossip, robbing, molten idols, caring for the poor. It has everything! I tell my students that if you’re on a desert island and can have only one chapter of the Bible with you, make it Leviticus 19. And its laws all come mixed in between each other. No line can be judged by what comes before it or after it. And, remember, there are no verse numbers or periods or commas in the original.

For more on the Book of Leviticus, read “What Does the Bible Say About Tattoos?” and “Book of Leviticus Verses Recovered from Burnt Hebrew Bible Scroll.”

The much respected Bible scholar Harry Orlinsky made the context argument in 1974.⁵ Because of his scholarly standing, he was followed by others. Robert Wright cited him in The Evolution of God.⁶ Wright had consulted with me on the matter of loving the alien, but unfortunately we didn’t discuss the “neighbor” verse; if we had, I would have cautioned him. Hector Avalos also followed Orlinsky, saying “as Orlinsky has deftly noted …”⁷ The “deftly noted” remark has been used (and often quoted) over and over again in connection with the interpretation of this verse. It was not deft at all.

The same “context” mistake was made by John Hartung, an evolutionary anthropologist⁸ who was cited and followed by Richard Dawkins in his bestselling The God Delusion, saying, “‘Love thy neighbor’ didn’t mean what we now think it means. It meant only ‘Love another Jew.’”⁹ Hartung emphasized the importance of context, but he then used only the one verse (quoted above), seemingly unaware that the joining of its two statements was done by those who created numbered verses centuries after the Bible was written.

“Love your neighbor as yourself” remains: Famous. Impressive. Fascinating. Inspiring. You can accept or challenge it. And you can decide whether you will follow it in your own life. But don’t change what it means.

“Love Your Neighbor: Only Israelites or Everyone?” by Richard Elliott Friedman was originally published in the September/October 2014 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. It was first republished in Bible History Daily on August 19, 2014.

Richard Elliott Friedman is the Ann and Jay Davis Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Georgia and Katzin Professor of Jewish Civilization Emeritus at the University of California, San Diego, and author of the classic Who Wrote the Bible? (1987). He was a visiting fellow at Cambridge and Oxford, a senior fellow of the American Schools of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, a visiting professor at the University of Haifa and participated in the City of David Project archaeological excavations of Jerusalem.

FREE ebook: Ancient Israel in Egypt and the Exodus.

Notes

a. Richard Elliott Friedman, “Taking the Biblical Text Apart,” Bible Review, Fall 2005.

b: Aharon Kempinski, “Israelite Conquest or Settlement? New Light from Tell Masos,” BAR, September 1976;

Yigael Yadin, “Israel Comes to Canaan: Is the Biblical Account of the Israelite Conquest of Canaan Historically Reliable?” BAR, March/April 1982;
Ziony Zevit, “The Problem of Ai,” BAR, March/April 1985;
David Ussishkin, “Lachish—Key to the Israelite Conquest of Canaan?” BAR, January/February 1987;
Bryant G. Wood, “Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho? A New Look at the Archaeological Evidence,” BAR, March/April 1990;
Hershel Shanks, “When Did Ancient Israel Begin?” BAR, January/February 2012;
Amnon Ben-Tor, “Who Destroyed Canaanite Hazor?” BAR, July/August 2013.

1. Michael Homan, To Your Tents O Israel (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 111–115.

2. Scott Noegel demonstrated this in an impressive paper at the Out of Egypt conference: “The Ark of the Covenant and Egyptian Sacred Barks: A Comparative Study” (conference, San Diego, May 31–June 9, 2013).

3. William Propp, Exodus 1–18, The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1999), p. 128.

4. Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 2000), p. 1654; and see bibliography there.

5. Harry Orlinsky, Essays in Biblical Culture and Bible Translation (New York: Ktav, 1974), p. 83.

6. Wright cited him in The Evolution of God (New York: Little, 2009), pp. 235–236.

7. Hector Avalos, Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2005), p. 140.

8. John Hartung, “Love Thy Neighbor: The Evolution of In-Group Morality,” Struggles for Existence (blog), (strugglesforexistence.com/?p=article_p&id=13).

9. Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2006), p. 253.

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The Tel Dan Inscription: The First Historical Evidence of King David from the Bible

BAS Staff — Sun, 23 Nov 2025 12:00:25 +0000

The fragmentary Tel Dan stela, containing the Tel Dan inscription (or “House of David” inscription) provided the first historical evidence of King David from the Bible. The Aramean king who erected the stela in the mid-eighth century B.C. claims to have defeated the “king of Israel” and the “king of the House of David.” Photo: The Israel Museum, Jerusalem/Israel Antiquities Authority (photograph by Meidad Suchowolski).

Few modern Biblical archaeology discoveries have caused as much excitement as the Tel Dan inscription—writing on a ninth-century B.C. stone slab (or stela) that furnished the first historical evidence of King David from the Bible.

The Tel Dan inscription, or “House of David” inscription, was discovered in 1993 at the site of Tel Dan in northern Israel in an excavation directed by Israeli archaeologist Avraham Biran.

The broken and fragmentary inscription commemorates the victory of an Aramean king over his two southern neighbors: the “king of Israel” and the “king of the House of David.” In the carefully incised text written in neat Aramaic characters, the Aramean king boasts that he, under the divine guidance of the god Hadad, vanquished several thousand Israelite and Judahite horsemen and charioteers before personally dispatching both of his royal opponents. Unfortunately, the recovered fragments of the “House of David” inscription do not preserve the names of the specific kings involved in this brutal encounter, but most scholars believe the stela recounts a campaign of Hazael of Damascus in which he defeated both Jehoram of Israel and Ahaziah of Judah.

FREE ebook: Ten Top Biblical Archaeology Discoveries. Finds like the Pool of Siloam in Israel, where the Gospel of John says Jesus miraculously restored sight to a blind man.

What made the Tel Dan inscription one of the most exciting Biblical archaeology discoveries for scholars and the broader public was its unprecedented reference to the “House of David.” The stela’s fragmented inscription, first read and translated by the renowned epigrapher Joseph Naveh, proved that King David from the Bible was a genuine historical figure and not simply the fantastic literary creation of later Biblical writers and editors. Perhaps more important, the stela, set up by one of ancient Israel’s fiercest enemies more than a century after David’s death, still recognized David as the founder of the kingdom of Judah.

The “House of David” inscription had its skeptics, however, especially the so-called Biblical minimalists, who attempted to dismiss the “House of David” reading as implausible and even sensationalistic. In a famous BAR article, Philip Davies argued that the Hebrew term bytdwd referred to a specific place (akin to bytlhm for Bethlehem) rather than the ancestral dynasty of David. Such skepticism aside, however, most Biblical scholars and archaeologists readily accepted that the Tel Dan stela had supplied the first concrete proof of a historical King David from the Bible, making it one of the top Biblical archaeology discoveries reported in BAR.

Even though the “House of David” inscription has confirmed the essential historicity of King David from the Bible, scholars have reached little consensus about the nature and extent of his rule. Was David the great king of Biblical lore who founded his royal capital at Jerusalem and established an Israelite kingdom? Or was David a ruler of only a tribal chiefdom, as Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University contends? Questions like these often arise from Biblical archaeology discoveries and lie at the heart of the complex relationships among archaeology, history and the Bible.

Based on “Issue 200: Ten Top Discoveries,” Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August September/October 2009. This Bible History Daily feature was originally published in 2011.

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“David” Found at Dan

“House of David” Built on Sand: The Sins of the Biblical Maximizers

“House of David” Is There!

Archaeological Views: Letting David Go

A House Divided: Davies and Maeir on the Tel Dan Stela

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Biblical Bread: Baking Like the Ancient Israelites

BAS Staff — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 12:00:12 +0000

Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August September/October 2019

In the July/August/September/October 2019 issue of BAR, Dr. Cynthia Shafer-Elliott writes about Tell Halifa and its focus on the study of the daily lives of the ancient Israelites. According to Dr. Shafer-Elliott, the unearthing of a grinding installation suggests that the primary purpose of the living space at one of the eighth-century four-room houses excavated– A8 House– was food production: grinding grain into flour.

In 2015 , Dr. Shafer-Elliott wrote for Bible History Daily about an experiment in building a tannur, a type of oven, and baking bread as the ancient Israelites might have done. Please enjoy revisiting Dr Shafer-Elliott’s previous article on connecting to the ancient Israelites through that experiment.

Current subscribers, read Dr. Shafer-Elliott’s article, Baking Bread in Ancient Judah, in the July/August/September/October 2019 issue of BAR.

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In his book Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation, well-known food author Michael Pollan observes a curious paradox regarding cooking within American culture: “The less cooking we were doing in our own lives, it seemed, the more that food and its vicarious preparation transfixed us.”¹ In other words, the further away we get from our food—both in growing it and cooking it—the more of a central role it plays in our society. Pollan points to the massive popularity of TV shows devoted to food and celebrity chefs as proof of our fascination with food.

In the summer of 2015, a team from the Tell Halif archaeological excavation decided to make their own tannur (oven) and bake bread in it. Here, William Jessup University students Rose Kania and Jessica Rentz and Tell Halif supervisor Tim Frank make the clay mixture out of which the tannur will be made. Photo: Courtesy of Cynthia Shafer-Elliott.

This is an interesting observation that forces me to ponder my own fascination with food, which goes beyond watching Food Network, surfing Pinterest for new recipes, or serving a meal to my family or guests. Food, as a subject, boiled over (pun intended) into my academic research interests, too.

In general, I study the cultural context of ancient Israel both as it is found archaeologically and as it is reflected in the Hebrew Bible. More particularly, I am curious about the daily lives of the ancient Israelites. Some questions about daily life that interest me are: How did the ancient Israelites live? What did they eat? How did they cook it? In the early days of my research, I found that there was a lack of information on what the ancient Israelites ate and how they prepared it. Fortunately, interest in food is now a subject of research within both Biblical studies and the archaeology of the Southern Levant (which includes ancient Israel).

FREE eBook: Life in the Ancient World.
Craft centers in Jerusalem, family structure across Israel and ancient practices—from dining to makeup—through the Mediterranean world.

William Jessup University students Rose Kania and Jessica Rentz, along with fellow volunteer Samara Wright and Tell Halif supervisor Tim Frank, making the first ring of the tannur. Photo: Courtesy of Cynthia Shafer-Elliott.

I study what the ancient Israelites ate and how they prepared it; but, like Pollan suggests, I am disconnected not only from the food that I eat, but also the food that I study. One possible remedy for this disconnection to ancient food is to conduct an archaeological experiment. In the summer of 2015, student volunteers on the Tell Halif archaeological excavation in Israel suggested that we try to make our own tannur (i.e., oven) and bake bread in it. My colleague and fellow Tell Halif supervisor Tim Frank has made a tannur before, so under his guidance, we built one behind the Halif archaeological lab at Kibbutz Lahav.²

First, a brief description of what we were trying to build. There are a few different types of traditional ovens that are still used today in the Middle East. One of the most common oven types is the tannur. A modern tannur is a beehive-shaped clay oven, usually close to one meter high, and will typically have two openings: one at the bottom and one at the top.

Ethnoarchaeological studies show that after a fire fueled by kindling and animal dung is built on the floor of the tannur, the ashes are raked out of the bottom opening, before using the top opening to slap the dough onto the interior walls or even the floor to bake. Platters and cooking pots could also be placed on top of the upper opening and used for baking or cooking, respectively. Although most archaeological reports refer to ovens as a tabun, they are more like the tannur type of oven. The term tannur is found in the Hebrew Bible fifteen times, seven of which refer to an oven used to bake bread (Exodus 8:3; Leviticus 2:4, 7:9; 11:35; 26:26; Hosea 7:4, 6–7).

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Cynthia Shafer-Elliott with the complete tannur. Photo: Courtesy of Seung Ho Bang.

Our experiment began one morning as we excavated by collecting five buckets of sifted dirt (though only half of the last one was used). It is important that the soil contains clay, and the soil at Tell Halif was perfectly acceptable for this experiment. The next day, Tim went down to the kibbutz stables and collected one bucket of straw. We gathered the next afternoon behind the excavation lab and cleared a place to begin our construction of a tannur.

The ground where the oven was placed was moistened before one bucket of dirt was emptied onto it and the straw mixed in. Water was emptied into the middle of the dirt and straw and was used to knead the mixture together. More water and dirt was added and kneaded until the clay mixture had a medium-stiff consistency.

Portions of the clay mixture were laid out in a circle and shaped in such a way as to attach it to the ground. The lower rung was extended to a height of approximately 4 inches, slightly inclining inward, and was then smoothed over. Once the bottom rung was complete, the process was repeated over the following days as the oven slowly dried. Each successive layer, slightly inclining, was added, until the tannur was approximately 12.5–13 inches high with a 19.5 inch-wide mouth.

Some of the Tell Halif excavation team on baking night. Photo: Courtesy of Seung Ho Bang.

To complete the hardening process, a fire was lit using straw and pine cones inside and immediately surrounding the tannur’s walls on the outside. A few days later, dough was made using flour, water, yeast and a tiny bit of sugar (honey would have been more authentic, but none could be found. Salt could not be found, as well).

After the dough had risen and was kneaded, it was divided into small balls and left to rise further. A fire was lit inside the tannur using straw and pine cones. Once the tannur was hot enough, the balls of dough were flattened into small loaves and were slapped onto the inside walls. The loaves only needed a few minutes to bake, after which the bread was removed carefully and consumed by the group.

About the experiment, Rose, a student from William Jessup University, commented, “I couldn’t help but become more familiar with the [ancient] bread-baking process. Firsthand experience with the mud, bread and fire is far more didactic than any textbook, slideshow or lecture. Being part of this experiment was fascinating and eye-opening!” We were all pleasantly surprised at how well the tannur worked and how tasty the bread turned out.

Small loaves of pita bread baking on the inside of the tannur. Photo: Courtesy of Seung Ho Bang.

Small loaves of bread that were baked on the inside walls of the tannur. Photo: Courtesy of Seung Ho Bang.

Like many ancient societies, the Israelites were dependent upon cereals; so much so that the word for bread, “lechem,” is synonymous with food. The process of turning grain into flour, then into dough, and finally into bread, would have been time-consuming—not to mention the construction and maintenance of the tannur itself. Today, the immediate demand for food can be easily obtained; but, as a consequence, the connection to the food that we eat has weakened—and, to some extent, the connection to our own histories has weakened as well. Archaeology helps us physically connect to the past, and, in this instance, in some small way, it helped connect us to the food of the ancient Israelites.

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Cynthia Shafer-Elliott, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at William Jessup University in Rocklin, California. Dr. Shafer-Elliott has been part of several archaeological excavations in Israel and is currently serving on the staff of the Tell Halif excavations. She is interested in the daily lives of the average Israelite and Judahite household, including economics, food preparation and consumption, religion and the roles and relationships of the family. Her book Food in Ancient Judah: Domestic Cooking in the Time of the Hebrew Bible is published through Routledge, and she is currently editing a volume entitled The Five-Minute Archaeologist for Equinox.

Notes

1. Michael Pollan, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation (New York: Penguin Books, 2013), p. 3.

2. A special thanks to Tim Frank for guiding us through this project. For more information on experimental archaeology and baking, please see University of Evansville Associate Professor of Archaeology Jennie Ebeling’s work.

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on July 29, 2015.

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Biblical Archaeology 101: Storage and Staples in Biblical Israel

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The Enduring Symbolism of Doves

Dorothy Willette — Sat, 12 Jul 2025 11:00:45 +0000

In addition to its symbolism for the Holy Spirit, the dove was a popular Christian symbol before the cross rose to prominence in the fourth century. The dove continued to be used for various church implements throughout the Byzantine and medieval period, including the form of oil lamps and this 13th-century altar piece for holding the Eucharistic bread. Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Few symbols have a tradition as long and as rich as the dove. A particular favorite in art and iconography, the dove often represents some aspect of the divine, and its use has been shared, adapted and reinterpreted across cultures and millennia to suit changing belief systems. From the ancient world to modern times, this simple bird developed layer upon layer of meaning and interpretive significance, making it a complex and powerful addition to religious texts and visual representations.

In the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean world, the dove became an iconic symbol of the mother goddess. Small clay shrines from the Iron Age Levant depict doves perched atop the doorways of these mini-temples. On one example from Cyprus, the entire exterior of the goddess’s shrine is covered with dovecotes. The doves represented feminine fertility and procreation, and came to be well-recognized symbols of the Canaanite goddess Asherah and her Phoenician and later Punic embodiment, Tanit. First-century B.C. coins from Ashkelon bore a dove, which represented both the goddess Tyche-Astarte and the city mint. In Rome and throughout the Empire, goddesses such as Venus and Fortunata could be seen depicted in statues with a dove resting in their hand or on their head.

FREE ebook: Exploring Genesis: The Bible’s Ancient Traditions in Context Mesopotamian creation myths, Joseph’s relationship with Egyptian temple practices and 3 tales of Ur, the birthplace of Abraham.

There is strong evidence in the Hebrew Bible, as well as the archaeological record, that many ancient Israelites believed the goddess Asherah was the consort of their god Yahweh. Perhaps it is not so surprising, then, that the heirs of this Israelite religion incorporated the “feminine” symbol of the dove to represent the spirit of God (the word for “spirit,” ruach, is a feminine word in Hebrew). The Babylonian Talmud likens the hovering of God’s spirit in Genesis 1:2 to the hovering of a dove. Indeed, this same “hovering” language is used to describe God’s spirit in the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as the New Testament.

A dove and two bird-like female figures perch atop this clay house shrine from the Iron Age. The dove was widely recognized throughout the Ancient Near Eastern world as a symbol of the mother goddess Asherah and her counterparts Astarte and Tanit. Ardon Bar Hama

Dovecotes, or niches for doves, dot the exterior of this small clay house shrine from Cyprus, while the goddess beckons to devotees from within. Erich Lessing.

But that is not the only allusion to a dove in the Hebrew Bible. The best-known example comes from the flood story of Genesis 6—9. In Genesis 8:8—12, after the ark has landed on the mountains of Ararat, Noah sends out a dove three times to see how far the flood waters have receded. The first time it found nothing and returned to the ark. The second time it brought back an olive leaf, so Noah could see that God’s punishment was over and life had begun again on the earth. (The image of a dove holding an olive branch continues to be a symbol of peace to this day.) The third time, the dove did not return, and Noah knew that it was safe to leave the ark. A similar flood story is told in parallel passages in the ancient Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh. There, too, the hero (Utnapishtim) sends out a dove, which returns to the ship unable to find a perch. In fact, from Ancient Near Eastern records to nautical practices as recent as the 19th century, sailors the world over used doves and other birds to help them find and navigate toward land. So, while Noah made use of an ancient sailor’s trick, the dove came to represent a sign from God.

A white dove represents the “spirit of God” that hovered over the face of the deep (Genesis 1:2) in this, the first of the Creation mosaics at the Cathedral of Santa Maria Nuovo in Monreale, Italy. Photo by the Casa Editrice Mistretta, Palermo, Italy

Dove imagery is also utilized in several of the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible. The low, cooing sound of a dove served as mournful imagery to evoke the suffering of the people of Judah (see Isaiah 38:14, 59:11; Ezekiel 7:16 and others).

A dove returns to Noah’s ark with an olive branch in its beak, a sign that life had returned to the earth after the great flood. Sailors throughout history have used birds to guide them to dry land. Pictured is a detail of a woodcut from the Nuremberg Bible. Credit: Victoria & Albert Picture Library.

The Epic of Gilgamesh, a Babylonian narrative that has several parallels in the early chapters of Genesis, tells the story of Utnapishtim, who (much like Noah) survived a flood that destroyed the earth and sent out a dove to try and find dry land. The British Museum

But doves were more than just a soundtrack for a people who had fallen away from God; they were also an instrument of atonement. Several passages of the Torah (especially Leviticus) specify occasions that require the sacrifice of two doves (or young pigeons)—either as a guilt offering or to purify oneself after a period of ritual impurity (including the birth of a child). Several columbaria, or dovecotes, have been excavated in the City of David and the Jerusalem environs (by crawford). These towers were undoubtedly used to raise doves for sacrificial offerings, as well as for the meat and fertilizer they provided—a popular practice in the Hellenistic and Roman periods that continued into the modern period.

Columbaria, or dovecotes, have been discovered in archaeological excavations in Jerusalem and throughout the Holy Land. The scarce remains of the tower on the left show a few rows of niches still standing in the City of David, whereas the underground dovecotes such as the one on the right, from Luzit, have been remarkably well preserved. Doves and pigeons were raised for their meat, and their droppings were collected for fertilizer, but they also played an important role in Temple sacrifice. Boaz Zissu

The atoning quality of doves led to comparisons in the Talmud and the Targums with Isaac and Israel. According to these extra-Biblical sources, just as a dove stretches out its neck, so too did Isaac prepare to be sacrificed to God, and later Israel took on this stance to atone for the sins of other nations.

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Thus, by the time of Jesus, the dove was already rich with symbolism and many interpretations—as a representation of Israel, atoning sacrifice, suffering, a sign from God, fertility and the spirit of God. All these meanings and more were incorporated into the Christian use of dove iconography.

Doves appear in the New Testament at scenes associated with Jesus’ birth, baptism and just before his death. The Gospel of Luke says that Mary and Joseph sacrificed two doves at the Temple following the birth of Jesus, as was prescribed in the law mentioned above (Luke 2:24). Yet in the Gospel of John, Jesus angrily drives out all of the merchants from the Temple, including “those who sold doves” to worshipers there (John 2:16).

During Benjamin Mazar’s excavations at the southwest corner of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, he recovered a stone bowl that bore the inscription korban (“sacrifice”), as well as finely scratched drawings of two upside-down (dead) birds. The bowl was probably intended for devout Jews to bring their offering of two doves or pigeons to the Temple for sacrifice, as commanded in the Books of Leviticus and Numbers. Erich Lessing

The Holy Spirit descends on Jesus in the form of a dove during his baptism in the Jordan by John the Baptist. Variations of this scene are told in all four of the Gospels and, as shown here in a 14th-century Byzantine mosaic from the Baptistery in the Church of San Marco in Venice, the dove became the quintessential symbol for the Holy Spirit, especially in representations of the Trinity. Alinari/Art Resource, NY

But perhaps the most familiar dove imagery from the New Testament is recounted in all four of the Gospels (though in varying forms) at the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist in the Jordan River. After Jesus came up out of the water, the [Holy] Spirit [of God] came from heaven and descended on him “like a dove” (see Matthew 3:16; Mark 1:10; Luke 3:22; John 1:32). The baptism story built on the pre-existing symbol of the dove as God’s spirit (and its many other meanings) and firmly entrenched it as the preferred representation of the Holy Spirit—especially in later artistic depictions of the Trinity.

Learn about the use of pagan imagery in Christian art in “Borrowing from the Neighbors” in Bible History Daily.

In Renaissance art, a dove became a standard element in the formulaic Annunciation scene, representing the Holy Spirit about to merge with the Virgin Mary. Doves were also shown flying into the mouths of prophets in Christian art as a sign of God’s spirit and divine authority. Even contemporary pop artist Andy Warhol used a (much more commercial) image of a Dove to represent the Holy Spirit in his, The Last Supper (Dove).

“The Word” enters Mary via rays of light emanating from a dove (representing the Holy Spirit) in this detail from Fra Filippo Lippi’s Annunciation scene, now in the National Gallery in London. National Gallery, London

This strange juxtaposition of modern brand labels and a classic Last Supper scene in Andy Warhol’s The Last Supper (Dove) nonetheless has hidden religious meaning. The dove hovers over Jesus’ head, representing the Holy Spirit, while the GE logo represents God the Father by recalling their famous slogan, “We bring good things to light.” © 1996 The Andy Warhol Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society, NY

Another source associates a dove with the beginning of Jesus’ life. According to the second-century Protoevangelium of James, when the Temple priests were trying to choose a husband for Mary, a dove flew out of Joseph’s rod and landed on his head, marking him as the one selected by God. In fairytales throughout the world, birds have often been used to signify the “chosen one,” the true king or even the divine.

Before the cross gained prominence in the fourth century, the second-century church father Clement of Alexandria urged early Christians to use the dove or a fish as a symbol to identify themselves and each other as followers of Jesus. Archaeologists have recovered oil lamps and Eucharistic vessels in the shape of doves from Christian churches throughout the Holy Land.

Since ancient times the dove was used to identify and represent the divine. It then helped countless peoples to envision and understand the many aspects of a God who could not be embodied by an idol or statue. It continues to be a favorite way to show the hand and presence of God in the world and remains one of our most enduring symbols.

Dorothy Resig Willette, formerly the managing editor of Biblical Archaeology Review, is a contributing editor at the Biblical Archaeology Society.

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First Person: Misogyny in the Bible

Hershel Shanks — Thu, 01 May 2025 11:00:31 +0000

Hershel Shanks

Christopher Rollston is one of the world’s leading paleographers of ancient Near Eastern inscriptions. I have been harshly critical of some of his views, principally regarding unprovenanced inscriptions—inscriptions that have surfaced only from the antiquities market, not from a professional archaeological excavation. They may be forgeries, he argues. Although my criticism of Chris’s position is intense,¹ we remain good friends and regularly share a meal. Chris is also a master carpenter. Above my office door hangs a beautiful polished wooden plaque expertly carved with my name in paleo-Hebrew script—the kind of Hebrew letters used before the Babylonian destruction of the Solomonic (First) Temple in 586 B.C.E.

Several years ago, when Chris was teaching at Emmanuel Christian Seminary, a Tennessee seminary affiliated with the Restoration Movement, he wrote an article about the Bible’s sometimes “unfair” or unequal treatment of women.² He recently published a revised and augmented version of this controversial article.³

Here are some examples from his article:

Noah and his wife had three sons (Shem, Ham and Japheth—Genesis 5:32) who were each married. All eight were on the ark. We know the names of all the men, but none of the women (Genesis 8:18), not even Noah’s wife.

Rollston finds the marginalization of women obvious and “clear” in the Ten Commandments: “The wife is classified as her husband’s property, and she’s listed with the slaves and work animals. There is also a striking omission in this commandment: Never does it say, ‘You shall not covet your neighbor’s husband.’”

Rollston continues with other examples:

An unmarried woman could be compelled to marry her rapist, as long as the rapist could pay the standard bride price and the woman’s father was comfortable with the marriage (Deuteronomy 22:28–29). Polygyny (a man having multiple wives at the same time) was not condemned, but was an accepted and legal custom (Deuteronomy 21:15–17; Genesis 4:19–24; and 2 Samuel 3:2–5). A woman’s religious vow could be nullified by her father or her husband (Numbers 30:3–15). And the assumption of the text is that the priesthood is all male (Leviticus 21). In short, within the legal literature of the Bible, women were not accorded the same status as men.

Other examples come from the New Testament; here is one of Rollston’s examples:

[1 Timothy 2] begins by stating that “men should pray” (and the word used here for men is andras, a gendered word that refers only to males) and then says “women should dress themselves modestly and decently” (vv. 8–9). So men are to pray, and women are to dress modestly. That’s quite a contrast. But there’s more: “Let a woman learn in silence and full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to be silent” (vv. 11–12). The author’s rationale: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor” (vv. 13–14). According to this text, women were to be silent in worship gatherings (and men were certainly not told to be silent), and the rationale for this mandate is that woman (Eve) was created second and sinned first. And the final blow is this: A woman “will be saved” (the future tense of the standard word for “be saved,” “be given salvation”) “through childbirth if she remains in faith and love and sanctification with modesty” (1 Timothy 2:15).

Learn about Biblical women with slighted traditions in the Bible History Daily feature Scandalous Women in the Bible, which includes articles on Lilith, Mary Magdalene and Jezebel.

Rollston recently told us in writing what we already knew. This criticism of the Bible led to his “forced ouster” from Emmanuel Christian Seminary.

Not long after his “forced ouster,” I saw Chris and told him that this could be the best thing that ever happened to him. And so it turned out. Eventually he obtained a tenured position at the George Washington University (GWU) in Washington, D.C. Soon thereafter the prestigious position of editor of the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (BASOR) opened up, and Chris and his distinguished colleague Eric Cline at GWU were appointed as coeditors to fill the position. Seldom do we write stories with such happy endings.

Notes

1. See Hershel Shanks, “Predilections—Is the ‘Brother of Jesus’ Inscription a Forgery?” Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 2015.

2. Christopher Rollston, “The Marginalization of Women: A Biblical Value We Don’t Like to Talk About,” Huffington Post, August 31, 2012.

3. Christopher A. Rollston, “Women, the Bible, and the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” in Frances Flannery and Rodney Alan Werline, eds., The Bible in Political Debate (New York: Bloomsbury, 2016).

“First Person: Misogyny in the Bible” by Hershel Shanks originally appeared in Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 2017.

The Bible History Daily feature, Misogyny in the Bible, was originally published in 2017.

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Fruit in the Bible

David Moster — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 11:00:48 +0000

Carbonized raisins from Iron Age I (12th to 11th centuries B.C.) Shiloh were published by Israel Finkelstein in BAR in 1986.

Seeds and fruit remains are exciting discoveries for archaeologists. Not only do they provide clues about ancient agriculture and diets, they can also provide radiocarbon data to help date buried strata.

Fruit also plays an important role in the Biblical narrative. If Eve had not eaten the fruit in Genesis 3, the story of Eden would have looked drastically different. What do we know about the creative ways the Israelites used fruit in their writings and everyday culture?

The Hebrew Bible mentions six types of tree fruit, many of which appear dozens of times:

Grape (גפן)
Fig (תאנה)
Olive (זית)
Pomegranate (רמון)
Date (תמר)
Apple (תפוח)

In my view, these six fruits are used in eight different ways in the Bible. First, many people are named after fruit, e.g., Tamar in Genesis 38:6, which means “date,” Tappuah in 1 Chronicles 2:43, which means “apple,” and Rimmon in 2 Samuel 4:2, which means “pomegranate.”

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In this this anonymous 18th-century icon from the National Art Museum in Kiev, Ukraine, Joshua and Caleb carry grapes back from the Promised Land.

Second, fruits are the namesake for a number of cities and towns, e.g., Anab in Joshua 11:21, which means “grape,” Rimmon (pomegranate) in Joshua 15:32 and Tappuah (apple) in Joshua 12:17.

Third, images of fruit are used as decorations, e.g., the blue, purple, and crimson pomegranates on Aaron’s priestly garments (Exodus 28:33-34) and the engraved date palm trees in Solomon’s Temple (1 Kings 6:29).

Fourth, fruits are the subjects of laws, e.g., the law in Numbers 6:3 that a Nazirite may not eat or drink grape products or the law in Deuteronomy 24:20 that one may only beat an olive tree once (the remaining olives are for the poor).

Fifth, fruits are used in a number of metaphors and similes such as, “Your breath is like the fragrance of apples” in Song of Songs 7:9 and “I found Israel [as pleasing] as grapes in the wilderness” in Hosea 9:10.

Sixth, fruits appear in curses and blessings such as “Your olives shall drop off [the tree]” in Deuteronomy 28:40 and “[Israel is a blessed] land of wheat and barley, of vines, figs and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey” in Deuteronomy 8:8.

A team from the Tell Halif archaeological excavation made their own tannur, a traditional oven referenced in the Hebrew Bible, and baked bread in it. Read all about the experiment in “Biblical Bread: Baking Like the Ancient Israelites.”

Seventh, fruits are used pedagogically in proverbs such as “He who tends to a fig tree will enjoy its fruit” in Proverbs 27:18 and “Parents eat sour grapes and their children’s teeth are blunted” in Ezekiel 18:2.

Eighth, and perhaps most obvious, fruits appear as objects in narratives, such as in Numbers 13:23, where the spies of Moses examine the grapes, pomegranates and figs of the land, and in Genesis 3, where Eve eats the forbidden fruit and is cast from Eden.

While these eight categories are neither rigid nor mutually exclusive, they illustrate the diverse treatment of fruit in the Hebrew Bible. Fruit was much more than a food for the ancient Israelites. It was a symbol that appeared prominently in the culture’s names, laws, proverbs and traditions.

When archaeologists uncover seeds, they find much more than radiocarbon data. The Biblical narrative provides a social and symbolic significance for these important foodstuffs, reminding archaeologists that there is much more to these seeds than meets the eye.

Fruit-producing gardens were some of the most luxurious parts of ancient palaces, yet there is no archaeological evidence of the most famous example–the Hanging Gardens–at Babylon. Discover why archaeologists believe this World Wonder was actually located at Assyrian Nineveh.

David Z. Moster, PhD, is a Research Fellow in Hebrew Bible at Brooklyn College and a Lecturer in Rabbinics at Nyack College. He is the author of the upcoming book Etrog: How a Chinese Fruit Became a Jewish Symbol (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). His websites are www.929chapters.com and brooklyn-cuny.academia.edu/DavidMoster.

This Bible History Daily article was originally published on January 27, 2014.

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Did Jesus’ Last Supper Take Place Above the Tomb of David?

Marek Dospěl — Sun, 30 Mar 2025 11:00:48 +0000

Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover. […] As you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. […] He will show you a large room upstairs, all furnished. Make preparations there.” (Luke 22:7–12)

This two-story stone building atop Mount Zion (below) ranks among the most intriguing sites in Jerusalem. It is traditionally called the Cenacle (from the Latin coenaculum, “dining-room”) and you will find it just outside the present-day Old City walls to the south (see map). The building’s lower story has been associated since the Middle Ages with the Tomb of David, the purported burial place of the Biblical King David, while the upper story—often referred to in English as the “Upper Room”—is traditionally believed to be the place of Jesus’ Last Supper.¹

Masonry of the Cenacle’s eastern wall clearly demonstrates its “layered” history—from the Second Temple period through the Byzantine and Crusader periods to the Ottoman period. Visible on the right is the Dormition Abbey. Photo: Courtesy of David C. Clausen.

Even though it suffered numerous natural and man-inflicted disasters and was claimed and successively held by the faithful of all three monotheistic religions, the Last Supper Cenacle remains standing as a testimony to a long-shared sacrality in the Eternal City. It has been a church, a mosque and a synagogue.

It was not until quite recently, however, that the location of Jesus’ Last Supper and the identity of this particular building were questioned and became an object of scholarly debate. David Christian Clausen, adjunct lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, examines the evidence for various claims regarding the historical purpose of the Cenacle in his Archaeological Views column “Mount Zion’s Upper Room and Tomb of David” in the January/February 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Jesus’ Last Supper and the Tomb of David are traditionally associated with the Cenacle on Mount Zion.

Regrettably, no archaeological excavation has ever been attempted at or around the alleged site of Jesus’ Last Supper and the Tomb of David on Mount Zion to assess the development, relationship or even age of the built structures. Only limited probing and non-invasive soundings were performed at different times in history—typically in association with new construction or renovation at the site.

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In his latest book,² Clausen looks at all the extant historical evidence and tries to make sense of what the limited archaeological data tell us when interpreted together with contemporary artistic representations, literary sources, accounts by Western pilgrims and the various traditions passed on through the ages.

In unraveling the complex story, Clausen tackles two sets of issues: First, when was the building we now call the Cenacle established, and what were its functions over the centuries? Second, where are the actual sites of Jesus’ Last Supper and the Tomb of David?

The presumptive Tomb of David is commemorated in the Cenacle on Mount Zion by this cenotaph. The niche visible behind the cenotaph is seen by some as evidence for the space having been a synagogue in antiquity. Photo: Courtesy of David C. Clausen.

Biblical texts locate the Tomb of David in the City of David, the ancient settlement overlooking the Kidron Valley (1 Kings 2:10 and Nehemiah 3:14–16). It was apparently only in the Middle Ages that the burial place of King David began to be expressly associated with Mount Zion. Adding to the puzzle, however, is the uncertain location of the Biblical Zion vs. the modern-day Mount Zion. Can we safely identify the Biblical Zion with the western hill we now call Mount Zion?

Modern scholars generally argue that the Biblical Zion was located on the hill east of the present-day Mount Zion, on the site where the formerly Jebusite City of David stood; they also mostly agree that Mount Zion came to be identified with the western hill only around the turn of the era. It is thus highly unlikely that the Cenacle has anything to do with the actual tomb of David.³

Where Jesus’ Last Supper took place as narrated in the Gospels is even more intricate. Unlike with the tomb of David, the location of the Last Supper’s cenacle is not specified in the Bible.⁴ Nor is the location of a number of other events associated with the same building clear, including appearances by the risen Jesus (Luke 24:36; John 20:19–29), the selection of Matthias the twelfth apostle (Acts 1:26), the first Pentecost following Easter Sunday (Acts 2:1–14), and the interment of Jesus’ brother James. And literary sources, such as the anonymous pilgrim from Bordeaux and Egeria who associate the location of Jesus’ Last Supper with Mount Zion, go back only to the fourth century C.E.

As the alleged place of congregation and worship for early Christians in Jerusalem, the Cenacle on Mount Zion would be the first Christian church ever.⁵ So, did subsequent churches at the site of today’s Cenacle honor the location of the original Upper Room? Was the Byzantine basilica of Hagia Sion (“Holy Zion”)—built in 379–381 C.E. and demolished in 1009 C.E.—constructed to incorporate the house where Jesus’ Last Supper happened? Called “the mother of all churches,” the Hagia Sion might have been, but the sixth-century mosaics of Jerusalem from Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome and St. George Church in Madaba, Jordan, which are the two earliest artistic representations of the basilica, do not support this opinion, but rather show an autonomous structure standing to the south of the Holy Zion Church.

This sixth-century C.E. mosaic map of Jerusalem from the Church of St. George in Madaba, Jordan, shows the large Byzantine basilica on Mount Zion with a small building next to it (encircled), which might be the building traditionally identified as the “Upper Room” of Jesus’ Last Supper and the Tomb of David.

Next, what is the relationship of the earliest architectural stages of the Cenacle to the Crusader-period Church of Virgin Mary and to the modern Dormition Abbey and the Basilica of the Assumption (or Dormition), built in the early 1900s over the western end of the Byzantine-era Hagia Sion?

A mosaic in the Santa Maria Maggiore Church in Rome depicts a large basilica on Mount Zion flanked by a small building—the cenacle of Jesus’ Last Supper and the Tomb of David? Photo: Courtesy of David C. Clausen.

But, most fundamentally: Do the Cenacle’s origins actually date back to Jesus’ time? Without new hard evidence—such as from excavations—this is impossible to tell for sure. Did other Biblical events traditionally associated with this building really take place at the same spot? We might never know.

Re-used in this medieval, Islamic-period dome inside the Cenacle is a Crusader-era column capital with carved eagles and other Christian symbols. Photo: Courtesy of David C. Clausen.

Some scholars, including Amit Reem of the Israel Antiquities Authority, maintain that the structures detected under the Cenacle are nothing more than just remains of a late-fourth-century Byzantine church, the Holy Zion basilica. Clausen, however, asserts that the Cenacle’s oldest elements did originate before the Byzantine period.

To learn Clausen’s full argument, read his Archaeological Views column “Mount Zion’s Upper Room and Tomb of David” in the January/February 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Subscribers: Read the full Archaeological Views column “Mount Zion’s Upper Room and Tomb of David” by David Christian Clausen in the January/February 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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Notes

1. “Room upstairs” in the opening quote from Luke’s gospel corresponds in the original Greek text to the word anagaion, which denotes any upper-floor room (or elevated part) of the house. In Luke’s gospel, it serves as a dining-room (hence the Latin coenaculum).

2. David Christian Clausen, The Upper Room and Tomb of David: The History, Art and Archaeology of the Cenacle on Mount Zion (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016).

3. See Jeffrey R. Zorn, “Is T1 David’s Tomb?” BAR, November/December 2012.

4. See Matthew 26:17–20; Mark 14:12–17; Luke 22:7–12.

5. See Bargil Pixner, “Church of the Apostles Found on Mt. Zion,” BAR, May/June 1990.

King Hezekiah in the Bible: Royal Seal of Hezekiah Comes to Light

Robin Ngo — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 12:00:28 +0000

HEZEKIAH IN THE BIBLE. The royal seal of Hezekiah, king of Judah, was discovered in the Ophel excavations under the direction of archaeologist Eilat Mazar. Photo: Courtesy of Dr. Eilat Mazar; photo by Ouria Tadmor.

The royal seal of King Hezekiah in the Bible was found in an archaeological excavation. The stamped clay seal, also known as a bulla, was discovered in the Ophel excavations led by Dr. Eilat Mazar at the foot of the southern wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The discovery was announced in a press release by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Institute of Archaeology, under whose auspices the excavations were conducted.

The bulla, which measures just over a centimeter in diameter, bears a seal impression depicting a two-winged sun disk flanked by ankh symbols and containing a Hebrew inscription that reads “Belonging to Hezekiah, (son of) Ahaz, king of Judah.” The bulla was discovered along with 33 other stamped bullae during wet-sifting of dirt from a refuse dump located next to a 10th-century B.C.E. royal building in the Ophel.

In the ancient Near East, clay bullae were used to secure the strings tied around rolled-up documents. The bullae were made by pressing a seal onto a wet lump of clay. The stamped bulla served as both a signature and as a means of ensuring the authenticity of the documents.

FREE ebook: Ten Top Biblical Archaeology Discoveries. Finds like the Pool of Siloam in Israel, where the Gospel of John says Jesus miraculously restored sight to a blind man.

Who Was King Hezekiah in the Bible?

King Hezekiah in the Bible, son and successor of Ahaz and the 13th king of Judah (reigning c. 715–686 B.C.E.), was known for his religious reforms and attempts to gain independence from the Assyrians.

The Ophel excavation area at the foot of the southern wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Photo: Andrew Shiva.

In Aspects of Monotheism: How God Is One (Biblical Archaeology Society, 1997), Biblical scholar P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., summarizes Hezekiah’s religious reforms:

According to 2 Chronicles 29–32, Hezekiah began his reform in the first year of his reign; motivated by the belief that the ancient religion was not being practiced scrupulously, he ordered that the Temple of Yahweh be repaired and cleansed of niddâ (impurity). After celebrating a truly national Passover for the first time since the reign of Solomon (2 Chronicles 30:26), Hezekiah’s officials went into the countryside and dismantled the local shrines or “high places” (bamot) along with their altars, “standing stones” (masseboth) and “sacred poles” (’aásûeµrîm). The account of Hezekiah’s reform activities in 2 Kings 18:1–8 is much briefer. Although he is credited with removing the high places, the major reform is credited to Josiah (2 Kings 22:3–23:25).

Hezekiah’s attempts to save Jerusalem from Assyrian king Sennacherib’s invasion in 701 B.C.E. are chronicled in both the Bible and in Assyrian accounts. According to the Bible, Hezekiah, anticipating the attack, fortified and expanded the city’s walls and built a tunnel, known today as Hezekiah’s Tunnel, to ensure that the besieged city could still receive water (2 Chronicles 32:2–4; 2 Kings 20:20).

The Sennacherib Prism on display in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Photo: Hanay’s image is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0/ Wikimedia Commons.

On the six-sided clay prism called the Sennacherib Prism as well as other annals of the Assyrian king, Sennacherib details in Akkadian his successful campaigns throughout Judah, bragging that he had Hezekiah trapped in Jerusalem “like a bird in a cage.” According to the Bible, however, Sennacherib ultimately failed to capture Jerusalem before his death (2 Kings 19:35–37).

The bulla discovered in the Ophel excavations represents the first time the royal seal of King Hezekiah has been found on an archaeological project.

“Although seal impressions bearing King Hezekiah’s name have already been known from the antiquities market since the middle of the 1990s—some with a winged scarab (dung beetle) symbol and others with a winged sun—this is the first time that a seal impression of an Israelite or Judean king has ever come to light in a scientific archaeological excavation,” Eilat Mazar said in the Hebrew University press release.

Bullae bearing the seal impressions of Hezekiah have been published in Biblical Archaeology Review. In the March/April 1999 issue, epigrapher Frank Moore Cross wrote about a bulla depicting a two-winged scarab. The bulla belonged to the private collection of antiquities collector Shlomo Moussaieff.¹ In the July/August 2002 issue, epigrapher Robert Deutsch discussed a bulla stamped with the image of a two-winged sun disk flanked by ankh symbols—similar to the one uncovered in the Ophel excavations. Both bullae published by Cross and Deutsch bear a Hebrew inscription reading “Belonging to Hezekiah, (son of) Ahaz, king of Judah.”

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The Hebrew University press release explains the iconography on the Ophel bulla and other seal impressions of Hezekiah:

The symbols on the seal impression from the Ophel suggest that they were made late in his life, when both the royal administrative authority and the king’s personal symbols changed from the winged scarab (dung beetle)—the symbol of power and rule that had been familiar throughout the ancient Near East, to that of the winged sun—a motif that proclaimed God’s protection, which gave the regime its legitimacy and power, also widespread throughout the ancient Near East and used by the Assyrian kings.

The prize find of the so-called Ophel treasure unearthed in the Ophel excavations is a gold medallion featuring a menorah, shofar (ram’s horn) and a Torah scroll. Photo: Courtesy of Dr. Eilat Mazar; photo by Ouria Tadmor.

The renewed excavation of the Ophel, the area between the City of David and the Temple Mount, occurred between 2009 and 2013. Under the direction of third-generation Israeli archaeologist Eilat Mazar, the excavation unearthed another extraordinary find: the so-called Ophel treasure, a cache of gold coins, gold and silver jewelry and a gold medallion featuring a menorah, shofar (ram’s horn) and a Torah scroll.

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on December 3, 2015.

Notes:

1. See also Meir Lubetski, “King Hezekiah’s Seal Revisited,” BAR, July/August 2001.

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King Hezekiah’s Seal Revisited

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A Feast for the Senses … and the Soul

Dorothy Willette — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 12:00:37 +0000

Few activities in life are as seemingly mundane yet vitally important as eating. Food is one of the bare necessities of life, and everyone—man or woman, young or old, king or servant—must eat. Thus it is perhaps not so surprising that many of the Biblical stories are set within the context of a meal.

Dating to the third millennium BC.E, this limestone plaque, discovered at Nippur depicts a well-sated goddess (center) holding a cup in one hand and a fish in the other as she relaxes on her duck-shaped throne. Behind her a male figure leads a worshiper, who is taking a small horned animal to the goddess. Photo courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania Museum (NEG S8-21978).

From the Hebrew Bible’s accounts of the food Abraham prepares for his divine visitors (Genesis 18:1–8), the stew with which Jacob deceives his aged father, Isaac (Genesis 27), and the all-important Passover meal (Exodus 12) to the New Testament’s miraculous wedding feast at Cana (John 2:1–11), the celebration for the return of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11–32), and even the Last Supper (Matthew 26; Mark 14; Luke 22; John 13), the Biblical texts provide countless examples of how ancient life was centered around meals. Ritual feasts and banquets in the Biblical world and beyond were particularly important occasions for showing devotion to a deity, solidifying social relationships and ranks, as well as teaching lessons.

In antiquity, even the gods had to eat. Temple officials in ancient Babylon and Egypt were tasked with the daily feeding of their deities. The statues of these deities were more than just depictions for their worshipers; they were themselves divine, and they needed to be fed, bathed, clothed and cared for. An elaborate ritual known as the Opening of the Mouth transformed manmade cult statues into “living” deities.¹ The ritual included offering choice meats, honey, fruit and beer for the god’s statue to eat and drink, and even water to wash with after the meal.

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In the religious practice of ancient Babylon and Egypt, the gods depended on their worshipers to provide sustenance. Thus in the Book of Zephaniah, the prophet warns that “The Lord will be against them; he will shrivel all the gods of the earth” (Zephaniah 2:11). The root of the Hebrew word translated as “shrivel” means “to make lean” or “to famish,” suggesting that Yahweh could cause rival deities to starve by cutting off their supply of food and drink.

The Israelites, too, made offerings of food and drink to their god, but since Yahweh was not represented by a statue or in any visual form, these sacrifices were burnt up or poured out on the altar. The Book of Numbers records the precise offerings of meat, grain and drink that were required by God twice each day, and more on the Sabbath and Passover festivals (Numbers 28).

Ritual feasts and banquets proved to be important social and political tools throughout Israel’s history. This was especially true in the early years of the Israelite monarchy. As one scholar has noted, “The king’s table was very important for creating and maintaining political support amongst the emerging elite. To be admitted to the table would have been an important marker of social status and influence.”² Thus was David invited to dine at Saul’s table (1 Samuel 20), and later David invites Uriah the Hittite to eat and drink at his own table in an attempt to cover the king’s affair with Uriah’s wife Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11). According to the Bible, King Solomon’s daily provisions from the district governors of flour, grain, meat and fowl (1 Kings 4:22–23, 26–28) were on a scale large enough to provide sumptuous meals for thousands of people. Likewise, lavish Persian feasts feature prominently at important points in the Book of Esther (1:11, 2:18, 5:4–8, 7:1–8, 9:18–23).³

The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci (1495-1498) depicts a Western European dining style instead of the reclining position that was common at Greco-Roman banquets of the ancient world. Art Resource, NY.

In later Judaism, meals had become familiar expressions of common identity, social unity and communal celebration.⁴ The community associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls came together at banquets, as did the Pharisees with others of their kind to partake of pure food and company. Even the weekly Sabbath meal was an occasion for families to come together and enjoy a night of festive fellowship unique to their own heritage.

So great were these celebratory communal meals that the afterlife came to be viewed as a great banquet at the end of time.⁵ The Hebrew Bible and extrabiblical Jewish writings describe the great messianic feast on the mountain of the Lord: “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-matured wines” (Isaiah 25:6ff.). It will be an “unfailing table” (4 Ezra 9:19) where “the righteous and elect ones…shall eat and rest and rise with that Son of Man forever and ever” (1 Enoch 62:12–14). This theme was later picked up by the authors of the New Testament.

A team from the Tell Halif archaeological excavation made their own tannur, a traditional oven referenced in the Hebrew Bible, and baked bread in it. Read all about the experiment in “Biblical Bread: Baking Like the Ancient Israelites.”

Perhaps the oldest and most important feast celebrated by the Israelites and later by Jews is the Passover. With its roots in the Exodus account, the original feast consisted of a sacrificial lamb, bitter herbs and unleavened bread eaten by each family at home (Exodus 12). The blood of the lamb was brushed on the doorposts so that the angel of the Lord would spare the lives of each Israelite household. After the Passover, the next seven days constituted the Feast of Unleavened Bread. (Today both of these feasts are celebrated together under the name Passover.)

Under the Israelite monarchy and the establishment of the Temple in Jerusalem, the sacrifice and celebration of Passover became a centralized affair. It was now a national pilgrimage festival, bringing families to Jerusalem from all over Israel.⁶ The sacrificial lambs—still a crucial part of the feast’s observance—were brought to the Temple to be slaughtered and offered by the priests. Families who were able ate the Passover meal together there in Jerusalem.

Jews who could not make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem to offer the Passover sacrifice were still able to recognize the holiday by holding a special meal, discussing the significance of the day and observing the Feast of Unleavened Bread. After the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E., the traditional Passover celebration evolved to look more like this feast. The sacrifice of the lamb was no longer central without the priests and a Temple. The rabbis of the Mishnah (which was edited around 200 C.E.) elevated the non-sacrificial aspects of the feast—including the unleavened bread and bitter herbs—to allow for continued observance. Thus, the Passover seder was born. This structured meal of special foods, questions, teaching and singing—now located once again entirely in the domestic sphere—is still the central feature of Jewish Passover celebrations today.

Corbis This lavishly decorated triclinium was part of a Roman home in Herculaneum.

Some have speculated that the Last Supper, recounted in some form in all four of the Gospels, might have been a Passover seder. However, this is clearly not the case in the Gospel of John. For theological reasons the author put the Last Supper before the Passover feast (John 13:1); Jesus is killed at the same moment the lambs are sacrificed in the Temple—in effect making him the new Passover sacrifice (John 19:28–37). In Matthew, Mark and Luke’s gospels, the Last Supper is explicitly identified as the Passover meal (Matthew 26:17; Mark 14:12; Luke 22:7), but since Jesus and his disciples were celebrating in Jerusalem, decades before the destruction of the Temple, it would not yet have taken the form of a seder. Their feast was a traditional sacrificial Passover meal.

Read Andrew McGowan’s article “The Hungry Jesus,” in which he challenges the tradition that Jesus was a welcoming host at meals, in Bible History Daily.

These meals did not develop in a vacuum, however. Just as the early Israelites had adopted the practice of offering food and drink to their god from their ancient Near Eastern neighbors, so too did later Passover feasts and seders (including the Last Supper) take on the form of traditional Greco-Roman banquets, albeit with their own particular Jewish influences and meaning.

A typical Greco-Roman feast featured diners reclining on couches—propped up on their left elbows—around a central table or a few smaller tables in a dining room (called an andron in Greek and triclinium or stibadium in Latin).⁷ Among the Greeks, usually only men reclined at these banquets; respectable women (such as the wives of the diners), if present, sat upright at the foot of the couches where the men reclined (cf. Luke 10:39) and usually left before the less wholesome entertainment of the evening began (which often included less-respectable women). Roman women, however, often attended banquets and reclined with the men. Food was generally served in a few communal dishes, in which diners would dip their bread or eat with their hands. Wine flowed freely and was served in bowls. Music, poetry, dancers, debate and even sexual play were all common forms of entertainment at these events.

The dinner entertainment at Greek and Roman banquets often included prostitutes and musicians, both shown in the banquet scene decorating a Greek red figure vase, probably made in southern Italy or Sicily in the fifth or fourth century B.C.E. Scala/Art Resource, NY.

As in the Israelite monarchy, Greco-Roman feasts functioned as important social and political tools. Scholar Dennis E. Smith noted that “meals were a means of creating and solidifying social bonds.”⁸ Where a person was positioned at a banquet made it quite clear where he fell in the pecking order among the attendees. The place of honor was immediately to the right of the host and then continued around the table in decreasing order, leaving the lowest guest at the far end. It was not uncommon for the lower guests to receive different (i.e., lower quality) food from what was being served to the host and honored guests.

Reconstruction of a banquet in a typical triclinium, based on a mosaic floor design from a Roman villa. Ancient diners reclined on their left elbows and ate with their right hands. Drawing by Romney Oualline Nesbitt/©Romney Oualline Nesbitt and Dennis E. Smith.

Understanding this social order and dining structure is important for properly interpreting several passages in the New Testament. Jesus often used the meal setting as a teaching opportunity. Rather than dining only with the elite, he shared his meals with sinners, tax collectors and other social outcasts (Matthew 9:10; Mark 2:15; Luke 5:29).⁹ Instead of letting the lowest guest at a meal serve the others, he set an example of service by washing his disciples’ feet (John 13:1–17).¹⁰ He taught them humility by telling them always to take the lowest place at a table, rather than endure the potential shame of being displaced by a higher-ranking guest (Luke 14:7–10). The Gospel of John says that at the Last Supper the beloved disciple was reclining in the bosom of Jesus, which means that he was seated next to him in the position of honor (John 13:23). The fact that Judas was close enough to accept a piece of bread “dipped in the dish” from Jesus suggests that he, too, may have been reclining nearby. And of course commemoration of this Last Supper developed into the Eucharist—an important ritual and communal meal for all Christians.

The Last Supper is history’s most famous meal. Read Jonathan Klawans’s full Bible Review article “Was Jesus’ Last Supper a Seder?” and his updated article “Jesus’ Last Supper Still Wasn’t a Passover Seder Meal” for FREE in Bible History Daily.

Community meals were also an important teaching tool for Paul—especially with the first Christians at Corinth. Ritual feasts of sacrificial meat offered to the gods at pagan temples were an extremely common occurrence in Corinth, but they posed a conflict of interest for some of these early Christians.¹¹ For Paul, the problem was not really the consumption of idol meat per se (because “we know that ‘an idol has no real existence,’” 1 Corinthians 8:4), but rather the effect that such temple feasts could have on the Christian community. Meals were all about whom you socialized with, so rather than associating with the drunkenness and debauchery of the usual Greco-Roman feasts, and potentially causing a fellow believer to “stumble” (1 Corinthians 8:9–13), Paul preferred private meals shared in common with other Christians—to help build and strengthen the community.

In this first-century painted marble tomb carving from Trier, Germany, formally dressed diners lie on a couch and sit on chairs around a table with a meal of cakes, fruit and wine. These scenes likely depict past meals with the deceased. Erich Lessing.

The early Christians also combined another traditional Greco-Roman meal, the funerary banquet, with their own interpretation of the Jewish messianic banquet.¹² Roman tombs and sarcophagi depict scenes of the deceased feasting with this family. It was also common for family members and friends to hold a banquet in honor of the deceased in special dining rooms constructed nearby for these memorial meals (called refrigeria in Latin). Christian burials in Roman catacombs show evidence of this practice as well, but for them it meant something more than simply remembering the deceased.

Seven young men are pictured enjoying a lively repast in frescoes from burial chambers in the Catacomb of Callistus in Rome. The third-century catacomb contains some of the earliest known Christian art, including several similar paintings of banquets meant to represent the afterlife. Scala/Art Resource, NY.

Jesus recalled the tradition of the messianic banquet at the Last Supper: “I tell you that I shall not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink of it new with you in my Father’s kingdom” (Matthew 26:29). Dennis Smith sees another connection in the story of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19–21): “The poor man, who once longed for a crumb from the rich man’s table, is now ’in the bosom of Abraham’ (Luke 16:23), that is to say, reclining just to the right of Abraham himself, in a position of honor, at the banquet of the afterlife.”¹³ Paintings on the walls of the catacombs depict this heavenly banquet and represent a wish for the deceased to enjoy a sumptuous feast in the society of all the blessed in paradise.¹⁴

The Bible History Daily article “A Feast for the Senses … and the Soul” was originally published in March 2013.

Dorothy Resig Willette was the managing editor of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Notes

1. See Dominic Rudman, “When Gods Go Hungry,” Bible Review, June 2002.

2. See Nathan MacDonald, Not Bread Alone: The Uses of Food in the Old Testament (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2008) p. 157. MacDonald, p. 203.

3. See Bruce Chilton, “The Eucharist—Exploring Its Origins,” Bible Review, December 1994.

4. See Dennis E. Smith, “Dinner with Jesus & Paul,” Bible Review, August 2004.

5. See Baruch M. Bokser, “Was the Last Supper a Passover Seder?” Bible Review, Spring 1987.

6. See Smith, “Dinner with Jesus & Paul.”

7. See Smith, “Dinner with Jesus & Paul.”

8. See Chilton, “The Eucharist—Exploring Its Origins.”

9. See Smith, “Dinner with Jesus & Paul.”

10. See Ben Witherington, “Why Not Idol Meat?” Bible Review, June 1994.

11. See Robin A. Jensen, “Dining in Heaven,” Bible Review, October 1998.

13. See Smith, “Dinner with Jesus & Paul.”

14. See Jensen, “Dining in Heaven.”

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The Eucharist—Exploring Its Origins

When Gods Go Hungry

Dinner with Jesus & Paul

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Why Not Idol Meat?

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Treasures in Clay Jars

Mark Wilson — Tue, 27 Aug 2024 13:00:47 +0000

A coin hoard stored in a clay jar at the Aydın Museum. Photo: Mark Wilson.

Several years ago a well-known New Testament scholar visited Antalya, Turkey. The two of us spoke to a group of pastors and their spouses from international churches in Europe and the Middle East.

During one session my friend spoke about a familiar text written by the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:7: “But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.” The Greek word for clay is ostrakinos, from which the archaeological term “ostraca”—pottery sherds—is derived. He argued that the references to light in verses 4 and 6 strongly suggest that clay lamps were the ceramic objects in Paul’s mind when he wrote this passage. So Paul developed his analogy about the fragility of the human body from the clay lamps used in antiquity to provide light.

Such lamps are discovered regularly at archaeological excavations. My friend’s idea seemed plausible, but because Paul used the general word vessel (skeuos) and not the specific word for lamp (lychnos), I was not totally sold on this interpretation.

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On the post-conference tour we joined a group traveling to Cyprus. There we visited the Cyprus National Museum in Nicosia, which houses a small but rich collection of artifacts. One display in particular jumped out at me—a clay pot lying on its side with a bunch of coins spilling out of its mouth. The description said it was a coin hoard found nearby dating from the first century C.E.

The topic of coin hoards caught my interest, and I discovered that archaeologists and treasure hunters working in the Greco-Roman world have found thousands of such hoards. The size of these hoards ranges from fifty to fifty thousand coins. The coins were buried in clay jars for safe keeping, often in times of warfare or instability.

Coins were also hoarded for ritual purposes as votive offerings. The phenomenon was so well known that Jesus told a parable about a man who found such a hoard and sold all his possessions to buy the field (Matthew 13:44). The Greek word for “treasure” (thesaurus) used by Jesus is the same word that Paul used in 2 Corinthians 4:7. So they seem to be talking about the same thing!

Several coin hoards have been discovered at recent Israeli excavations. Read The Ophel Treasure, Fatimid Treasure Discovered at Crusader-Era Apollonia-Arsuf and Bountiful Hoard Discovered Near Kiryat Gat. Interested in ancient coins? Learn about a recent numismatics conference in a post by Mark Wilson.

Coin hoards can be seen in many archaeological museums in Turkey. One of the most famous—the Elmalı Hoard—is now on display in the Antalya Archaeological Museum. In 1984 three Turks with a metal detector discovered a clay jar buried in a muddy field. The jar contained some 1900 silver coins struck by the Attica-Delos League. The hoard included fourteen rare, medallion-sized decadrahmi produced by Athens to celebrate its victory over the Persians.

The hoard was smuggled illegally out of Turkey and sold to collectors, much of it going to the wealthy American businessman William I. Koch. After a decade-long lawsuit initiated by the Turkish government, Koch returned 1,661 coins to Turkey in 1999.

While visiting the new archaeological museum at Aydın (ancient Tralles) recently, I saw two coin hoards on display. The hoards were found at excavations nearby and consisted of Hellenistic bronze coins (4th century B.C.E) and silver Roman coinage (40–270 C.E.). The clay jars that contained these hoards were well-preserved and displayed next to the coins (see one in photo).

The ubiquity of hoards in antiquity, both in time and region, suggests that the phenomenon was so well known that Paul could reasonably use it as an analogy. However, these treasures—the coin hoards mentioned in 2 Corinthians 4:7—were never placed in clay lamps but rather in clay jars.

Mark Wilson is the director of the Asia Minor Research Center in Antalya, Turkey, and is the host for BAS’s tours of Turkey, including Abraham’s Country and the Ancient Civilizations of Turkey. Mark received his doctorate in Biblical Studies from the University of South Africa (Pretoria), where he serves as a Research Fellow in the Department of Old Testament and Biblical Archaeology. He is currently Visiting Professor of Early Christianity at Regent University and leads field studies in Turkey for several universities and seminaries. He is the author of Charts on the Book of Revelation, the revising editor of The Cities of St. Paul, editor of Constantinople and the Scenery of the Seven Churches of Asia Minor and the author of “The Book of Revelation” in the Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary. Professor Wilson also served as a consultant for “The First Christians” in the History Channel’s “Lost Worlds” series.

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Destroying a Temple

Money Talks through Ancient Coins

Of Pirates and Virgins: Greek and Turkish Scholars Colloquiating

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BAR Jr.: Sharp Eyes Find Ancient Treasure on the Beach

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A version of this post originally appeared in Bible History Daily in 2013

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