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Religious Pron - Archaeology and Tradition 2

Apr 22, 2022, 2:31 PM

Religious Pron – Archaeology and Tradition

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The Mount of Olives...or today, more like mount of tombstones. Definitely a real place. No tradition needed. Jews want to be buried there because when their messiah comes, he will triumphantly arrive first at the Golden, or Eastern Gate, to Jerusalem, just out of frame on the left.

Tombstone city. Not many olives, but a lot of stone.

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The Eastern Gate. The oldest gate in town. Where the Jewish messiah will enter Jerusalem, raise the dead, and usher in heaven on earth with Jerusalem at its center. In Judaism, God brings Heaven to you, so you don’t have to go anywhere – sort of. They call it The World To Come.

But the gate is prime real estate, and folks are buried right up to the front door, because you definitely want to be first in line for that event. It’s the Jewish version of front row concert seats.

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In Jesus’s day the whole wall and gate was lower, because people have a way of piling up trash and shid through the centuries into mounds called “tells.” It was also open, so he could have easily walked from the Temple through the gate, maybe after thrashing a few money-changers. Then he could walk right on over to the Mount of Olives for a sermon, say. Very convenient.

My, how the place has grown. When the Jews pine for “Zion”, they are speaking allegorically but also literally. Zion is a mount, and a town district, as you can see below. Note Calvary Hill just north of the Third Wall, where the Romans broke in in 70AD. Mount of Olives to the right.

Model of the Second Temple (Herod’s, not Solomon’s), and the Eastern Gate, at the time Romans blew it all up. With old Jerusalem behind it. The Romans didn’t bother scaling those massive walls at the Temple. They just came up the stairs though the Antonia Fortress, that little square building in the upper right hand corner. Josephus wrote all about it.

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The very concept of a messiah, like say Jesus, has a definite start date. That is, the Jews weren’t always looking for one. The Hebrews with Moses weren’t, nor were the Judges. You won’t even find the term anywhere in the Old Testament. The birth of the concept is tied to the destruction of Israel by Assyria, and the later destruction of Judah by Babylon. They speak of a savior in the OT, but the two words have slightly different historical meanings.

So the Jew’s expected messiah, originally, was just a man who would put their smashed country back together, not a divine being. Many considered Cyrus the Persian, who freed them from Babylon, to be that man, among other potential messiahs. But Cyrus wasn’t of the Davidic line, nor was Jesus. And so the Jews are still holding out for a hero to this day.

The Eastern Wall from the Valley of Kidron, between Jerusalem and The Mount of Olives.

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Not only did Jesus not free the Jews from Roman rule, not long after he died Rome demolished their entire country yet again. Permanently this time, until 1948. So you can see why there might have been some disagreement about whether Jesus was the messiah, from the Jewish perspective, for about 2000 years, and to this day. He was about as anti-messiah as you can get, in their minds.

The First Jewish Revolt (of three), against Rome. Masada is that tiny, last dot of zealot holdouts down by the word “Lake”

Masada. The end of the line for Jewish resistance.

Modern Israel flying over ancient Israel. The Dead Sea is directly below these planes, Masada right behind them, and the Mediterranean Sea is on the horizon. Israel is tiny - we’ll get to that later in the post.

You can see the ramp the Romans built to the top of Masada to root out the last Jewish holdouts, 2000 years ago. Built Ford Tough? Built Roman Tough. You can still use that ramp to this day.

And the squarish Roman camps are still there too. About 8 of them circling the mountain. It took them three years in the blazing desert to win, but the Romans never leave a fight.

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The Tomb of the Prophets, on the Mount of Olives, with gravestones behind. A suitable resting place for Old Testament superstars Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. Also definitely there, not traditional. But hold on...

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Archaeology has shown that the tombs beneath those fancy buildings were dug in the 1st Century BCE, and those three prophets died 500 years earlier in the 6th Century BCE. So are they here? Were they moved here from older tombs? Or did they even exist at all? The tombs are definitely there, but what about the people? Welcome to “Religious Pron – Archaeology and Tradition”

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We had some really great responses to last week’s post. You guys really took it up a notch with your contributions, so many thanks for that.

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To those with even a passing interest in this stuff, I’ll point you as much to the prior comments as the OP itself. Some really, really good stuff down in there. Even some dabbling in philosophy. Dew check it out.

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We left off last time touching on tradition, which I consider to be the filler between fact and faith.
(Mrs. English would have given me a gold star in 7th grade composition class for that little bit of alliterative magic.)

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Specific finds tied to history are sometimes are really, really hard to come by in archaeology. Like, the Tomb of X, or the House of Y, or the Temple of Z. It’s not as easy as a square peg in a square hole.

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That’s the issue with “historical” archaeology. Once you start hunting for specific (rather than general) things and places, and stop analyzing what you find scientifically, you face the risk of tainting the process. And answering one question prematurely just pops another one up.

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There’s a maxim in science that “you will always find what you are looking for.” That is, the very way you set up your experiment will affect what it does, or does not, reveal.

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If you are familiar with Young’s Two-Slit experiment, it shows this as phenomenon well as anything.

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Set the experiment up one way, and light will be shown to be a particle. Set it up another way, and light will be shown to be a wave. So you have, in effect, helped determine the answer merely by what question you ask or what experiment you run.

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So, so much we just don’t understand. Duality may simply be the mark of a simple mind. How much gray do we miss by forcing things to be black, or white?

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The same thing happens in archaeology too. It’ s interesting when things do match up, but if you force the connection it can sometimes hurt both the science and the religion.

Sometimes, people simply get too zealous in their quest for “proof.” Not too long ago, an archaeologist found the ruins of an ancient home by the Sea of Galilee with a fish hook in it. He declared it was “Peter’s House.” W T F?

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They even put a sign up that said so...

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So you find a fishhook, by a lake, in some ruins, and suddenly it belonged to Peter? What about James, or John, or Andrew, or any other thousands of random fisherman on the Sea of Galilee throughout the centuries? That is QUITE a jump to go from one very random hook to a very specific Peter.

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Now, this archaeologist clearly made that claim to get attention, and probably some funding too. And it worked. Because people are people. But stuff like that doesn’t help science, and it doesn’t help religion.

No person of faith I have ever known has their faith shaken because Noah’s ark hasn’t been found, any more than they would have it bouyed if it was found. All you could ever definitively say was that you found a boat, built by a guy named Noah, who probably believed in the Jewish god. But that’s it. That’s as far as you could go with “proof.”

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Because once you tie yourself to the logic that physical evidence leads to spiritual “proof”, where does it end?

If someone finds a temple to Ba’al in Canaan, does that mean Ba’al existed, or just that someone believed Ba’al existed and built a temple to him? Science, vs. religion.

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An altar to Ba’al in Canaan. Sorry Ba’al, this doesn’t prove that you exist. You might, but this won’t prove it.

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The Temple to Diana outside of Ephesus. Same deal.

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Except we do know Diana existed because Michael Jackson sang about her

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So this brings us back around to tradition. Maybe something happened, just not exactly where, or how, it was recorded. Maybe because the where or how weren’t as important as the event or message itself.

And corroboration helps too. Take Jesus for instance. Now, if he was only in the pages of the Bible, that would be one thing. The Leviathan is also in the Bible, as is the 7-headed beast of Revelation. And while believing a man existed is not a big deal, monsters and giant fish are a bit more of a stretch.

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Job couldn’t handle the Leviathan, but God could. It’s referenced in the Book of Job, with much more info in the non-canonical books of Esdras and Baruch

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But, the fact that Jesus is recorded in the New Testament by those who loved him, and in Jewish texts outside the Bible by those who hated him, and even in Roman texts by those who didn’t care about him either way, is pretty good corroboration that he existed.

Triple corroboration is almost impossible to find in any ancient texts. And so, aside from the divine and messianic skepticisms the Pharisees and Romans had, the evidence that Jesus was at minimum a man who walked the earth is pretty darn good. Better than for a lot of ancient kings in fact, whose names might be listed only once in all history on a single King List.

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Of course, context and claims also have to also be factored into beliefs. A Leviathan sized fish could be interpreted as a whale (well, mammal), but I’ve never personally known anyone who’s lived in one’s belly for three days.

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Looking at you, Jonah. Maybe a person could live a few seconds in a belly if they had a chainsaw, but 3 days? That requires a whole other level of belief. So is the Jonah story about fish gastroenterology, or is it a metaphor for something else?

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And then there’s Opie. Opie did once meet a giant who walked in the tree tops wearing a big silver hat, who jingled when he walked, and who could blow smoke out of his ears. No one believed Opie, till they saw the giant for themselves. So you never really know what is fact and what is metaphor.

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Opie and the mysterious Mr. McBeavy

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When trying to prove those things that can be proved archaeologically, it does help that the area of the Middle East we are talking about is really small. The entire ancient Sumerian civilization was a few dozen or so 5,000-50,000 person cities strung along 100 miles of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. So their “empire” stretched about from Clemson to Cootlumbia. There are probably more people living on that stretch of I-85/385/26 today than ever lived in Sumeria.

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The entire Sea of Galilee would easily fit into Lake Marion or Lake Moultrie, with plenty of room to spare. You can stand on the shore of any part of the Sea of Galilee and still see every part of the opposite shore.

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The place has some wicked storms, though, as shown in these classic paintings by Brueghel and Rembrandt of Jesus calming the seas

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The entire Sinai Peninsula would easily fit into South Carolina, with tons of room to spare. In fact, I have heard of quite a few SC football fans who wandered aimlessly in the wilderness for 40 years, just like the Hebrews traditionally did in the Sinai.

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Bethlehem is only 6 miles from Jerusalem. That’s closer than Seneca is to Clemson. And the entire land that Jesus walked in the New Testament would fit into the area from Clemson to Gaffney.

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In fact, all of ancient Israel would fit in the Southern California. LA is the big grey blob in the middle, the House Wives of Orange County are in the green area south of LA, and San Diego and the obvious bay are farther on the right. Las Vegas, the lesser Death Valley, and the fictional Area 51 are just off the map at top center.

It’s 100 miles from LA to San Diego, and 100 miles from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea. All of ancient Israel would fit in the area from the grey to the bay. Tiny.

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The easiest things to find archaeologically are cities. Scores of ancient cities have been located. Many not excavated at all, even today. Just mounds of earth, broken pottery, and eroded mud brick called a “Tel” (mound) or a “Har” (mountain), like Har-Megiddo (Armageddon)

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Beer-sheba (or, The Well of the Oath). A mountain of ancient cities stacked on top of each other, waiting to be fully excavated.

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Ancient Jericho. Another stack of cities. Lots of valuable historical stuff found, but no trumpets, and no crumbled walls found, yet. Tradition.

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But what’s much harder than finding cities, if not impossible, is to verify what may have happened in those cities. So many of the spots considered to be holy in Christianity are just traditional, and that’s as close as archaeology can get.

And as the last post covered, almost all the early churches built in Israel were on spots selected by Emperor Constantine’s mother, with local input, over 300 years after Jesus died.

Like, the exact spot where he was born…

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in the Church of the Nativity, in Bethlehem

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Where the Last Supper took place…

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Room of the Last Supper, Jerusalem

Sorry, Leonardo

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and the Virgin Mary’s birthplace…

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Anyhow, If you ever travel in the Holy Land you will find the guides there make one thing very clear...all the sites are “traditional.” For so many things religious, nobody really knows for sure, there’s very little proof of anything, and so you’ve got to rely on faith, whatever yours is.

And that’s probably a good thing. After all, do you really need proof if you truly believe in something? And if you prove everything, what need is there of faith at all?

And with that we’re ready for Mesopotamia!

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Often, the traditional holy sites are even tailored to your specific beliefs.

For instance, some Protestants consider the tomb of Christ to be here, at the lovely “Garden Tomb”...

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Some Catholics consider the tomb of Christ to be here, back in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, just a few steps from the site of Christ’s crucifixion at Calvary, conveniently located in the same church.

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Or, Jesus may have been crucified here, at the Skull of Golgotha, instead of at the Holy Sepulchre location

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Some Franciscan Friars consider Christ’s tomb to be here, at the Empty Tomb...

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And the Muslims believe Jesus never even died. He simply rose up to heaven, laughing at those who thought they had killed him - a tradition also shared by the early Christian Gnostics.

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This is the Christ Tomb in Kasmir, India. It’s administered by a splinter sect of Muslims who are denounced by mainstream Islam, who state “the very idea that Christ would ever be buried, or have a tomb, anywhere on the earth is a blasphemy to Islam. He rose.”

How many opinions do you want? How many people do you have?

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And this is the Tomb of Jesus in Shingo, Japan. According to this tradition, Jesus didn’t die on the cross at Golgotha either. Instead, his brother Isukiri took his place, while Jesus fled across Siberia to Japan. Once there, he changed his name to Torai Tora Daitenku and became a rice farmer. He eventually died at the age of 106. If Jesus could come to America and found Mormonism, why not Japan?

Domo arigato, tradition!

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Thanks for your reply Burning.

>Why believe a fabulist about anything?

I haven't heard the term "fabulist' before but that's a good one. "Peter's House" is a very important and valuable archaeological find, but short of having a name on a sarcophagus or "Caesar X" chiseled in the side of a Triumphant column or arch, it's darn near impossible to attribute specific people to specific buildings.

People just get excited. It's human nature, and it takes discipline to temper expectations and conclusions. A few years back there was even a sarcophagus with the name "Jesus" on it found somewhere in Israel. Naturally, people's minds raced. But it was found nowhere physically near anything described in the Bible, and after dating turned out not in the right time frame either for Jesus of Nazareth. But that wasn't unusual, it was a pretty common name.

The name "Jesus" itself means "Yahweh is salvation" - a Jewish name to the core, from the words Ya (Yawheh) and Yasha (to deliver).

In Hebrew the word merger Ya-Yasha becomes “Yeshua” or, “Joshua” in English. So Joshua was technically named Jesus too.

When the word Yeshua is translated into Koine Greek ( or, Common Greek), however, it becomes “Iesous.” And when Iesous is translated into English, it becomes “Jesus.” So were it not for the Greeks we wouldn’t know Jesus as Jesus. A byproduct of Alexander the Great ruling the known world for the brief period of his life. Then his empire split three ways...we’ll get to all that in a few weeks.

Anyhow the point is that even a name isn’t enough proof sometimes to make a “fabulist” leap.

>citing that as proof that Israel's worship of Yahweh must have started later.

I hadn’t heard that but it would be an interesting read. But again, hard if not impossible to prove, I agree. There are some archaeological issues with the Conquest/Judges/Monarchy periods as well, just like Exodus, and it’s a topic of hot debate right now.

The root issue is that yet again, the rocks don’t match the text. For instance, Ai is seemingly right where it should be, and it was destroyed and rebuilt multiple times, but the time frames don’t match the Biblical chronology. Sort of like finding ancient Atlanta and saying “Well, we have evidence of it burning down in 1820 and in 2100, but there’s no evidence it burned down in 1864. What gives?” It’s like a massive puzzle where you always have to challenge your old, and new, assumptions.

>Bible has more historical support

Yes, it’s quite remarkable, especially for those things which can be proven archaeologically. And particularly the New Testament, which is the newest portion. But in all cultures, the farther back you go the more scarce the documentation. Egypt might be the exception, because it was so stable for so long, and didn’t suffer the political turmoil of Mesopotamia, which I plan to be the next post.

>what leads you to say Jesus wasn't from the Davidic line?

This is the Orthodox Jewish position, and one (along with the military expectation, and the expected building of the Third Temple) of the reasons they don’t accept Jesus as the Messiah. They’re looking at the patrilineal line line from David-Solomon-Rehoboam and then on to Jehoiachin and finally to poor Zedekiah who only ruled 3 months before the Babylonians showed up on his and Judah’s doorstep.

At Rehoboam the 10 tribes split off under Jeroboam, and eventually met their fate with the Assyrians. So once the ancient unified nation of Israel split into Israel and Judah, Israel was out of the lineage by Orthodox thought. Similarly, when the Maccabees appeared they supported a non-Davidic ruler as well. It’s a great story and probably worth a post of its own at some point.

It’s also a hot topic, because Christianity has its interpretation as well, in which Jesus is of course of the required lineage. They trace Jesus’ lineage through Mary by way of Nathan I believe, and declare the matrilineal line is the correct line because Jeremiah cursed the Davidic line in Jeremiah 22:30:

“...for none of his offspring will prosper, none will sit on the throne of David or rule anymore in Judah.”

It’s all riveting debate if you are a fan of genealogy and ancestry stuff.

>When you say the OT doesn't use the term Messiah

Yes, you are right on the trail, and a few weeks ahead of me in fact. The word Messiah is never used in the OT exactly because it is of Post-Exilic (captivity) thought. And this is where it gets tangled with which parts of the OT were actually written first, vs. which parts are presented first. That is, books written before captivity and books written after. It’s quite complex and I’m sure will be controversial as well, so I want to save it till I get the ancient political foundations down first so it all has historical context.

The word Messiah is very specific in that it means “anointed with oil” in Hebrew, which was a part of the ritual holy consecration of kings, priests, and prophets, etc. Even Cyrus got the “holy” treatment in Isaiah 45:1

“Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped,”

So in its most specific sense, even Cyrus was a “messiah” because he too was anointed with oil, or at least was viewed to be worthy of it. He fit the bill of a messiah to the Jews. He saved Israel (well, more specifically, Judah) from Babylon. And he helped rebuild their temple. But he was only a man, and there was never an expectation that he would be any more than that in Jewish thought.

This is from an online Jewish Encyclopedia:

“This prophet, Cyrus, through whom were to be redeemed His chosen people, whom He would glorify before all the world, was the promised Messiah, "the Shepherd of Yhwh" (xliv. 28, xlv. 1).”
CYRUS - JewishEncyclopedia.com

Cyrus was the “Messiah” of his day. And then Rome came and wrecked the house again, and so now a new Messiah must arrive, in Jewish thought.

So “messiah” is a very specific term, in both meaning and the time it was used. “Savior”, and other like terms, are older and can be found all over both the OT and NT. Often, but not always, in the context of the Exodus:

Psalm 106:21 - “They forgot God, their Savior, who had done great things in Egypt”

Isaiah 19:20 - It will be a sign and a witness to the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt. When they cry to the Lord because of oppressors, he will send them a savior and defender, and deliver them.

In short, “savior” is a more general term, and messiah is a more specific term. And in Christian thought, Messiah becomes even MORE specific, because it obviously ties in with divinity and Original Sin and other concepts. And, as you might expect, in Islam, messiah has yet a different meaning.

>you didn't screw around with Rome

That is a fact. It’s hard to convey the impact having your city literally razed to the ground had on the Jews. Think Patton standing in the ruins of what Rome did to Carthage. When Rome got fed up, they just wiped the slate clean. It’s remarkable that Judaism, and hence Christianity, even survived at all.

Great, great questions!

Religious Pron - Archaeology and Tradition 2

That's top shelf entertainment right there.***

Very informative post, as always.

Re: Very informative post, as always.

Re: Very informative post, as always.

Re: Very informative post, as always.

Re: Very informative post, as always.

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