Cities Through the Looking Glass: Essays on the History and Archaeology of Biblical Urbanism 9781575065878

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Cities through the Looking Glass

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Cities through the Looking Glass Essays on the History and Archaeology of Biblical Urbanism

Edited by Rami Arav

Winona Lake, Indiana Eisenbrauns 2008

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Dedicated to the memory of

Clifton Brooks Batchelder ç Copyright 2008 by Eisenbrauns. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

www.eisenbrauns.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cities through the looking glass : essays on the history and archaeology of Biblical urbanism / edited by Rami Arav. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-57506-142-9 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Cities and towns—Biblical teaching. 2. Cities and towns, Ancient—Middle East. 3. Urbanization—Middle East. 4. Bible. O.T.—Antiquities. 5. Middle East—Antiquities. I. Arav, Rami. BS680.C5C58 2007 220.8u30776—dc22 2007049428

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. †‘

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Contents Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rami Arav

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Landscape of Shadows: The Image of City in the Hebrew Bible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Nicolae Roddy Gospel Cities: Real, Imagined, and Avoided . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Paul Allen Williams Text and the City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Leonard Greenspoon The City and the Philosopher in Ancient Greece . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Laura W. Grams Urbanism in Galilee: A Study of Kinneret, Hazor, Dan, and Tzer in the Iron Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 John T. Greene The Fortified City of Bethsaida: The Case of an Iron Age Capital City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Rami Arav Jerusalem between the Hasmoneans and Herod the Great . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Dan Bahat

Indexes Index of Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Index of Scripture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Index of Other Ancient Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

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Preface The essays in this book were inspired by papers presented at the Conference on Urbanism in the Biblical World that took place on October 28–30, 2003, at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. This conference was part of the annual series of the Clifton Batchelder Conference for Biblical Archaeology and the Bethsaida Excavations Project. The conference has been structured so that text scholars and materialculture scholars interact and write alongside each other. This interdisciplinary approach created a unique atmosphere of viable productivity between scholars from different disciplines who, although sharing a common interest in the ancient world, seldom meet. There were scholars researching ancient Greek philosophy, biblical scholars, and archaeologists. The conference concluded with the suggestion that the papers read and the interaction created need to be shared by the large community of scholars and laymen. Although there are often conferences on urbanism or on some aspects of urbanism, not too many engage in an interdisciplinary approach, and few, to the best of my knowledge, deal with the quests posted in this book; even fewer are published and see the light of day. The authors and the Bethsaida Excavations Project team are grateful to the many people who made the excavations and the conference possible. First and foremost, we are greatly indebted to Mrs. Anne Batchelder and the Batchelder Family Foundation for their generosity and encouragement to make this conference an annual occurrence. Mr. Clifton Batchelder was a faithful attendant at the Bethsaida conference when we first launched it, when our budget was meager. The Batchelder Family Foundation helped to enhance this conference, and with their kind support we managed to attract internationally acclaimed scholars and to make the conference a biblical archaeology feast celebrated annually and attended by people from around the world. Many thanks are due to Chancellor Nancy Belk, Vice Chancellor John Christensen, and Vice Chancellor James Buck of the University of Nebraska at Omaha for recognizing the uniqueness of the Bethsaida Excavations Project among the various important projects and programs the university is committed to, and for their special efforts to keep the program alive at a time when many institutions throughout the country withdrew from international programs. Special kudos are due to Dean Thomas vii

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Gouttierre, who, in spite of many difficulties, which would tire and discourage any administrator, believed in the program and made the Bethsaida Excavations Project and the annual conference feasible. The continuous support of all is a vote of confidence not only for the program but also for the importance of biblical archaeology as a genuine leader in biblical studies. Indeed, enhanced knowledge of the past is essential in understanding our present. The conference is an outcome of the Bethsaida Excavations Project, which consists of 17 international universities and colleges and 35 codirectors and colleagues. Many thanks are due each of them. Special thanks to Richard A. Freund, the tireless Project Director of the Bethsaida Excavations Project and the annual conference, a former University of Nebraska at Omaha faculty member, and currently the director of the Judaic program at the University of Hartford. Unquestionably, the excavations and the conference would never have reached the status they currently enjoy without his assiduous devotion. Many thanks are due to the staff and students of the International Studies and Programs of the University of Nebraska at Omaha for helping in organizing the conferences. Thanks to Frieda C. Luefschuetz for keeping the budget records; and to Wendi Chiarbos, former coordinator of the Bethsaida Excavations Project; Christina Etzrodt for the maps and ground plans in this volume; and special thanks to Stephen T. Reynolds, the Bethsaida archivist, for his hard work on the myriad technicalities of the conferences and for proofreading these articles. Rami Arav

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Abbreviations General DH EA LXX MT nrsv NT OG OT

Deuteronomistic History/Historian El-Amarna (tablet) Septuagint Masoretic Text New Revised Standard Version New Testament Old Greek Old Testament

Reference Works ABD ABRL BA BAR BASOR BibOr BIOSCS CBQ ConBNT CurBS ErIsr HUCA IEJ Int JEA JSJ JSOT JSOTSup NEAEHL

NTS OBO PEFQS QDAP SBLDS

Freedman, D. N., editor. The Anchor Bible Dictionary. 6 vols. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1992 Anchor Bible Reference Library Biblical Archaeologist Biblical Archaeology Review Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research Biblica et Orientalia Bulletin of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies Catholic Biblical Quarterly Coniectanea Biblica, New Testament Currents in Research: Biblical Studies Eretz-Israel Hebrew Union College Annual Israel Exploration Journal Interpretation Journal of Egyptian Archaeology Journal for the Study of Judaism Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series Stern, E., editor. New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land. 4 vols. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and Carta / New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993 New Testament Studies Orbis biblicus et orientalis Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement Quarterly of the Department of Antiquities in Palestine Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series

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x SBLSCS TDNT VT VTSup ZAW ZDMG ZDPV

Abbreviations Society of Biblical Literature Septuagint and Cognate Studies Kittel, G., and Friedrich, G., editors. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. 10 vols. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–76 Vetus Testamentum Vetus Testamentum Supplements Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft Zeitschrift des deutschen Palästina-Vereins

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Introduction Rami Arav University of Nebraska at Omaha

Urbanism is such a natural phenomenon of modern human life that sometimes it is easy to forget that this heritage of human civilization is only slightly more than 5,000 years of age. If we imagine the 5,000,000 years of human life on earth as a gigantic clock, the past 5,000 years are but a few seconds on this clock. The Bible, however, did not forget that urbanism is a human institution that did not descend from heaven as a divine gift. According to Genesis, not only were cities founded by human beings, but the very first city was founded by no other than Cain, the first murderer, the father of all crimes and criminals. Accordingly, cities originated in crime. The Bible views primarily the downside of urbanism, which is essentially its social shortcomings; that is: crime, transgressions, injustice, and social polarization between the “haves” and “have-nots.” It is a far cry from the more egalitarian society assumed among most nomads and seminomads. This collection of essays investigates the concept of city in the biblical past in an effort to understand how people in ancient times observed this phenomenon. It is, in a way, a deconstructionist study in which the authors are engaged in an attempt to divert from structuralism and a linear description of text and artifacts, an attempt to reveal new concepts and images in texts and to confront them with archaeological discoveries. Critics may claim that this is circular evidence; that is, the archaeological remains of cities are being interpreted by the way they look in texts, But in fact, every textual description, whether ancient or modern, is an interpretation and a demonstration of emphases (Bapty 1990). These essays are no different in presenting interpretations of texts and archaeological finds. This is also a study in cognitive archaeology, in which modern scholars attempt to “read the mind” of ancient people rather than apply a modern interpretation. When comparing studies done half a century ago with more recent publications, we can see how much scholars have changed focal points with time. The problems, questions, and interests have become different. 1

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During the mid-20th century—a century after Sumerian and Akkadian cuneiform and Egyptian and Hittite hieroglyphs had been deciphered— scholars were still overwhelmed by the content of the documents, the records they contained, and their implications for particular topics (such as the foundation of cities and their social amalgamation), above all, their implications for biblical research. Archaeology, which had already made major progress, by the mid-20th century was primarily viewed as an effort to retrieve more documents and to unearth monumental architecture. This attitude largely changed during the second half of the 20th century. Current scholars are concerned more with the meaning of these documents— their intrinsic socioeconomic, anthropological, historical constructs and implications—rather than with sweeping political-historical conclusions. It seems that the focal point for both archaeologists and historians has shifted toward the social sciences. Biblical parallels, political history, and monumental architecture, although still pursued, are no longer the primary goals of scholarship. The role and definition of biblical archaeology have also changed dramatically, and not just one time but several times during the past century (Dever 1992). All through the end of the 19th century and early 20th century, biblical archaeologists, who were primarily theologians, sought to use archaeology to prove the Bible correct (or incorrect, according to their agenda). In the pre–World War I era, E. Sellin and C. Watzinger unearthed the ancient city of Jericho and thought that they had discovered the famous biblical walls of Jericho that were miraculously destroyed by divine intervention. Watzinger, however, rightly corrected this interpretation in 1926, suggesting that the walls of Jericho were destroyed a few centuries earlier than the date that biblical scholars give to the conquest of Joshua (Watzinger 1926). For a long time, no one wanted to listen. More sophisticated archaeologists did not claim to prove the Bible correct or even to discover artifacts mentioned in the Bible but maintained a positive attitude toward the interpretation of archaeological discoveries in accordance with biblical narratives. For example, if archaeology could not prove the historicity of the patriarchs, it provided an archaeological picture that nomads similar to the patriarchs roamed about the ancient Near East during Middle Bronze Age II. Or, if no victory stele erected by Joshua was discovered, the destruction layers in Hazor (and indeed, only in a few other places) were construed as the work of Joshua (Yadin 1992: 542). However, with the advance of the critical reading of the Bible during the second half of the 20th century, the quest for proof became unrealistic, and the definition of biblical archaeology was altered again. Archaeolo-

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gists perceived, at this stage, that their mission was simply to illustrate the Bible (Dever 1992: 365–67). Accordingly, archaeology was conceptualized as an effort to retrieve artifacts from the ground that would serve as illustrations to the biblical texts. There was indeed no limit to the number of illustrations provided to elucidate biblical texts: from small and trivial objects such as pottery vessels and objects of daily life to architecture and cities. If the actual objects were not retrieved, archaeology was able in many cases to provide similar samples. This is not an unworthy goal; on the contrary, it is very popular among material-culture and textual scholars, and it is a powerful illustrative tool, whenever it works. But it is certainly not all that archaeology can do. Archaeological research was developed during the second half of the 20th century at a pace that had not been seen before, and far more disciplines were involved in this study. Speculations gave way to substantial proofs, and evidence provided by scientists from a wide range of the academic spectrum was used to create a much more solid ground for this scholarship. Slowly, words such as reasonably and plausibly yielded to more scientific terminology. After serious scrutiny, it became apparent that what seemed reasonable to us for ancient people to do was not always what was found to have been done. Today, archaeologists often realize that “it is not easy to predict the past.” In fact, when a “reasonable” argument is used, the “reason” we use is the reasoning of the modern mind, which does not necessarily coincide with ancient reasoning. Too often we tend to associate practical elements with the process of “reasoning.” When things seem “logical,” we usually are referring to reasoning based on Greek logic. Were pre-Hellenistic ancient Near Easterners familiar with Greek logical reasoning? Of course not. Greek logical reasoning is not an intrinsic endowment of humanity; it was developed in Greece in the 5th century b.c.e., and it reached the east only centuries later. This means that, by imposing Greek philosophy on ancient people in the Near East, we may very well be misinterpreting historical situations. Here again it is cognitive archaeology that comes into practice. In order to research ancient people’s motivations, we need to try to “read” their minds, to see what they thought was their motivation and not to apply our concepts to their motivations. An outstanding example is the “reasons” we apply to the minds of ancient people in the process known as the selection of sites for cities. Most “reasons” modern scholars find are taken from what should be dubbed as “practical, modern thinking.” Very often we read that reasons such as security, a commanding view, water sources, trade routes, and so on were behind the selection of sites for the location

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of cities. 1 Cognitive archaeology reveals that none of these reasons is correct, even when we are dealing with periods and places that were familiar with “Greek rational thinking.” For example, in the first of his monumental ten volumes De Architectura (which served as a textbook for 15 centuries), the 1st-century b.c.e. architect Vitruvius teaches that “good air” is the most important priority in selecting a site for a city and that in the process of the selection priests should sacrifice to gods to seek their consent. Neither of these factors appears in modern scholarly writing, and it would be easy to imagine the reaction of readers if a scholar were to claim one of them as the reason for a particular foundation. 2 Noteworthy is the contribution of the natural sciences. Geology, physics, chemistry, and other archaeometric sciences have made a significant contribution to archaeology. This involvement caused the definition of archaeology to change once more, and today it is perhaps better defined as an endeavor to reconstruct ancient environments with all of their components. This reconstructed environment should serve as an arena in which biblical scholars may install biblical narratives—similar to a stage in a theater. Reconstructed ancient environments include a large variety of factors such as topography and physical geography, fauna and flora, road networks, human geography, anthropological patterns, ancient socioeconomic patterns, settlement pattern and city planning, public and private houses and their content, down to the most minute detail that can possibly be retrieved. Biblical archaeology is no longer just a provider of illustrations; it has been a discipline of its own for a long time. The archaeological community conventionally divides the periods using various metals as a parametric division for the various epochs. Thus, the Chalcolithic “Stone–Copper” Age is followed by the “Bronze Age,” which is followed by the “Iron Age.” Undoubtedly, this division echoes the Homeric division of the “Golden and the Silver Ages.” However, even though metals are important in any society, and even though the discovery and improvement of metals are important, it is doubtful that metals were as crucial in the life of ancient people as the existence of cities. A society with or without urbanization is far more significant and meaningful to individuals or an entire society than the amount and kind of metal used. The significance of urbanism in any society is reflected in the ways 1. Almost all scholars note one or more of these reasons for the location of cities; see, for example, Aharoni 1979: 106–7. See A. Mazar on foundation of Early Bronze Age cities (Mazar 1990: 94, 111). 2. See more details in the essay “The Fortified City of Bethsaida,” in this book, pp. 83–115.

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the society organizes and structures itself and forms its hierarchy. Therefore, I follow a suggestion made recently in scholarship to divert from the traditional terminology and to use a more meaningful definition. This opinion is shared by a growing number of sociologists and anthropologists who prefer to divide the epochs by the existence or lack of urbanism (Herzog 1997: 1–16). The ancient Near East, except perhaps Egypt, saw three major waves of urbanization before it was incorporated into the gigantic empire of the Persians, and archaeologists prefer terminological parameters based on this history rather than on material culture. For reasons that should be investigated by anthropologists and social-science scholars rather than only archaeologists, each wave lasted about an equal period of time—approximately half a millennium. The first wave occurred in the first half of the third millennium b.c.e., during the period called the “Bronze Age.” In this period, we witness a process by which people left the rural settlements and clustered in centers that are defined as urban. This means fairly large communities, surrounded by city walls, that contained structures to house urban establishments such as city temples, palaces, and administrative buildings. From the anthropological-sociological point of view, each building had a group of officers and officials in full-time employment. A settlement in which a large percentage of its population is not engaged directly in production of food is also defined as an urban community. 3 This is perhaps the social meaning of the public and administrative structures found in the excavated urban centers. City walls therefore represent full-time military officers; temples, a full-time clergy and associates; and palaces, a full-time king and a royal administrative entourage. Although it is clear today that the decline of rural settlements and the rise of urban centers meant mostly shifting populations from the villages to the cities rather than waves of immigration from far-away countries, it is still unclear what caused this movement and what the factors were that motivated it. It is obvious, though, that this movement swept the entire Near East, from Mesopotamia to the southern Levant. It is also obvious that urbanization did not spring out full fledged like Athens from the head of Zeus; rather, a period of about a century passed before the first urban structures were erected. The first urbanization period peaked in about the mid-3rd millennium b.c.e., and during the second half of this millennium, there was a slow decline of the centers, which ended in a 3. Herzog (1997: 36–100) summarizes the socioanthropological views of urbanization and its application to biblical archaeology.

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thorough desertion and destruction of the cities. Just as the rise of urban centers, so also the decline remains an enigma; scholars cannot identify what caused it. Theories vary from external reasons such as a wave of immigrant conquerors, natural disasters, diseases, and earthquakes to internal reasons such as an intrinsic social malfunction that led to decline and to the collapse of the system. The era of urbanization was followed by a long period of nonurbanization, known in scholarship by many terms, but scholars have not settled on the nature of the period. Those who see continuity between this period and the early Bronze Age prefer to dub it Early Bronze Age IV. Other scholars point out the similarities and changes in this period and prefer to term it the Intermediate Early–Middle Bronze Age, while some other scholars view this period as the forerunner of a new era and call it Middle Bronze Age I. We propose the First Intermediate Nonurban period. This period occupied about three centuries (23rd to 20th). No matter what the results of this debate are, it is clear that the main characteristic of the period was a fundamental lack of urbanization. However, not all cities were deserted; some areas, particularly on the periphery of the urbanized zone, still evidence some degree of urbanization. Toward the 20th century b.c.e., the second wave of urbanization occurred, and similar to the first urbanization period, it took about a century for communities to gather and build city walls and urban institutions. The reasons for this urban wave are circumstantial and conjectural, but it has been suggested that they were connected with the arrival of the Amorites. These people appear in Mesopotamian records, but the lack of explicit, unequivocal documents prevents us from reaching solid conclusions. Similar to the first wave, this one slowly declined in the period called the Late Bronze Age (1550–1200). The Second Intermediate Nonurban period was the last two centuries of the second millennium b.c.e. During this period, archaeologists observe only meager urbanization and predominantly nonsedentary societies. Because this period is conventionally identified with the biblical period of the conquest of the southern Levant by the Israelites from the east and the Philistines from the west, scholars tend to associate these changes with the arrival of new immigrants. However, some scholars maintain that the exodus never occurred, and the Israelites never came out of Egypt. According to these scholars, they were the same autochthonous Canaanite or Transjordanian population in change. Archaeologists call the third period of urbanization Iron Age II. It began sometime during the 10th century b.c.e. and spanned the first half of

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the first millennium b.c.e. to the Babylonian conquest. Our historical documents, primarily from the Bible, are richer for this period and provide, not without pungent debate, a far better understanding of the period that results in a more reliable historical reconstruction. This view of three waves of urbanization facilitates a true sociohistorical-archaeological approach and facilitates additional interdisciplinary dialogue, in which social scientists, historians, archaeologists, and theologians may find fairly large common ground. The first essay in this book is authored by Nicolae Roddy, who examines the attitude of the Hebrew Bible to cities and discovers that all through the various biblical literary genres the attitude is constantly negative. He scrutinizes the prophetic writings, the Deuteronomistic History, the primeval narratives, and the ancestral narratives, concluding that no city but Jerusalem is ever viewed positively. Jerusalem as the chosen city, the temple city, is the only city that escapes a negative opinion. Roddy observes that this view was only intensified in the postexilic period, when the redaction of the Bible took place. Paul A. Williams investigates the gospel literature and arrives at the same conclusion, that cities in the gospel traditions are potent and dangerous places. “Jesus does not enter cities often or willingly, possibly for his own security.” Jerusalem is again an exception; it is dangerous but unavoidable. The famous saying of Jesus, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets” (Matt 23:37–39, Luke 13:34–35, nrsv), is a powerful dirge for this ambiguous situation. Laura W. Grams researches the Greek world and finds that, contrary to biblical literature, the attitude of Greek philosophers to the polis (Greek, “city-state”) is unscrupulously positive. Socrates is devoted to Athens and feels that he cannot be creative outside the city, despite the fact that this devotion will cost him his life. Plato and Aristotle are not different from Socrates in their concern for city life and its ramifications and strive to improve it by creating the ideal polis. However, Greek philosophers are not monolithic. Cynics and early Stoics took a different route and “rejected the idea of living as citizens of a particular polis” and left the city to work in the rural areas. It is noteworthy that the Dead Sea Scrolls sect took a very similar attitude toward Jerusalem and preferred to flee to the wilderness; they justified it as an order to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah (40:3): “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” Beginning with the Middle Bronze Age (18th–16th centuries b.c.e.), city gates in the Near East were increasingly developing significance and

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reached a climax during the high urban phase of the Iron Age (10th–6th centuries b.c.e. [Herzog 1997: 102–89]). While the city gate in the Near East was the most important civic structure of the city and the heart of the city, city gates in the Greek cities were no more than an opening in the city wall. Sometimes these openings were lavishly decorated and made to impress, but the heart of the Greek city lay in the agora, which was mostly located at the physical center of the city. The difference in attitude between Greeks and Near Easterners toward cities may explain this phenomenon. Near Easterners may have felt insecure inside the city and thought it safer to interact with each other when they were nearer the perimeter of the city. Leonard Greenspoon examines the Septuagint and concludes that it was written by an urban society. References to tents in the Hebrew Bible are translated ‘houses’ in the Septuagint, and other references allude to this urban environment of the authorship. This conclusion is very important and exceeds the scope of this book. It shows clearly that, if the Bible had been written in the Hellenistic period, as some minimalists speculate, it would have been an urban work more like the Septuagint. The fact that it was not is significant. John T. Greene surveys the history and archaeology of Iron Age cities in Galilee—Kinneret, Hazor, and Dan—and concludes that, due to their significant location on an important trade and military route leading from north to south, they had to be considered in the military campaigns of Tiglath-pileser III in 734–732 b.c.e. Two case studies were researched. One was Jerusalem and the other was Bethsaida. Jerusalem was selected as a case study because the essays dealing with the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament show very clearly that Jerusalem is considered exceptional among all cities in the world. It is the only city in the Bible that is not viewed negatively. Even though Jesus went to his death in this city, the Gospels mourn this fact but still regard the city very highly. Dan Bahat demonstrates that the city expanded during the Herodian period and achieved the dimensions of a great, lavish, Greco-Roman capital city. Ironically, the outcome of Herod’s construction was a place that Greek philosophers would want to create and live in; nevertheless, there was something about it that made both citizens and visitors resentful. Bethsaida was selected to be a case study for urban research, not only because it is the site that my colleagues and I have been excavating for almost 20 years, but because the remains of the city are so unique that it requires a separate study. The conflagration caused by the military action of

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Tiglath-pileser III in 732 b.c.e. was so immense that the second and third floors of the city gate collapsed onto the first floor, covering it completely. The layer of ash and debris preserved at the moment of the destruction is like a time capsule and affords us an opportunity to glance at this moment as though in a picture—a rare oppurtunity in archaeology. The walls of the city gate were preserved to about 3 meters high, and the content was preserved to an extraordinary extent. Not only is it the best-preserved city gate, but it is also the largest of all city gates excavated thus far in the southern Levant. With all its components—outer city gate, courtyard, and four-chambered inner city gate—it occupies 525 square meters and is 25 square meters larger than the city gate of Dan, which was previously considered the largest city gate found. The main reason for this magnitude is that Bethsaida was preplanned as a capital city for the Kingdom of Geshur. It is undoubtedly the best-preserved capital city anywhere in the southern Levant. The other capital cities in this region—such as Damascus the capital city of the Arameans, Tyre the capital city of the Phoenicians, Samaria of Israel, Jerusalem of Judah, Rabba of the Ammonites, Dibon of the Moabites, and Sela of the Edomites—are all very poorly preserved. Some, such as Sela and Dibon, are not even identified. We know a little more of the Philistine city of Ekron, which was one of the five chief cities of the Philistines. Thus, Bethsaida is unique and rightfully deserves to be the role model for a biblical Iron Age capital city. This book is an intellectual confrontation with ancient textual attitudes toward urbanism and urban environments reconstructed from archaeological investigations. It is an attempt to understand what was perceived to be wrong with cities in the ancient world.

Literature Cited Aharoni, Y. 1979 The Land of the Bible: A Historical Geography, trans. A. F. Rainey. Philadelphia: Westminster. Bapty, I. 1990 Nietzsche, Derrida, and Foucault: Re-excavating the Meaning of Archaeology. In Archaeology after Structuralism: Post Structuralism and the Practice of Archaeology, ed. Ian Bapty and Tim Yates. London: Routledge. Dever, W. G. 1992 Archaeology, Syro-Palestinian and Biblical. Pp. 354–67 in vol. 1 of ABD. Herzog, Z. 1997 Archaeology of the City: Urban Planning in Ancient Israel and Its Social Implications. Tel Aviv University Monograph Series 13. Tel Aviv: Emery and Claire Yass Archaeology Press.

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Mazar, A. 1990 Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 10,000–586 b.c.e. New York: Doubleday. Watzinger, C. 1926 Zur Chronologie der Schichten von Jericho. ZDMG 80: 131–36. Yadin, Y. 1992 Hazor. Pp. 531–42 in vol. 2 of NEAEHL. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. [Hebrew]

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Landscape of Shadows: The Image of City in the Hebrew Bible Nicolae Roddy Creighton University

More than 30 years have passed since the publication of Jacques Ellul’s influential work The Meaning of the City 1 brought to light the Bible’s generally negative portrayal of urban society, an institution usually heralded as “the crowning achievement of the ancient world.” 2 Ellul was not the first to notice the negative biblical attitudes toward the city, 3 but his investigation, driven by a particular kind of theological agenda, led him to identify a remarkably consistent, overarching perspective on the nature of the city that transcends source-critical delimitations and runs like a scarlet thread from the beginning of the Pentateuch to the New Testament Apocalypse. In the present essay, I explore more fully the image of the city in the Hebrew Bible, arguing that its overarching negative attitude toward the city appears to be rooted in and sanctioned by the rhetoric of 6th-century b.c.e. prophets and exiled priests, who following the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple were involved in a desperate attempt to answer the devastating question “What went wrong?” Engaged in the process of giving final shape to its grand and meaningfully defining mythos, 4 a community 1. Ellul, Meaning of the City (trans. D. Pardee; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1970). 2. Frank S. Frick, The City in Ancient Israel (SBLDS 36; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1977) 1. 3. For a notable earlier example, see G. Wallis, “Die Stadt in den Überlieferungen der Genesis,” ZAW 78 (1966) 133–48. One should also mention the negative view of the “earthly city,” standing in contrast to the preferred “heavenly city,” put forth by Augustine in his classic work De ciuitate Dei [City of God]; see especially 15.1. 4. Translating this term with its obvious English cognate, given the popular use of the word, would fail to convey the true nature and function of this human phenomenon. Myth as I intend it here is an essential, self-defining narrative that arises out of human culture, which in turn reflects and reinforces that culture. Thus it is not some fictitious story but a means for access and participation in ultimate realities. For further study, one should begin with M. Eliade, Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), then pursue the key phrase “phenomenology of religion” for subsequent critique and development.

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among the exiles, making use of earlier traditions, crafted a narrative world in which human institutions are critically evaluated for having failed to deliver the good life for the citizens of Judah. The institutions this group found most wanting included the monarchy, certain aspects of the official cult, and the military forces that this ruling elite complex commanded. Last but not least were the cities—political and economic nerve centers for the administrative web that housed the former three institutions and held the nation together. The subjective moral and religious evaluation of Israel’s past overlooked the things that modern historical consciousness has come to expect; peering beneath the mere surface of things as only the prophets and poets can do, they brought to the fore the determinative power of unseen influences and other such mythic realities. Thus it is that the near final product of this narrative, a defining stage in the process of the Hebrew Bible’s formation and its eventual transformation into “Scripture,” betrays, on the one hand, a radical disconnect between Iron Age Levantine urbanism “on the ground,” so to speak, and, on the other hand, the literary projections—and retrojections—of a community’s devastated, rekindled, and conditional hope.

Levantine Urbanism in the Iron Age The current special interest in the phenomenon of Levantine urbanism among biblical scholars is auxiliary to the larger issue of Israelite state formation and focused primarily on the 12th through 10th centuries b.c.e. Even after several decades of interest and publication, the state of the question, as William Dever has noted, continues to be “plagued by a general lack of definition” of the basic terms and concepts used by ethnographers and anthropologists. 5 However, this lack of terminological and conceptual precision is only part of the problem, adding fuel to the occasionally heated personal exchanges that continue to take place over a more volatile issue—namely, the nature of the biblical text and its relationship to Israel’s past. 6 The literary approach of the present essay avoids this debate; however, some mention of the settlement patterns and demo5. William Dever, “Archaeology, Urbanism, and the Rise of the Israelite State,” in Urbanism in Antiquity: From Mesopotamia to Crete (ed. W. E. Aufrecht, N. A. Mirau, and S. W. Gauley; JSOTSup 244; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997) 172–93. 6. Currently, some of the best examples of these personal exchanges are found on the Web; see, for example, Bible and Interpretation, available at http://www .bibleinterp.com/index.htm.

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graphics for the Iron Age I Levant is necessary in order to demonstrate what it is the writers and compilers of the Bible may or may not be saying. First, by way of general definition, in the Hebrew Bible ‘city’ (ºîr) may be characterized simply as a fixed settlement of indeterminate size, surrounded by a protective wall or other defensive structures. 7 Despite scholarly disagreement over such things as population density and ethnic identity markers for the Iron I period, the archaeological record reveals a significant number of late-10th-century settlements that meet this general description. Field surveys indicate a marked decrease in the number of rural sites during the Iron I period and the concomitant growth or emergence of as many as 11 full-fledged cities, around which about 20 percent of the regional population (estimated at around 100,000) may have lived. 8 Major urban centers such as Hazor, Megiddo, Gezer, and Lachish, which were culturally distinct in the Late Bronze period, begin showing signs of cultural homogeneity on a trajectory with later developments. 9 In such a small geographical area, intercourse between the larger cities and their surrounding rural villages—and eventually with each other—would have politically and economically affected all but a pastoral fringe of the region’s population. The protection offered by this constellation of cities anchored by their respective Northern and Southern capitals came at a great price: taxes, military service, obligatory or forced labor (missîm), and the loss of clan-based status and power. 10 For good and for bad, these walled cities loomed over the stark Levantine landscape as artificial monuments to human endeavor and achievement, but in the aftermath of imperial conquest, occupation, and final destruction, the prophetic conviction that Israel’s hope for deliverance was not to be found in them came to be agonizingly confirmed.

7. Frick, City in Ancient Israel, 30. 8. Dever, “Archeology, Urbanism,” 182–83. 9. John S. Holladay Jr., “The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah: Political and Economic Centralization in the Iron IIA–B (ca. 1000–750 b.c.e.),” in The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land (ed. Thomas E. Levy; London: Leicester University Press, 1995) 371–72. For an ethnic identity approach to the question of Israelite settlement patterns in the Iron I period, see Robert D. Miller II, “Identifying Earliest Israel,” BASOR 333 (2004) 55–68. 10. Samuel’s words to the people concerning the consequences of being united under a king (1 Sam 8:11–18) reflect this reality in a manner far more consonant with the actual process of state formation than the naïve reason cited for the people’s asking for a king in the first place (1 Sam 8:4–5).

spread one pica short

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The City in the Prophetic Writings R. Carroll has already noted the impossibility of addressing every prophetic reference to the city in a single article; 11 however, a brief foray into the literature is sufficient to demonstrate that the prophetic tradition levies a wholesale battery of criticism against the city for its inability to deliver on the promises for which it was built. 12 The critique of the city as an ultimately inadequate institution that no longer upholds justice or affords protection for people who seek refuge in it may have been rooted in popular movements during the Omride building program of 9th-century Israel before being taken up by certain 8th-century antiestablishment prophetic figures such as Amos and Hosea. Amos challenges the arrogant pride and false security that Israel places in its citadels, proclaiming, “I abhor the pride of Jacob and hate his strongholds; and I will deliver up the city and all that is in it” (Amos 6:8, nrsv). 13 He proclaims that Israel’s cities will see their resident armies literally decimated (5:3) and that those who seek refuge in Samaria will be dragged away with hooks through breaches in the city wall (4:2–3). Cities such as Bethel and Gilgal, which house official cultic shrines, will not be divinely protected and thus offer no refuge. Hosea, Amos’s somewhat later contemporary, decries the fact that Israel has “forgotten his Maker and built palaces; and Judah has multiplied fortified cities.” He proclaims that Yhwh will “send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour his strongholds” (Hos 8:14) and follows up the threat of destruction with the taunt “Where now is your king, that he may save you? Where in all your cities are your rulers?” (13:10). Finally, Isaiah ben Amoz, prophet (and likely also priest) of the Jerusalem court, also rails against the pride of cities and the false security they offer. The fact that Isaiah functions in connection with the establishment makes his case all the more extraordinary: 14 “On that day their strong cities will be like the

11. Robert P. Carroll, “City of Chaos, City of Stone, City of Flesh: Urbanscapes in Prophetic Discourses,” in Every City Shall Be Forsaken: Urbanism and Prophecy in Ancient Israel and the Near East (ed. L. L. Grabbe and R. Heck; JSOTSup 330; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001) 47–61. 12. Frick, City in Ancient Israel, 209–31. See also the superb collection of essays in Lester L. Grabbe and Robert D. Heck, eds., Every City Shall Be Forsaken ( JSOTSup 330; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), especially the essay by R. P. Carroll, “City of Chaos.” 13. Translations not my own rely on the nrsv. 14. Isaiah’s influence likely intensified during Samaria’s rapid transition from an aggressive defense posture under Pekah to rapid political decline and eventual destruction (722 b.c.e.).

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deserted places of the Hivites and the Amorites . . . and there will be desolation. For you have forgotten the God of your salvation” (Isa 17:9–10). The antiurban attitude expressed by these 8th-century prophets certainly arises out of their own distinct social situations, but the same theological diagnosis is tendered in that the cities are regarded as monuments to human folly, repositories of misplaced trust for the promise of deliverance that comes only from Yhwh, God of Israel. Thus, later prophets and their schools would already have had at their disposal a wealth of raw materials to work with in warning against their own rivals, who in the words of Ezekiel, would “whitewash the truth” by insisting that refuge may be taken in Yhwh’s inviolable city. 15 The extent to which the writings of the 8th-century prophets have been edited to reflect the convictions of later prophetic schools cannot be entered into here; however, it is clear that sentiments expressed in earlier prophetic writings were applied full force in later prophetic contexts. Isaiah 28, a reworked oracle against Ephraim, becomes an antiestablishment diatribe against Judah’s reckless leadership; the so-called Isaiah Apocalypse (chaps. 24–27), which also contains reworked earlier material, proclaims a powerful and enigmatic judgment against the desolate “city of chaos broken down” (24:10). In the end, the unnamed city comes to ruin, a symbol for any and every city that fails to offer true refuge and justice, principles established by Israel’s God. 16 For you have made the city a heap, the fortified city a ruin; the palace of aliens is a city no more, it will never be rebuilt. Therefore strong peoples will glorify you; cities of ruthless nations will fear you. For you have been a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat. (Isa 25:2–4a)

Nowhere is the prophetic indictment against the city more powerfully delivered than in Ezekiel’s proclamation that Yhwh will destroy “adulterous” Jerusalem as he destroyed Sodom (Ezekiel 16). Jerusalem’s sin is far more grievous in that it had learned nothing from the example of

15. Ezek 13:1–16; see also Jer 23:17, 27:9–10. 16. For discussion over identification of this unnamed city, see Carroll, “City of Chaos,” 48–52.

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Samaria’s destruction (chap. 23). From the perspective of Ezekiel, the exiled priest cum prophet of Babylon, the word of God as embodied in the prophets makes for a holy people and provides its only sure refuge. Ezekiel’s sacerdotal language aside, the conviction that the word of God in the mouth of the prophets is Israel’s only deliverance—not the monarchy, the temple cult, the military, or the city—is complementarily shared by Jeremiah and permeates the redactional overhaul of the so-called Deuteronomistic “History.” The word of God now dwells in the prophet as it once dwelt in Jerusalem, for Jeremiah himself becomes the new city: “And I for my part have made you today a fortified city, an iron pillar, and a bronze wall, against the whole land—against the kings of Judah, its princes, its priests, and the people of the land. They will fight against you; but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you, says the Lord, to deliver you” ( Jer 1:18–19). The juxtaposition of Ezekiel and Jeremiah in the Hebrew Bible produced a kind of dyptich 17 that for a crucial moment in time united disparate roles (priest and prophet), traditions (priestly and deuteronomistic), and perspectives (past and future), providing the defining and refractive orientation for the overall structure of the Hebrew Bible. The prophetic critique of human institutions such as the city accounts in part for how it is that this ancient corpus of texts came to be experienced as Scripture.

The City in the Deuteronomistic History It is somewhat unfortunate that the biblical books once known collectively as the Former Prophets, namely Joshua through 2 Kings, have come to be referred to commonly by scholars as the Deuteronomistic History. First of all, the appellation can be misleading, at least to the naïve, in that history in the modern sense of the word is clearly not what is being presented. For example, we read in the Assyrian records that King Ahab ben Omri commanded 2,000 chariots of iron and 10,000 footsoldiers, providing the greatest share of forces in support of a 12-nation coalition against the Assyrians and withstanding Shalmaneser III’s armies at the Battle of Qarqar (856 b.c.e.). Yet one finds nothing of this in the Bible. It is remotely possible, but highly unlikely, that the so-called Deuteronomistic Historian (DH) was not aware of this significant campaign; nevertheless, he presents Ahab strictly in terms of the king’s grievous transgressions 17. I have borrowed this helpful analogy from Paul N. Tarazi, The Old Testament: An Introduction, vol. 1: Historical Tradtions (rev. ed.; Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003) 33.

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against the Mosaic tradition in persecuting the prophet Elijah and promoting Phoenician fertility religion throughout Israel. Even the king’s military victory over Ben-hadad and the Arameans is regarded as a foul matter in light of the king’s violation of the divine law of ˙erem (1 Kgs 20:42). At the end of the story of Ahab, readers are invited to consult the “Book of the Annals of the Kings of Israel” for additional information about him; but unlike the Bible, this chronicle and other named sources did not survive. The “Book of the Annals” was most likely an official document sanctioned by the royal court, which would have contained additional information about Ahab’s political and military might, perhaps even a boast about the king’s successful resistance against the Assyrians. In any event, it is clear that DH was interested in writing something other than mere history. The critique of leadership in light of particular divine standards resulted in the production of a kind of “anti-history” that was something quite apart from the officially sanctioned and legitimizing histories of the palacetemple complex. 18 Paradoxically, it is this self-critical aspect of the Bible that played an important part in its survival and eventual transformation into Scripture, while the (mere) Israelite histories shared the fate of similar ancient Near Eastern writings and passed unnoticed into oblivion. A second, related reason that “Deuteronomistic History” is an unfortunate misnomer is that it obscures the fact that this compilation of sources was shaped by a prophetic agenda that interpreted the events of the 6thcentury b.c.e. experience through a particular perspective of Israel’s past. The redactional interpretive efforts of this community would not have been regarded as a distortion of history but as representative of a truer reality, in which Israel’s past, present, and future transcendently co-arise. Therefore, it is indeed possible to find early traditions in the Bible that seem to reflect a positive view of institutions such as the city (a case in point: the conquest narrative in the book of Joshua, in which Canaanite cities serve as trophies to Israel for its faithfulness to the divine warrior). But the disastrous state of affairs that brought about the transformation of Israelite religion in the 6th century b.c.e. was attributed to human failing— whether idolatry, social injustice, or misplaced trust in human institutions and might—so that what in earlier traditions may have been celebrated as a blessing comes to be interpreted as a curse in light of the life that might have been. Indeed the final product of the so-called Deuteronomistic History is, among other things, a testament to the ultimate inadequacy of 18. Ibid., 18–20.

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human institutions to deliver Israel from adversity, voicing the prophetic perspective that Israel’s hope is found only in Yhwh, whose word is conveyed through the medium of the “true” biblical prophet. This conviction was taken up in priestly circles, some members of which, like Ezekiel, had prophetic experience themselves, and together they collected, edited, and preserved the story of Israel.

The Image of City in the Primeval Narrative According to the Bible, the world’s first city is established by Cain, a fratricide-in-exile, who calls his new creation after his son Enoch (Gen 4:17). 19 This statement is no mere isolated, etiological factoid, for it marks the beginning of an ongoing tainted portrait of this monumental human social institution in the primeval narrative. Cain’s descendants, and not the favored Sethite line, engage in occupations associated with and supportive of urban life: livestock producers, who lived in close proximity to urban centers and may in fact have formed a guild; 20 artisans of products both useful and appealing; musicians, who offered their skills for cultic purposes as well as entertainment; and toolmakers, who made it possible to build and maintain houses, palaces, military garrisons, grain storage facilities, and so on. Thus, something of Cain lives on in both the institution and the ongoing life of the city. One might argue that Cain’s creation can be interpreted in a positive sense in that cities serve as places of refuge for pastoralists in threatening times, 21 but there is nothing in the text to support this. To the contrary, the association of nefarious outcasts with the founding of cities continues throughout the primeval narrative. In Gen 9:20, another etiology identifies Noah as the first person to plant a vineyard. This new technology leads to Noah’s eventual drunkenness and subsequent self-exposure; this in turn leads him to curse his son Ham, who had the misfortune of stumbling in upon his father’s nakedness. In true biblical fashion, however, Ham’s curse falls upon his son Canaan (9:25), eponymous ancestor of the land of great cities, including terrible Sidon, the infamously wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 10:15–19), and the 31 royal cities that Joshua and the Israelites will

19. This Enoch is not to be confused with the Enoch of the Sethite genealogy, who “walked with God” and whom “God took” (5:24). 20. Frick, City in Ancient Israel, 207. 21. See the discussion in Don C. Benjamin, Deuteronomy and City Life: A Form Criticism of Texts with the Word ‘City’ (ºîr) in Deuteronomy 4:41–26:19 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983) 1–9.

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vanquish in order to settle in the Promised Land ( Josh 12:23). Cush, another son of the accursed Ham, is associated with the formidable imperial cities of Mesopotamia, most notably Babel and Nineveh (Gen 10:8–12). The crowning monument of primordial human achievement is constructed by the citizens of Babel, but it is not the archetypal Babylonian ziggurat alone that is the Bible writer’s source of scandal but the patron city as well: “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens” (Gen 11:4). If as Speiser has noted, the Hebrew ºîr ûmigdal is in fact a hendiadys, than the text may be translated alternatively as ‘a city with a citadel’. 22 In any event, the Lord comes down to see what humans have wrought and scatters them abroad, thus establishing the monument as a symbol of human folly and incompleteness, for “they left off building the city” (v. 8). Thus, from the Bible’s very beginning, a generally negative portrait of the city begins to emerge. Established in primeval time and space just outside the lush garden of Eden, the city has questionable origins from the start. The foundational image of the city from Cain through Noah and culminating in the Babel account is that it is a human institution manifesting itself as something foreign, wicked, and proud. Just as the Babel story plays on the Akkadian word for gate (bab; bab-ilani = ‘gate of the gods’) and the Hebrew word for ‘confusion’ (babel), so also the Hebrew term for ‘gate’ (saºar; pl. séºarîm), often employed metaphorically as a synonym for city, 23 carries the potential for attracting negative attention, reinforced by saºar, a homonymous Hebrew adjective applied to shameful or detestable things.

The Image of City in the Ancestral Narrative Cities are a significant part of the Canaanite landscape in the ancestral narratives; as such, they remain largely a foreign phenomenon. The all too obvious reason is of course that the promise to Abraham has yet to be fulfilled. However, some stories, particularly those that have been attributed traditionally to the putative Yahwist source, reflect the attitude that somehow the city setting has never been the place for the best of human interaction to occur. For example, in Genesis 13 the reader encounters one of the many “close calls” of the ancestral narratives in that Abraham gives his nephew Lot first choice over the land that lies before them. “And Lot looked about him, and saw that the plain of the Jordan was well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord. . . . So Lot chose for himself 22. Frick, City in Ancient Israel, 208. 23. Ibid., 44.

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all the plain of the Jordan and journeyed eastward. . . . Abram settled in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled among the cities of the plain and moved his tent as far as Sodom” (13:10–12). The rest of the story is well known: “With sulfur and fire the Lord overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and whatever grew on the ground” (Gen 19:25). Thus Lot, incestuous father of the eponymous ancestors of the Moabites and Ammonites, chooses well the lush gardens of the plain, but the wickedness rising up from its cities brings this once fertile land to utter barrenness, shame, and ruin. The Isaac cycle offers additional commentary on the nature of city, in a passage foreshadowing the conquest and acquisition of Canaanite cities anticipated in Rebekah’s prenuptial blessing: “May you, our sister, become thousands of myriads; may your offspring gain possession of the gates of their foes” (Gen 24:60). Contrary to the way these words are usually understood, largely influenced by the overarching nationalistic saga rooted in the book of Joshua, the attitude expressed here is not that the acquisition of these cities is some great prize in itself; but neither is the attitude merely neutral. In continuity with the primeval narrative, as well as the Deuteronomistic and Priestly perspectives that preserved and edited these selected earlier sources from the vantage point of a later, more ominous time, the image of the city remains dark and formidable and a haven for Israel’s enemies. The fact that Israel eventually acquires these obscure locations does not lessen the suspicion that something of Cain and his descendants lingers in the institution of the city. As a human construct, the city must continue to be regarded with wariness and alarm. According to the Bible, Ephraim’s former capital, Shechem, was conquered by the sons of a reluctant patriarch Jacob. Led by Simeon and Levi, who rally their brothers under the pretext of avenging family honor following the namesake of the city’s treating their sister Dinah “like a whore,” the men utterly wipe out the Shechemites, leaving the sons of Jacob exceedingly more enriched with spoils of war than any law of proportionate recompense (lex talionis) would ever have allowed. The city of Shechem passes into Israel’s hands; but as in the case of Rebekah’s blessing there is no inherent goodness in the acquisition itself, for the slaughter of all of Shechem’s males and the seizure of all of its flocks and herds—whatever was in the city and its fields, all their wealth, all their little ones and all their wives—become a trophy for human greed, as Jacob himself seems to recognize—and which the avenging of family honor fails to justify.

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In one final example, the shadowy threat of the cities that looms over the biblical landscape is also seen in the establishment of the altar at Bethel-Luz. The altar’s consecration requires divine intervention on the part of Jacob’s God, who lays a terror upon the inhabitants of the surrounding cities so that Jacob’s activities in purifying the site of the ancient shrine may continue unimpeded. The aims and activities of the residents of the cities appear to be at odds with both priestly and prophetic expectations in the Hebrew Bible.

Conclusion Visionary leaders from among the exiled community in Babylon surveyed the ruins of Jerusalem from afar and, while looking ahead, continued to celebrate their origins as a captive people in a foreign land. They remembered that their ancestors were forced by an unnamed pharaoh to construct, brick by brick (even having to find their own straw for the process), the great supply cities of Pithom and Ramses (Exod 1:11). The story, which they recited once each year, makes a dramatic shift from the scene of forced labor in the cities to and from the hierophany in the wilderness, where Yhwh’s plan for intervention and the liberation of the people is revealed. Yhwh enters history because the cities of Egypt lack justice and righteousness; but so also the great cities of Mesopotamia, Nineveh, and Babylon, the formidable cities of Canaan, the arrogant cities of Israel and Judah, and finally even Jerusalem itself—all fail to uphold justice and righteousness, engaging in exploitation and exhibiting self-pride. From the vantage point of Israel’s exiled seers and visionaries, the city remains little more than an inherently incomplete, human-made construct of magnificent emptiness and fleeting shadow.

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Gospel Cities: Real, Imagined, and Avoided Paul Allen Williams University of Nebraska at Omaha

Introduction Current studies of Galilee during the 1st century c.e. seek to integrate insights from archaeological and rabbinic studies with findings from the literary and historical analyses of the early Christian writings. In order to develop a methodology to pursue their studies, some scholars have also adopted social-scientific models of the Mediterranean or the Greco-Roman world in order to understand the historical dynamics of the Galilean world. The results of these developments are still debated in the literature. 1 In this context, a key issue in the scholarly literature on Jesus and the canonical Gospel traditions is the relationship between rural and urban Galilee, including the canonical presentation of Jesus in relation to urban areas. Taking urbanism to denote attitudes toward or beliefs

Author’s note: Thank you to the organizers of and participants in the Fifth Annual Batchelder Biblical Archaeology Conference, University of Nebraska at Omaha, 30 Oct–1 Nov 2003. I am particularly grateful to Rami Arav, Dan Bahat, and Reggie Bollich for their comments on a previous version of this essay, which was delivered at that conference. I also thank Philip Reeder for his concepts “surface survey” and “base map” in archaeological contexts; I have borrowed them for use in literary contexts. 1. Galilean studies seeking to integrate these disparate disciplines and methods (archaeological and/or textual) include the works of Rami Arav, John Dominic Crossan, Sean Freyne, Eric Meyers, Richard Horsley, Jonathan Reed, James Strange, and many others. A brief, accessible summary of the state of knowledge may be found in Sidnie White Crawford’s “Romans, Greeks, and Jews: The World of Jesus and the Disciples,” Journal of Religion and Film 8/1, February 2004, http:// avalon.unomaha.edu/jrf/2004Symposium/Crawford.htm. Recently, F. Gerald Downing has pushed the discussion further by raising questions about the habitus of the Galilean peasantry, encouraging a new set of questions about rural life during the 1st century (“In Quest of First-Century ce Galilee,” CBQ 66 [2004] 78–97). His initiative retraces familiar textual territory in order to provide fresh insights into the world of Jesus and his contemporaries.

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about cities, this essay specifically considers urbanism in the canonical Gospels. In other words, this essay describes the base map of the evangelical geography—that is, the topography of the religious imagination as it appears in the canonical Gospels of the New Testament. 2 What attitudes toward urban areas are exhibited in the New Testament? Are different urban areas treated differently? Do attitudes vary according to textual traditions (for example, Mark, “Q,” John)? Within the larger horizon of New Testament attitudes toward cities both real and imagined, the Gospel traditions are rooted in the actual cities through which Jesus traveled; however, like Hebrews and the Revelation of John, the canonical Gospels also use these actual cities as metaphorical expressions of the religious imagination. Typically translated ‘city’, polis appears in the New Testament about 160 times, referring to a variety of urban areas, from relatively small towns such as Capernaum to large cities such as Jerusalem. A polis in the NT may be an inhabited area, a sacral center, or an eschatological metaphor. In the Gospels, polis typically refers to an actual city or town such as Bethsaida or Jerusalem. In Matthew and Revelation, polis is used in the expressions the “holy city” or the “beloved city” to signify Jerusalem as the sacral center of Judaism and early Christianity (for example, Matt 4:5, 27:53; Rev 11:2, 20:9). In Hebrews, the Revelation of John, and elsewhere, the “new” or “heavenly” Jerusalem is an eschatological polis, a city of the apocalyptic imagination (see, for example, Rev 21:2; Heb 11:10, 16). 3 2. Although reference will be made to archaeological insights, in in this essay I consider cities primarily as they appear in the canonical literature and secondarily as physical sites having existed in strict historical terms. There is also a difference between the cities and communities of Jesus’ time as they appear in the Gospel accounts and the (later) communities for whom the Gospels were written. See, for example, Halvor Moxnes, “The Social Context of Luke’s Community,” Int 48 (1994) 379–89. However, those later social contexts are not readily accessible to us and remain a matter of debate. See, for example, Sean Freyne, Galilee and Gospel: Collected Essays (Leiden: Brill, 2002) 299–300. 3. Towns and cities of various sizes are labeled polis in the New Testament writings. According to canonical Gospel usage, some poleis include the following: Bethany (Matt 21:17), Jerusalem (Matt 23:37, Luke 13:34), Bethlehem (Luke 2:4), Capernaum (Matt 9:1, 11:20; Mark 1:33; Luke 4:31), and Bethsaida (Luke 9:10). Although Jerusalem was clearly a city by any contemporary use of the term, the others were relatively modest towns and villages. Another, perhaps more appropriate term used to identify population centers in the New Testament is kome. Although kome is typically translated ‘town’ or ‘village’, there is no sharp distinction between polis and kome as they are used in New Testament texts. This combination of relatively modest towns or villages along with large cities blurs the distinction

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A “surface survey” of the canonical Gospels themselves identifies a distinct pattern in the attitudes toward urban areas. The bulk of the present essay considers evidence from the Gospels, with reference to archaeological findings. Despite the accounts regarding Bethlehem as the birthplace of Jesus, the bulk of the Synoptic tradition is devoted to Galilee, not Judea; and Nazareth is the town with which Jesus is most closely identified. After this introduction, pp. 25–28 below review the towns and cities within Galilee; pp. 28–32 consider the Gentile and Samaritan cities beyond the Galilean periphery; pp. 32–35 move with the Jesus story to Judea and Jerusalem, the key urban center of the biblical literature. Because the Synoptic Gospels, the Pauline Epistles, and the Johannine literature exhibit a range of attitudes toward major and minor urban centers from Jerusalem to Rome and many points in between, the conclusion summarizes the basic set of attitudes toward urban areas in the canonical Gospels with some prospective comments about the rest of the New Testament literature.

Galilean “Cities” in the Gospel Traditons If one concentrates on the Synoptic traditions, one finds that three key towns constitute the geographical heart of Jesus’ ministry. Fr. Pixner refers to the area demarcated by Capernaum, Chorazin, and Bethsaida as “the evangelical triangle.” 4 Many of the healing stories, teachings, and other events associated with Jesus and his disciples take place within or near this small area on the northwest side of the Sea of Galilee. The centrality of these towns to Jesus’ ministry and the fact that they were home to many of his disciples did not exempt them from criticism by Jesus. In a famous passage, he is reported to have said, Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, on the day of between polis and kome. Archaeological and textual references make it possible to sort out the cities from the towns and villages. The main concern here is the larger urban areas that we might typically call cities and the range of attitudes exhibited toward them in the canonical Gospels. See Hermann Strathmann, “Polis in the New Testament,” TDNT 529–33. 4. Bargil Pixner, With Jesus through Galilee according to the Fifth Gospel (Rosh Pina, Israel: Corazin, 1992) 33. For information about the excavation at Bethsaida, see the works of Rami Arav and Richard Freund, eds., Bethsaida: A City by the North Shore of the Sea of Galilee. The Bethsaida Excavations Project Reports and Contextual Studies (3 vols.; Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1995–2004).

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This passage from the Q tradition reveals more than frustration with the Galilean villages; it places them against the background of larger, pagan cities beyond the periphery of Galilee. And, as Reed suggests, “Q observes the city or even civilized society from a tense and anxious perspective. It is a dangerous place where hostilities are encountered.” 5 Although labeled polis in the Gospel writings, the towns of the “evangelical triangle” do not qualify as cities in either an ancient or a modern sense, due to their modest populations and their lack of standard features of Hellenistic and Roman cities (for example, theaters, temples, and gymnasia for Hellenistic cities and, notably, the cardo and decumanus street grid for Roman cities). Despite some scholarly estimates as high as 12,000–15,000 residents, a recent study suggests that, during the life of Jesus, Capernaum’s early1st-century population may have been only 600–1,500. Chorazin and Bethsaida were likely no larger. 6 So, the key population centers in the ministry of Jesus would be more accurately identified individually as kome ‘towns’. Of course, these towns at the north end of the Sea of Galilee were not the only communities important to the public career of Jesus. In a study entitled “What Has Cana to Do with Capernaum?” Peter Richardson also analyzes “the geography of the gospels.” 7 Although Bethlehem is viewed as Jesus’ hometown and Nazareth as his family home (in Matthew and Luke), all three of the Synoptic Gospels present the seaside town of Capernaum as the center of his ministry in the context of a twopart ministry, in Galilee and Judea, successively. Turning to the Gospel of John, Richardson points out that John emphasizes the agricultural town of Cana as Jesus’ Galilean center and that Jesus moves back and forth between Judea and Galilee. 8 The movement back and forth leaves open the 5. Jonathan L. Reed, Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus: A Re-examination of the Evidence (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2000) 195. 6. Ibid., 152. 7. Peter Richardson, “What Has Cana to Do with Capernaum?” NTS 48 (2002) 320. 8. To avoid repeating the cumbersome expression “the author of the Gospel of John,” I simply refer to “John.” By the same token, I refer to Matthew, Mark, or Luke. This usage does not signify a judgment about the authorship of these texts.

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possibility that Jesus’ ministry was based as much in Judea as in Galilee from the evangelist’s perspective. Despite these differences between the Synoptic and Johannine traditions and the different economic bases in Cana (agriculture) and Capernaum (fishing), the parallels between Jesus’ Galilean centers are striking. “Both were small peasant villages, each within sight of a capital of Galilee; in the first century both were associated with Jesus and with events of the Great Revolt.” 9 In addition, Richardson notes marked similarities in the “evidence of social and religious life,” albeit with somewhat more evidence for observant Judaism at Cana than at Capernaum. Curiously, although they lay within sight of the towns of Nazareth, Cana, and Capernaum during the life of Jesus, the Herodian cities of Sepphoris and Tiberias are almost entirely ignored by the Gospels. These two Galilean capital cities figure prominently in scholarly discussions precisely because of their absence in the canonical Gospels, albeit well-known from Josephus and, increasingly, from the archaeological record. Josephus reported that Sepphoris (Zippori) rebelled after the death of Herod the Great, leading to its destruction, and that his son Antipas rebuilt the city during Jesus’ childhood. Recent studies of Sepphoris emphasize the fact that, despite some architectural features common to Hellenistic cities of the Roman period, it was predominately a Jewish and not a Gentile city. A mere four miles from Nazareth, it was surely known by Jesus and his disciples, and it is plausible that Jesus had been in Sepphoris during or before his public career. Yet, as indicated above, neither the Synoptic Gospels nor John mention Sepphoris. 10 Sixteen miles east of Sepphoris, Antipas built Tiberias on the shores of the Sea of Galilee in about 20 c.e. Again, although Tiberias was near the geographical center of Jesus’ ministry, the Synoptic tradition fails to mention it at all. John mentions the “Sea of Tiberias” twice ( John 6:1, 21:1) and “some boats from Tiberias” ( John 6:23); however, there is no indication that Jesus ever went there. These lacunae in the evangelical geography raise important questions. Why did the redactors of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and, to a large extent, John ignore these cities? Were there no oral traditions regarding Jesus in 9. Richardson, “What Has Cana to Do with Capernaum?” 330. 10. The growing literature on the city of Sepphoris includes the following: Reed, Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus, 100–138; Mark Chancey, “The Cultural Milieu of Ancient Sepphoris,” NTS 47 (2001) 127–45; Richard A. Batey, “Sepphoris and the Jesus Movement,” NTS 46 (2001) 402–9; James F. Strange, “Sepphoris,” The Bible and Interpretation, September 2001, www.bibleinterp.com/articles/ sepphoris.htm.

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these cities or referring to these cities? Did Jesus not travel and perform “deeds of power” there? Did he not teach in the synagogues of these predominately Jewish cities, as he did in Nazareth and Capernaum? Scholars have offered a variety of explanations for the Synoptic and Johannine silence regarding the two most important urban areas of Galilee of the 1st century c.e. Studies of rural-urban relations in 1st-century Galilee concentrate on a presumed hostility against urban centers by the rural peasantry, emphasizing the “parasitic” nature of the urban areas and the burden of taxation in the rural communities and small towns. In his discussion of “bandit and messiah,” Crossan highlights the popular hostility of Galileans towards Sepphoris and Tiberias, “their hatred of the urban centers” during the middle of the 1st century. 11 Reasons given include the burden of taxation on the rural classes. These judgments are echoed by Horsley and Reed in their explanations of Jesus’ avoidance of the cities. Even scholars who do not stress a Galilee seething with revolutionary potential suggest that Antipas’s execution of John the Baptist gave Jesus sufficient cause to avoid the royal cities of Galilee. 12 While the precise reasons remain unclear, avoidance of either city could be explained by the fact that Jesus’ power base lay in the towns and villages and, as a popular leader, his life was at risk in these royal cities. Thus, Jesus may have avoided Sepphoris and Tiberias from an abundance of caution or for more-ideological or ritual-purity reasons. In any case, what the theories do not explain is why the Gospel traditions (for example, Mark, Q, John) or Jesus himself did not mark Sepphoris and Tiberias for use as objects of “woes” (like the villages of Bethsaida and Chorazin) or as negative examples (like Tyre and Sidon). Although the town and country orientation of Jesus’ public career leaves this curious gap in the canonical literature regarding Sepphoris and Tiberias, the same cannot be said of surrounding Gentile cities.

Cities Beyond the Galilean Periphery Unlike the Herodian Jewish cities in Galilee, several Gentile cities beyond the Galilean periphery do appear as part of the canonical literature, indicating that the regions around these Gentile and/or Samaritan cities played an important role in the story of Jesus of Nazareth. Outside Jesus’ 11. John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (New York: HarperCollins, 1991) 192. 12. Paula Fredrikson, Jesus of Nazareth: King of the Jews. (New York: Random, 1999) 165.

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geographical center in the “evangelical triangle,” the cities mentioned include Tyre and Sidon to the northwest, Caesarea Philippi to the north, the cities of the Decapolis to the east and southeast, and, in a Johannine passage, Sychar to the south. 13 Canonical references to this ring of cities on the Galilean periphery reinforce the conclusions of the previous section regarding Jesus’ avoidance of urban areas. As Freyne recently commented, “when one holds up a map of Jesus’ movements . . . he is more frequently to be found in the environs of, if not actually within, pagan cities, than he is in recognizably Jewish locations.” 14 First, the ancient Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon serve as both the referential backdrop to Jesus’ critique of Bethsaida and Chorazin and the region of transformative events for disciples and Gentiles alike. 15 For example, as noted above, Jesus compares the Jewish towns of Bethsaida, Chorazin, and Capernaum with Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom, respectively. Although one might use these sayings as evidence of his focus on the Galilee, there is archaeological evidence of trade relations between the region of Tyre and the Galilee. According to the Synoptic traditions, Jesus not only uses Tyre and Sidon to shame the towns of the evangelical triangle, he also travels “to the region of Tyre and Sidon,” a pagan region. There, he encounters a Syro-Phoenician woman who asks him to cast a demon out of her daughter. After a conversation with her about the appropriateness of this request and the depth of her faith in his power, he concedes, and her daughter is freed of this possession (Mark 7:24–31, Matt 15:21–28). 16 Thus, the synoptic tradition presents Tyre and Sidon both as examples of wickedness and also as the context for a cross-cultural 13. Another Gentile city that is not mentioned is Scythopolis, a major center near the south end of the Sea of Galilee; however, other cities of the Decapolis are mentioned. 14. Although some scholars may see references to these cities as later redactions of the Jesus traditions, Sean Freyne notes their importance in terms of the biblical ideal regarding the full extent of the land of Israel and the 1st-century reality of Jewish communities in the vicinity of, at least, the regions around Tyre, the Decapolis, and Caesarea Philippi, citing evidence from Josephus and rabbinic sources. According to Freyne, Jesus may in fact have been “including the territorially marginalized Jews in his invitation to the banquet” as part of his “exploiting the territorial symbolism of restoration” (quotations from Jesus, a Jewish Galilean: A New Reading of the Jesus Story [London: T. & T. Clark, 2004] 80, 83). 15. LaMoine F. DeVries, Cities of the Biblical World: An Introduction to the Archaeology, Geography, and History of Biblical Sites (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997) 73–82. 16. See also Freyne, Jesus, a Jewish Galilean, 88–90, where he disputes scholarly doubts about the historicity of Jesus’ visit to the region of Tyre.

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transformative experience, the healing of a pagan woman by a Jewish rabbi, Jesus. Second, a significant series of events take place on the way to the villages of Caesarea Philippi, to the north of the Sea of Galilee, in the northwestern corner of Herod Philip’s territory. 17 Known as Paneas (Panias) due to the worship of the Greek god Pan, the region of this city is the location of Peter’s good confession identifying Jesus as Lord, Jesus’ first passion prediction, and Peter’s subsequent rebuke of Jesus (Matt 16:13–23, Mark 8:27–33). 18 As the prelude to the transfiguration (whatever religious experience the story represents), these events mark a critical turn in the Synoptic story, beginning the movement south, ultimately to Jerusalem. Although the Gospels do not identify the mountain, church tradition has placed the transfiguration on Mt. Tabor, southwest of the Sea of Galilee. For his part, Fr. Pixner suggests that the transfiguration took place north of the Galilee in the Golan Heights, perhaps on Mt. Hermon itself, and he argues that Mt. Tabor was an unlikely venue because it was crowned by a walled city in the 1st century. Third, across the Sea of Galilee from Capernaum, Jesus is described as driving demons from a man into a herd of swine. The Gospel accounts vary; however, the city references all suggest locations in the region of the Decapolis. 19 The event did not end well (that is, the people drove Jesus back across the sea), but according to Mark and Luke the man proclaimed “how much Jesus had done for him.” Although this event probably took place in the Tetrarchy of Philip and not in the region of the Decapolis, the presence of a herd of swine makes it clear that it was a Gentile area, possibly in Kursi (also known as Gergesa). 20 Among other scholars, Breyten17. For more information on Caesarea Philippi (Paneas), see the following: Mark Chancey and Adam Porter, “The Archaeology of Roman Palestine,” Near Eastern Archaeology 61 (2001) 181–82; DeVries, Cities of the Biblical World, 264–68. 18. Luke 9:18–22 does not mention the location of the events immediately preceding the transfiguration. 19. Although Mark 5:1–20 indicates that this was among the Gerasenes, and one man was possessed, manuscript evidence for Matt 8:28–34 suggests Gadarenes, Gerasenes, or Gergesenes, with two men possessed, and Luke 8:26–39 indicates Gerasenes. For information about these cities, see DeVries, Cities of the Biblical World, 276–81; and the entry for “Decapolis,” in John J. Rousseau and Rami Arav, Jesus and His World: An Archaeological and Cultural Dictionary (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995). 20. In his own interpretation of the life of Jesus, Fr. Pixner suggested that the “feeding of the 4,000” occurred on the east side of the Sea of Galilee and was not the same event as the “feeding of the 5,000.” As evidence for this conclusion, he

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bach has noted that Mark “has a preference for rural locations,” suggesting that his setting is “the world of small villages, towns, fields, and the rural peasant people.” 21 Fourth, the emphasis on rural Galilee and the areas/regions/districts/ villages near cities beyond the periphery of Galilee extends beyond the Synoptic traditions. According to the Gospel of John, near the city of Sychar to the south, Jesus encountered a Samaritan woman by Jacob’s well and had a conversation about her life and the meaning of water ( John 4:1–42). 22 The conversation with Jesus persuaded her of his prophetic powers, and led her to witness to her neighbors about him. This story is often cited as an example of Jesus’ crossing various social barriers—gender, ethnic, and religious. Consistent with the evidence about Jesus near Tyre and Sidon, Caesarea Philippi, and the Decapolis, this conversation with the Samaritan woman took place in the vicinity of but outside Sychar itself. “The woman left her water jar and went back to the city. . . . They left the city and were on their way to him” ( John 4:28–30). Although not a large city itself, Sychar was in the vicinity of Samaria–Sebaste, an urban area apparently also avoided by Jesus. Were these traditions regarding the Gentile cities randomly selected from the available oral tradition? Or were they chosen by the Gospel writers to make a point? Much scholarly attention has been given to Jesus’ tendency to cross ethnic, religious, and gender boundaries, and these passages have been used to underscore Jesus’ attitude toward Gentiles, pagans, and women; however, what is at issue here is what these accounts suggest about attitudes toward cities in the canonical Gospels. Despite the range of possible interpretations, three observations suggest a pattern common to the canonical Gospel traditions. First, despite ignoring the principal cities of the Galilee, the Gospel writers do record stories of Jesus that include references to some of the principal Gentile and Samaritan

cited the different terms for basket and fish, as well as the numerical symbolism (7 baskets representing the Gentile nations and 12 baskets for the tribes of Israel; Pixner, With Jesus through Galilee, 71–72, 83–84). 21. Cilliers Breytenbach, “Mark and Galilee: Text World and Historical World,” in Galilee through the Centuries: Confluence of Cultures (ed. Eric M. Meyers; Duke Judaic Studies 1; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1999) 78, 79. 22. DeVries suggests that this may have been the city of Shechem (Cities of the Biblical World, 314; see also pp. 231–37). Like the cities beyond the Galilean periphery that are mentioned but not approached by Jesus, Samaria–Sebaste contained an important pagan temple, in this case a Temple of Kore (Chancey and Porter, “Archaeology of Roman Palestine,” 170–71).

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cities. Second, it is not the cities themselves that provide the locus of Jesus’ activity; it is the surrounding area, the neighborhood, or the region around or near the cities. There is no indication that Jesus actually went into any of these cities. Third, the “regions” around these cities are the settings for significant transformative events in the lives of Jesus, his disciples, and others with whom they had contact. The significance of urban areas as dangerous but potent areas near which transformative events occur comes into sharper focus in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ final days. Before I turn to Judea and Jerusalem, one last point about the Galilean periphery needs exploration. The significance of these references in the Gospels has been attributed to Jesus’ propensity for crossing social boundaries and anticipating the later Christian movement beyond the Jewish heartland into Samaria and the larger Greco-Roman world. The debate has hinged on whether this was Jesus’ own propensity to share his gospel with the larger world or a late-1st-century Christian representation, as Christians looked back at the actual historical progression of Christianity from the 30s to the 70s and 80s. An alternative view has recently been presented by Sean Freyne. According to Freyne, stories of Jesus’ entry into the apparently Gentile areas were not an unequivocal assertion of his mission to the larger world (and, hence, evidence of a later Christian redaction of the Jesus traditions); rather, his visits to the region of Tyre and Sidon, to the villages of Caesarea Philippi, to the region of the Decapolis, and to Jacob’s well near Sychar were themselves a claim about the larger world of Israel based on the early traditions of settlement in the second millennium b.c.e. In other words, Jesus was not reaching out to the larger world; he was making a statement about the land of Israel and, through his travels, incorporating regions previously claimed but not currently occupied by or, at least, dominated by the descendants of Jacob: “when viewed from a perspective of the symbolism of ‘the land remaining’, those journeys . . . were perfectly understandable within the parameters of the ‘greater Israel’ and its restoration hopes.” 23 From this point of view, the later Gentile mission of Christianity is an extension of Jesus’ own expansive understanding of and mission for the restoration of Israel itself.

Judea and the Centrality of Jerusalem In the Galilee portrayed by the Gospel traditions, there is no great urban center, no capital city; rather, the landscape is of towns and villages, 23. Freyne, Jesus, a Jewish Galilean, 109.

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with urban centers on the periphery, and Jesus acts in the towns and villages but near the urban centers. Although the cities of Tyre and Sidon, Caesarea Philippi, the Decapolis, and Sychar clearly have a significant role in the symbolic geography of the Gospels, the real city of Jerusalem has a valence beyond the towns and villages of Galilee or the cities beyond its 1st-century periphery. The situation in Judea appears inverted: the peripheral towns and villages are less significant, and the major urban center is where the action is. Thus, the smaller Judean towns and cities (for example, Bethlehem, Bethany, Jericho) appear in the Gospel accounts, but their role is dramatically overshadowed by the sacral center of Judaism— that is, Jerusalem. As the definitive locus of the climax of the Gospel story, Jerusalem bears all the potency of the capital of the Kingdom of David and the site of the Temple of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. According to the Hebrew Scriptures and the historical record, it was also the city that destroyed the prophets, the city that fell to the Babylonians because of its faithlessness, and the city that was compromised by a succession of occupiers for centuries. The ambiguity of this heritage is not lost on the Gospel writers. Although Judean towns such as Bethany are typically regarded with affection, Jerusalem is the object of both affection and anxiety. The only story from Jesus’ childhood places him in the temple in conversation with the teachers of the law, and later, he refers to the temple as his “father’s house.” However, in Luke 19:41, Jesus is reported to have wept over Jerusalem, forecasting its siege and destruction. This poignant combination of affection and judgment is even more pronounced in a passage shared by Luke and Matthew. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you, desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” (Matt 23:37–39, Luke 13:34–35, nrsv)

Although in Matthew this passage immediately precedes the section known as the “Synoptic apocalypse,” in Luke it appears right after his departure from Galilee. According to Luke, the departure from Galilee was motivated by a warning sent to Jesus by the Pharisees. “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” His response included “yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem” (Luke 13:31– 33). Thus, with this mix of anxiety and affection, the Synoptic tradition

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records the adult Jesus as only appearing in Jerusalem in the last week of his life. On the other hand, John has Jesus appear in Jerusalem on multiple occasions, leading to the supposition that he had a two- to three-year ministry. He indicates that Jesus was in Jerusalem for the Passover near the beginning of his ministry ( John 2:13, 23) and “cleansed” the temple. Then, John says that he went into the Judean countryside with his disciples, indicating that they performed baptisms ( John 3:22, 4:2). (It is after this passage that John records the story of the Samaritan woman by Jacob’s well near Sychar.) Later, John indicates that Jesus went to Jerusalem for an unnamed festival ( John 5:1). Whether this was Shavuot or Sukkot in the same year or a following Passover is not known. Jesus’ healing of a man on the Sabbath by the Sheep Gate is given by John as a cause for persecution and a plot to kill Jesus ( John 5:2–18). 24 Thus, John’s references to Jerusalem prior to the final week all suggest that the city is an increasingly dangerous place for Jesus. He even has Jesus going secretly to the Festival of Booths (Sukkot) after telling his brothers he would not go ( John 7:1–10). Publicly presenting himself at the temple, he antagonizes the authorities by his teachings, fueled by speculation about his identity (prophet? messiah?). John implies that he does not stay in the city; references to the Mount of Olives and Bethany in subsequent passages suggest that Jesus spends the night outside Jerusalem. The Johannine indications of Jesus’ presence in Judea and Jerusalem prior to the final week differ from the Synoptic storyline; however, the problems experienced in the city and the threat to safety that he faced are consistent with the Synoptic pattern of depicting Jesus in a tense relationship with urban centers, Gentile or Jewish. In a sense, Jesus goes to the temple within the city of Jerusalem, much as he had gone to the synagogues within Nazareth and Capernaum. The consequences of these visits include an antagonistic relationship with social and religious authorities. In addition to these synoptic characterizations of Jesus’ attitude toward Jerusalem and the Johannine stories about his festival visits to the city, the climax of the story for all is the “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem and the “passion narrative.” The “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem and the provocative entry into the temple are comparable to teaching in the synagogues

24. As is typical of other Gospel records, John’s geographical references here are unclear. With no geographical transition from Judea to Galilee, John 6:1 indicates that Jesus “went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee” to perform the feeding of the 5,000.

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of Galilee; however, the consequences of going to the heart of power will be greater than the consequences of his synagogue appearances. In the passion narrative, Jerusalem is the site of a plot to kill Jesus, the story of the Last Supper, Judas’s betrayal of his teacher, the arrest, interrogation, and torture of Jesus, Peter’s threefold denial, and beginning the walk to Golgotha. Jesus’ death on a cross at Golgotha and his burial in a tomb place him outside the city for the defining climax of the story, and the empty tomb, where the resurrection is first made known to Mary (according to all Gospel accounts) and reported by her to Peter. Although Jesus spends time in Jerusalem and numerous important events occur and signs are given there, the definitive transformative events of the Gospel story take place not in Jerusalem itself but outside the city. Like the first Synoptic passion prediction, the feeding of the 5,000, and the transfiguration, the execution of Jesus and the story of the empty tomb are beyond the city walls—in the area beyond the bounds of a polis or kome.

Conclusion Moving from the Gospel literature into the rest of the New Testament writings, one finds that areas peripheral to urban centers continue to play an important role in the Christian story (for example, the experience of Saul on the road to Damascus, the encounter with Lydia outside Thessalonica); however, the latter examples are found in the Acts of the Apostles, an extension of the Synoptic tradition. On the other hand, the Pauline literature presents a radical inversion of this pattern; cities such as Antioch of Syria, Ephesus, Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, Athens, and of course Rome are themselves loci of transformation. It is within these cities that new communities emerge, defining themselves in opposition to existing social and political structures yet unavoidably encased within these very structures. And for the Revelation of John, real cities such as Laodicea contain churches metaphorically transformed into the lampstands of an eschatological vision, whereas Rome is symbolically buried in the figure of Babylon, and Jerusalem is exalted as Zion. No longer are Jerusalem and Rome real cities; they are sites in the topography of the apocalyptic imagination. In the Revelation of John, these imagined cities of Babylon and Zion escape history and become objects of religious geography and significant far beyond earthly realities, past or present, and far removed from the fishing villages of Bethsaida and Capernaum. What attitudes toward urban areas are exhibited in the canonical literature of the Gospels? Four final comments seem warranted. First, in the canonical Gospel traditions, cities are potent and dangerous places. Jesus

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does not enter cities often or willingly, possibly for his own security. This may especially be true of Sepphoris and Tiberias, sites of royal power—the kind of power that destroyed John the Baptizer and also motivated Jesus’ departure from Galilee (according to Luke 13). He may have avoided these cities intentionally, and this may explain the absence of references to them in the literature. Speculation has included political, security, and geographical reasons as well as the question of ritual purity. Thus, scholarly opinion remains divided on this question, and it is possible that a combination of these factors may be at work. In any case, Jesus avoids the key Galilean cities because it is dangerous to approach them. Second, as political and sacral centers, cities contend with the kind of power that Jesus represents. As he approaches the Gentile cities to the north, south, east, and west, he is reputed to have performed deeds of power. These cities are rife with transformative potential; and when, portrayed as a personal locus of divine power, Jesus approaches the cities, he demonstrates his ability to touch the lives of people who do not benefit from the power of the cities, inserting a social or class index into his work. It is sufficient to be near a city, in the region of a city, and in the environs of a city; it is here that Jesus’ own power is manifest—not in the city but near the city. This is not only true for the Gentile cities to the north, it is also true of Jerusalem itself. For it is not in Jerusalem that his triumph is made known. It is outside the city where Mary finds the empty tomb; it is on the way to Emmaus that two of his followers walk with him. Third, while the cities of Sepphoris and Tiberias are dangerous and avoidable, and the Gentile and Samaritan cities outside the Galilee are dangerous but approachable, the city of Jerusalem is both dangerous and unavoidable. The story of the Gospels is a story of a collision course between Jesus’ demonstrations of power, on the one hand, and the volatile blend of Roman military might and priestly ritual authority, on the other. When he makes the final journey to Jerusalem, the symbolic wedge that Jesus drives into the heart of the holy city explodes in his face; however, the consequences of this explosion lead him outside the city for the climactic moments of the story. Finally, the pattern discovered in the town and country geography of the Gospels anticipates the geography of imperial cities in Pauline and Apocalyptic literature, a geography that ranges from the historical cities of Jerusalem, Corinth, and Rome to the visionary metaphors of Babylon and Zion. Consideration of the remaining canonical texts of the New Testament reveal that, beginning with the Passion, urban areas become the locus both of Christian activity and of the Christian imagination. From the agrarian and small-town experiences and metaphors of Jesus’ time to the

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intensely urban lives of Saul of Tarsus and John of Patmos, the early Christian literature demonstrates that cities are not only the reference points of the apocalyptic imagination; they are also in fact the centers of Christian activity and the transformative experiences that early evangelists tried to stimulate—experiences that led to dire consequences from an earthly point of view.

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Text and the City Leonard Greenspoon Creighton University

After the repetition of the Ten Commandments in the first part of Deuteronomy 5 and the reaffirmation of Moses’ unique role in the second part, God commands Moses to say to the people, “Return to your tents” (thus the Masoretic or traditional Hebrew text [MT], Deut 5:30). For the translator of Deuteronomy responsible for the Septuagint (LXX) of this book, Moses’ words became, ‘Return to your houses’. When Abraham’s servant met Rebekah, soon to be his master’s daughter-in-law, he presented her with several gifts (Gen 24:22), the first of which—according to the MT—was “a gold nose-ring weighing a half shekel.” The LXX translator of Genesis rendered this ‘gold earrings, a drachm each in weight’. Wherever the LXX is at variance with the MT, as in these two examples, scholars posit one of two explanations: either the Greek translators accurately reflected their underlying Hebrew (or Vorlage), which in these cases differs from the MT, or the LXX translators inadvertently or consciously modified an MT(-like) Vorlage. 1 As a rule, it is difficult to determine, in a given instance, which of these two explanations is more likely. But in our two examples, it is easy: the changes in the LXX vis-à-vis the MT are conscious choices on the part of the translators. And we can go a long way toward explaining the rationale for these and a number of other modifications that the LXX translators produced. 1. For general introductions to the Septuagint and questions of translation technique and practice, see these accessible sources: Jennifer M. Dines, The Septuagint (London: T. & T. Clark, 2004); Karen H. Jobes and Moisés Silva, Invitation to the Septuagint (Grand Rapids: Baker / Carlisle: Paternoster, 2000); and Natalio Fernández Marcos, The Septuagint in Context: Introduction to the Greek Versions of the Bible (Leiden: Brill, 2000). Other useful resources are Cécile Dogniez, Bibliography of the Septuagint / Bibliographie de la Septante (1970–1993) (VTSup 60; Leiden: Brill, 1995); and my “It’s All Greek to Me: Septuagint Studies since 1968,” CurBS 5 (1997) 147–74. More focused, but still of general interest, are Sidney Jellicoe, The Septuagint and Modern Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968); and Emanuel Tov, The Text-Critical Use of the Septuagint in Biblical Research ( Jerusalem Bible Studies 8; 2nd ed.; Jerusalem: Simor, 1997).

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It is first of all necessary to look, if only in a general way, at the origins of the LXX. As narrated in the Letter of Aristeas, which probably dates to the mid-2nd century b.c.e., 72 elders, sent from Jerusalem to Alexandria by the high priest and meritorious both in their knowledge of languages and their probity, were warmly greeted by the reigning monarch, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who wished to include a Greek version of the Torah in his library. With royal patronage, these 72 individuals worked together, dividing—much as modern translation committees do—into subgroups to prepare preliminary drafts, which were then scrutinized by the committee as a whole, undergoing revision until they arrived at an agreed-upon text. The date of this enterprise would be approximately 275 b.c.e. or a little over a century prior to Aristeas’s Letter. 2 We are without any earlier evidence, including eyewitness reports by observers or by the translators themselves. Linguistic analysis of the LXX or OG of the Pentateuch confirms a date in the first half of the 3rd century b.c.e. and an Egyptian provenance. There is therefore no reason to think that the translators came from Palestine. Many scholars doubt that the impetus for the translation came from the palace, emphasizing instead the intra-Jewish needs as the growing Alexandrian community lost facility with Hebrew and gained familiarity with Greek. As is so often the case when analyzing circumstances of this sort, we must avoid an “either/ or” explanation and admit that a convergence of interests—some emanating from outside of the community, others from within—made the reign of Philadelphus an ideal time and Alexandria the perfect location for this project. As narrated in the Letter, the LXX translators followed what we might term “standard procedures” in producing a Bible version by committee; only their palatial surroundings on the island of Pharos separate these 72 from later translators. These procedures would surely have allowed the “elders” to incorporate into their translation select aspects of their cultural, social, political, geographical, and religious environment. Given the fact that the Hebrew they were rendering was already “old” and “foreign” by the 3rd century b.c.e., we would not be surprised to find some updating to reflect differences between 3rd-century Alexandria and Palestine, Babylonia, and Egypt many centuries earlier. This appears to be the case in the two examples with which we began this essay. 2. On the Letter of Aristeas, see, in addition to works mentioned in the previous footnote, Harry M. Orlinsky, “The Septuagint as Holy Writ and the Philosophy of the Translators,” HUCA 46 (1975) 89–114.

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Nonetheless, some may interpose, could it really have been the case that these translators were given (or assumed on their own) the freedom to depart from what they surely understood as Sacred Writ? In this perfectly legitimate query lie two related but separable concerns, both of which relate to procedures adopted by the OG translators. Many people, including scholars, are more familiar with an account of LXX origins at variance with the description outlined above. In its fullblown form, this narrative describes how each of the 72 translators was placed in a separate cell, completely isolated from the others. After a period of time, during which each of the 72 produced a version of his own, their texts were compared: they were identical in every respect. As judged in the Christian traditions that preserved these enhanced features, a “miracle” of this sort was a sure sign that the translators were inspired in all respects by God. Or, as the first-century c.e. Jewish philosopher Philo put it, they were prophets, rather than (mere) translators. A view of this sort would make it far less likely that these individuals incorporated even sporadic references to their contemporary society. Here it is worth observing that the oldest (re)source, the Letter of Aristeas, lacks these “miraculous” occurrences. The only thing even approaching a “miracle” (and one about which the Letter’s author seems almost apologetic) is that the translation took the same number of days as the number of translators, namely, 72. But this is viewed as something akin to a coincidence rather than the result of divine decree. Nevertheless, one wonders whether the translators were bound by some tradition of rendering the Hebrew that precluded updatings of the sort I am suggesting. I readily admit that, for the most part, the LXX of the Pentateuch is a rather straightforward representation of its Hebrew Vorlage, exhibiting what I would call a sensible and comprehensible literalism. But this was not the result of any preexistent tradition, inasmuch as the LXX was the first example of a translation into Greek of a sacred text from a “barbarian” (that is, foreign) language. “Sensible literalism” as an approach toward translation is surely sufficiently flexible to allow translators freedom enough to adopt and adapt with a view toward their audience, even while remaining on the whole very faithful to their Hebrew Vorlage. Although the Letter of Aristeas envisions the LXX Pentateuch as the result of one committee deliberating at a single (and singular) moment, modern scholars have detected at least five, and probably six translators for this material, with a different individual (or group of individuals) for each book and in all likelihood a second individual (or group) for the latter

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part of Exodus. The similarities among the Greek books of the Pentateuch do, nonetheless, support the “kernel of truth” in Aristeas’s contention, which is that they share (at least in general) a common origin and authority. 3 As is still true in Judaism, it is the Torah, or Five Books of Moses, that are most authoritative and most studied in comparison with other parts of the Hebrew Bible. It makes perfect sense, then, that these books were the first to be rendered and that the approach(es) adopted for this rendering were influential in the preparation of later books in the Greek Bible. This is not to say that the entire “Septuagint” was rendered exactly as the Torah had been, because some LXX books are more literal and others far freer— occasionally veering toward paraphrastic. In other words, the Pentateuch “model” was followed by some later translators but ignored (if known) by others. In no case do we have an explicit statement from antiquity that would help us understand the differing approaches or the reasons for accepting or rejecting earlier patterns. But we can note that concerns for contemporary application were more prominent in the versions (and presumably also in the minds) of some Greek translators in comparison with others (see below). 4 In this essay I will for the most part limit myself to the Pentateuch. In the preceding paragraphs I have sought to demonstrate that the men responsible for the Greek or LXX Pentateuch were members of Alexandria’s Jewish community who, motivated by concerns both intra- and extracommunal, produced a version that for the most part reflected a sensibly literal rendering of their Hebrew Vorlage for their intended audience. If I were able to engage these translators in conversation, they would assert, correctly I think, that their primary loyalty or allegiance was to the Hebrew source text that they were rendering. At the same time, they were mindful of the variety of contemporary contexts they shared with their fellow Alexandrian Jews. It is to these shared contexts that the title of this essay, “Text and the City,” refers. The text is the LXX version; the city is Alexandria. 3. In addition to authors mentioned in above footnotes, see my “Jewish Translations of the Bible,” in The Jewish Study Bible (ed. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003) 2005–20. 4. Different perspectives on a variety of relevant issues are provided by R. Timothy McLay, The Use of the Septuagint in New Testament Research (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003); and Joseph Mélèze Modrzejewski, The Jews of Egypt: From Rameses II to Emperor Hadrian (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1995), especially chap. 5.

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This frame of reference means that I largely ignore the large number of passages in which the LXX equals, for all intents and purposes, the Hebrew (whether MT or not). It also means that we do not subject to analysis variations that are unrelated to the Hellenistic urban setting of Alexandria but more broadly relevant to the Hellenistic world at large or to harmonizations and other translational/scribal changes that sought to bring the text into agreement with itself regardless of the translators’ circumstances. As a final introductory or preliminary consideration, I affirm the correctness and applicability of the well-known observation that all translation involves interpretation, to which I do not hesitate to add, as a coda, that not all interpretation is of the same sort. So, for example, a 19thcentury English-language Bible prepared in London is not expected to reveal its urban origins, nor would we be entirely happy with a 20th-century product of New York City that reflected distinctive characteristics of that northeastern metropolis. Although I firmly believe that, given the opportunity, “translators will be translators” in many important, shared ways, it is still true that time and place play their role, which can be crucial. Thus it is that, even if we do not fully comprehend or appreciate the mixture of motives that led the 5, 6, or 72 men responsible for the LXX Pentateuch, the result of their labors and its legacy are eminently worthy of our study and analysis. Let us now return to the examples with which we began. In discussing Deut 5:30, John Wevers correctly observes: “To an urban Jew in Alexandria ‘tents’ as dwelling places would be an anachronism, and ‘Return to your houses’ made much more sense.” 5 Wevers makes the same point with respect to several similar examples from Genesis: “At 9:21 Noah is said to have undressed himself ‘in his tent.’ But tents were hardly common in Alexandria, and the translator updated this by his ‘in his house.’ ” 6 It is not entirely clear why these translators would pick up on this element and not others, or why most later translators of the LXX simply used a Greek equivalent for “tent.” It should, in any case, be observed that this updating 5. John William Wevers, “The LXX Translator of Deuteronomy,” in IX Congress of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies (Cambridge, 1995) (ed. Bernard A. Taylor; SBLSCS 45; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997) 84. See also his comments in The Greek Text of Deuteronomy (SBLSCS 39; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995). 6. John William Wevers, “The Interpretative Character and Significance of the Septuagint Version,” in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation (ed. Magne Saebø; vol. 1; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996) 104. See also Wevers’s comments in The Greek Text of Exodus (SBLSCS 35; Scholars Press, 1993).

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was not mechanical. Thus, the translator of Joshua, following chronologically and stylistically in the footsteps of the Pentateuch translators, also substituted ‘house’ for “tent,” except in chap. 7, where Achan’s digging up the ground inside his ‘house’ to provide a hiding place for ill-gotten gain would not have make sense to an urban dweller in Alexandria (the LXX provides a literal rendering for Hebrew “tent” here). Robert Hiebert has cogently discussed the issue of jewelry and its weight in the MT and LXX of Gen 24:22: In the LXX, “the ‘nose-ring’ weighing a ‘half shekel’ has become ‘earrings’ weighing a ‘drachm’ each. This adaptation was occasioned by the fact that nose-rings were not part of the fashion scene in third century b.c. Alexandria, and if earrings were to be the substitute in the Greek text, they should come in pairs.” 7 We cannot draw from Hiebert’s remarks the conclusion that this or any other Greek translator effected a thoroughgoing fashion transformation to reflect the height of Hellenistic urban apparel; only that he did so on occasion—and this is one occasion. Hiebert also notes that “there is an interesting correspondence with respect to the weight designation, in that the shekel and the didrachm were regarded to be equivalent. Consequently, the weight of the nose-ring in the MT corresponds to that of each earring in the LXX.” Hiebert locates another example in an area of Hellenistic urban life that reflects more serious concerns. It relates to the differences between the MT and LXX at Gen 37:28. As recorded in the MT, Joseph’s brothers “sold him to the Ismaelites for twenty pieces of silver.” As calculated in the LXX, the same transaction entailed ‘twenty gold pieces’. There is every indication that this difference is the result of conscious intervention by the Greek translator himself. Hiebert agrees: “As it turns out, the average price for a slave in the time and place of the LXX translator was considerably higher than the twenty silver pieces mentioned in the Hebrew text. . . . Thus the Greek translator set a price that would have been more in line with the going rate in third century b.c. Alexandrian slave markets.” 8 The reference to Joseph’s being sold into slavery brings to mind several other contextual changes in the LXX of this narrative section at the end of Genesis. Thus, in MT Gen 41:34, Joseph advises Pharaoh “to appoint overseers over the land.” For the Hebrew term for “overseers,” the LXX has an appropriate, contemporary Egyptian title, toparxes. Somewhat later, in Gen 45:8 MT, Joseph identifies himself as “a ruler in all the land

7. Robert J. V. Hiebert, “Translation Technique in LXX Genesis and Its Implications for the NETS Version,” BIOSCS 33 (2000) 87. 8. Ibid., 88.

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of Egypt.” By the slight change of “in all the land” to ‘of all the land’, the LXX translator makes it clear that Joseph’s position is uniquely elevated rather than his being simply one among the nomarchs of Egypt. 9 Two verses later in the MT (at 45:10; see also 46:34), after having revealed his true identity to his brothers, Joseph assures them that they will be able to “settle in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me.” To the Greek equivalent of ‘land of Goshen’, the LXX translator added in apposition the proper name, Arabios. As Wevers observes: This “was one of the nomes of the delta in Ptolemaic times; LXX makes the text more understandable for the Alexandrian Jews.” A number of place-names are similarly updated or clarified for the benefit of Alexandrian Jewry. Thus, “in the land of Edom” in MT Gen 36:16 becomes ‘in the land of Idoumea’ in the LXX of this verse, which was in line with the geographical perceptions of Hellenistic Alexandrians. The sporadic nature of such changes is evident when we note that five verses later (at 36:21) the Greek replicates the same phrase rather than replacing it as it does here. 10 Perhaps, the substitution in this earlier verse was deemed sufficient from the perspective of this LXX translator. In Deut 2:23, the MT refers to “the Caphtorim, who came from Caphtor.” For most modern scholars, Caphtor is Crete, but the LXX translator identified it with Cappadocia in Asia Minor. As explicated by Wevers, this identification reflects the Alexandrians’ clear knowledge of Asia Minor as a trading partner, although “their knowledge of ancient tribal movements was sparse.” Wevers judges as more valid the updated identification of the “Sidonians” in MT 3:9 as ‘Phoenicians’ in the LXX of the same verse. 11 Changes in bureaucratic terminology in line with Ptolemaic usage are not limited to ‘overseers’. An instructive example is offered by the Hebrew word translated ‘elders’. As Wevers notes, throughout the Pentateuch, with the exception of Deuteronomy, the LXX uses what we might call the literal rendering presbuteroi. But in LXX Deuteronomy, the favorite rendering (16 out of 20 times) is gerousia or ‘council of elders, senate’. As Wevers notes, “this probably reflects conditions in the Jewish quarter of Alexandria.” 12 One of the most interesting developments in this regard involves the oft-used Hebrew expression for “king,” which could refer to God, to an

9. Wevers, “Interpretative Character,” 104–5. 10. Ibid., 105. 11. Idem, “LXX Deuteronomy,” 83–84. 12. Ibid., 84.

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Israelite ruler, or a foreign monarch. As Wevers notes for the Greek book of Deuteronomy, and as others have cataloged more broadly, 13 many of the Greek translators had no difficulty with the literal basileus for foreign kings, because this reflected the political realities of both ancient Israel and Hellenistic Alexandria. The same term would of course be appropriate with reference to the Lord. However, with considerable consistency, LXX Deuteronomy avoids basileus when MT “king” refers to an Israelite leader, preferring instead arxon or ‘ruler’. For Wevers, this demonstrates that “to the translator only the Lord is Israel’s king.” 14 Jobes and Silva find another motivation in this shift, namely, “a desire not to publicize the Jews’ hope for a national identity under their own king when they were in a precarious political position where the forces of a pagan empire could turn against them at any time.” 15 A similar desire not to offend may well be at the root of several other modifications effected by the LXX translators of the Pentateuch. Thus, for example, the Greek translator of Deut 11:10 avoided reminding “any possible Egyptian readers that his own forebears were at one time agricultural slaves of Egyptian farmers.” 16 Jobes and Silva point to a relevant example from the realm of religion: although the LXX translators on occasion substituted the names of Hellenistic deities for the Semitic gods they found in their Hebrew Vorlage, they generally avoided such substitution in connection with the patron deity of Alexandria, Agathos Dainion. Because almost all references to pagan deities in the MT were derogatory, “the explicit denunciation of the city-god revered by the pagans with and under whose power they lived would have exposed the Jews of Alexandria to recrimination.” 17 More generally, it has often been asserted that a number of the LXX alterations identified by the rabbis were inserted so as modify passages that might otherwise cause offense. 18 The force or validity of these examples rests on the contention that the LXX, or at least portions of it, were available to non-Jews and read at least on occasion by them. Presumably, this could have occurred during re13. As, for example, Richard A. Freund, “From Kings to Archons: Jewish Political Ethics and Kingship Passages in the LXX,” JSOT 2 (1990) 58–72. 14. Wevers, “LXX Deuteronomy,” 87. 15. Jobes and Silva, Introduction to the Septuagint, 106. 16. Wevers, “LXX Deuteronomy,” 84. 17. Jobes and Silva, Introduction to the Septuagint, 104–5. 18. On this tradition, see Emanuel Tov, “The Rabbinic Tradition concerning the ‘Alterations’ Inserted into the Greek Pentateuch and Their Relation to the Original Text of the LXX,” JSJ 15 (1984) 65–89.

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search on their part (perhaps adding some weight to the view that the LXX could indeed have been consulted at Alexandria’s Library) or for less benign purposes on the part of individuals or groups not well disposed to the large and growing Jewish influence in the city. The non-Jewish audience, or at least the segment of it that was not unalterably biased against Jews, could also find reasons for greater support of and trust for the Jews of Alexandria in, for example, the LXX additions to the book of Esther. There, among other points being made, the role of Mordecai in saving the king’s life is enhanced at the same time that Haman’s villainy is enlarged to include his role in a plot to overthrow the Persian Empire. In this way, the lessons of this biblical book are expanded beyond the safety of the Jews to the safety of any empire (and its ruler) that they inhabit. “Such a point would have reassured, for example, the Ptolemies, that the Jews of Alexandria were not a threat to the pagan king, but to the contrary, a friend,” as cogently stated in Jobes and Silva. 19 Susan Brayford has detected the influence of the Alexandrian environment on the LXX translators, in this instance the translator of Greek Genesis, in what we might call a far more private realm of life than the other examples we have looked at. 20 In Genesis 18, God informs the elderly couple, Abraham and Sarah, that they will at last have a son of their own. Upon hearing this, Sarah (as narrated in MT v. 12) “laughed to herself, saying, ‘After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?’ ” When, in the following verse, God reports Sarah’s remarks to Abraham, there is in essence a divine paraphrase that, among other factors, omits any reference to Sarah’s remarks about the possibility (or impossibility) of enjoying the pleasures of sex. As Brayford correctly observes, “The LXX version of the stories of Sarah and Abraham was both a translation and an interpretation of the Hebrew text.” Because, as we noted above, the translators of the Pentateuch generally followed a literal approach to their task, even “minor differences between the Greek and Hebrew versions of the ancestral stories are significant.” 21 With reference to passages such as Gen 18:12, she continues, 19. Jobes and Silva, Introduction to the Septuagint, 105. 20. Susan A. Brayford, “The Domestication of Sarah: From Jewish Matriarch to Hellenistic Matron,” in Women and Judaism: Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Symposium of the Philip M. and Ethel Klutznick Chair in Jewish Civilization, October 28 and 29, 2001 (Studies in Jewish Civilization 14; ed. Leonard Greenspoon, Ronald A. Simkins, and Jean Axelrad Cahan; Omaha: Creighton University Press, 2003) 1–21. 21. Ibid., 5.

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“Due to their Alexandrian milieu, the Jewish translators of the LXX saw the world through Hellenistic lenses. The feature of this perspective that is most important for Sarah’s story is its view of gender and gender roles.” 22 Although the precise translation of LXX Gen 18:12 is difficult to determine, Brayford is surely correct in discerning the translator’s focus on childbearing to the exclusion of any reference to her sexual pleasure. In Brayford’s view, this is an indication of “Sarah’s domestication”: “LXX Sarah, like her Hellenistic role models, is portrayed as a woman whose value and fate are determined by her reproductive capacities. LXX Sarah, moreover, is not tainted by impure thoughts of sex inappropriate for a Hellenistic lady.” 23 The examples we have looked at thus far, mostly from the books of the Pentateuch, are telling and, I firmly believe, convincing in their cumulative effect. Taken as a whole, they demonstrate that on occasion these Greek translators reflected the Alexandrian environment that they and their first readers inhabited. The range of interests and areas influenced by this urban context is quite broad, even if the number of examples may be considered small. For later books of the Greek Bible, both the books translated from a Semitic Vorlage and books that represent original compositions, we rarely have outside evidence, even from a document as problematic as the Letter of Aristeas. A good case can be made that the Greek book of Joshua followed shortly after the Pentateuch, but a chronological determination of this sort, whether relative or absolute, rests primarily on conjecture (which, in my opinion, is not an altogether shaky foundation). In some cases, including the book of Isaiah (to which we turn below), the updatings are rather comprehensive and numerous in comparison with their sporadic nature in the Pentateuch. 24 The classic analysis of Greek Isaiah is by I. L. Seeligmann. 25 One of the characteristics of LXX Isaiah is that it evinces a marked influence from the surrounding cultural atmosphere, as well as expressing the author’s personal views. This translation, so it seems, is almost the only one among the various parts of the Septuagint that repeatedly reflects contemporane22. Ibid., 6. 23. Ibid., 9–10. 24. On these and related issues, see also my “Hebrew into Greek: Interpretation in, by, and of the Septuagint” in History of Biblical Interpretation (vol. 1; ed. Alan Hauser and Duane F. Watson; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003) 80–113. 25. I. L. Seeligmann, The Septuagint Version of Isaiah: A Discussion of Its Problems (Mededelingen en verhandelingen 9; Leiden: Brill, 1948).

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ous history. The differences between the Hebrew original (as it appears in the MT or is reconstructed or retroverted) and the Greek translation thus serve as the basis for a reconstruction of the theological ideas behind the translation (or better, behind the translator): its conception of God, its historical consciousness, and its expectations in regard to the future. Seeligmann enumerates an impressive number of renderings through which the Greek translator of Isaiah reveals his acquaintance with what had become traditional language and practice within the Alexandrian Jewish community. As he indicates in the programmatic statement to his study, Seeligmann seeks further specificity through purported references to specific historical events or conditions. Although most translators do betray (if this is the appropriate term) aspects of their cultural and theological environment, it is less common for the specifics of history and government to make their way into the versions. For LXX Isaiah, these latter factors are in evidence in many ways, especially in the specific historical references that Seeligmann succeeded in isolating. His findings in this regard are quite remarkable: in the LXX, the great satire of chap. 14 contains unmistakable allusions to Antiochus Epiphanes; Isaiah 8, to the high priest Onias III. 26 In Seeligmann’s elaborated analysis, other references to historical personalities of the period and to the Jewish reaction to them abound. We are, as it were, moved from the 8th–7th centuries of First Isaiah or the 6th century of Deutero-Isaiah to the era of the Maccabees, the Seleucids, and especially Ptolemaic Egypt. Seeligmann establishes additional historical links with the Oniad-founded temple in Heliopolis, Egypt. This last reference leads to a consideration of the translator’s theological views. In this regard, as in others, “the Isaiah translator . . . cannot be said to have been merely a translator and nothing more.” 27 Seeligmann carefully analyzes the cumulatively convincing evidence that this translator made a “conscious attempt to transpose from the Biblical to the Hellenistic sphere of thought [the] nuclear idea of every Jewish-theological concept: God, Thorah and Israel.” 28 In the process, the Isaiah translator exhibits a considerable degree of independence from biblical thought, especially in his conception of Torah. Seeligmann links Septuagint Isaiah’s theological pattern with Alexandrian Jewish theology in general and then takes this idea one step further by hypothesizing that some of the language

26. Seeligmann, “Septuagint of Isaiah,” 83–94. 27. Ibid., 95. 28. Ibid., 96.

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in Greek Isaiah is specifically aimed at a “heretical” group that failed to live up to the standards that Isaiah (in Hebrew and in Greek) was thought to have erected. 29 Equally apt is Seeligmann’s characterization of the Isaiah translation as giving “striking insight into the Galuth psychology of Alexandrian Jewry.” As seen through his extensive reworking of, for example, chap. 25, this translator observed “the conditions of his own time and of the state of exile. . . . [Diaspora] is symbolic of misery and humiliation.” Life in Alexandria did indeed offer much even to its Jewish residents, but it could never take the place of Zion for the loyal among them. 30 However, so Seeligmann continues, Septuagint Isaiah was more than a road map of loss and destruction; it was also a blueprint for future redemption and salvation. National deliverance would come. It had been foreseen by the biblical prophets, including Isaiah, whose words (at least as recorded in the Greek of Isaiah) pointed to the Diaspora community of Alexandria itself as the means of effecting this salvation. As viewed through the interpretive prism constructed by Seeligmann, salvation moved onto a universal stage as Diaspora Jews taught their religion among the Gentile majorities in whose midst they passed their Exile (viewed in this light, the Greek reworking of Isa 66:5 may be understood as a “fragment of Alexandrian preaching and exhortation to the making of religious propaganda in the hostile Gentile milieu,” especially in regard to the teachings of the Torah. 31 Not unexpectedly, later generations of LXX researchers have not agreed with every point Seeligmann made, but on the whole the direction of their scholarly comments has been toward refinement and expansion rather than abandonment. 32 One example, among many, comes from a recent study by Stanley Porter and Brook Pearson. 33 They call attention to Greek Isaiah’s rendering of 40:3–6 as reflective of “an event in the course 29. Ibid., 104–8. 30. Ibid., 111–12. 31. Ibid., 118. 32. See also Arie van der Kooij, “The Old Greek of Isaiah 19:16–25: Translation and Interpretation,” in VI Congress of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies (Jerusalem 1986) (ed. Claude E. Cox; SBLSCS 23; Atlanta: Scholars Press) 127–66; and Ronald L. Troxel, “What’s in a Name? Contemporization and Toponyms in LXX-Isaiah,” in Seeking Out the Wisdom of the Ancients: Essays Offered to Honor Michael V. Fox on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday (ed. Ronald L. Troxel, Kelvin G. Friebel, and Dennis R. Magary; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005) 327–44. 33. Stanley E. Porter and Brook W. R. Pearson, “Isaiah through Greek Eyes: The Septuagint of Isaiah,” in Writing and Reading the Scroll of Isaiah: Studies of an

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of Hellenistic history which may very well have resonated both with the translator of Isaiah and with his audience—namely, the funeral procession of Alexander the Great.” Although this event took place perhaps as much as 200 years earlier than the Greek rendering of Isaiah, it is not farfetched to think of its remaining etched in popular imagination, especially if it were kept alive through public ritual in Alexandria. When Porter and Pearson characterize Greek Isaiah’s rendering of these verses as “strictly literal” and yet capable of conveying “the theology and historical situation of the translator,” we are reminded, as the authors point out, of Seeligmann’s observation that “passages that were translated literally in a given book of the Septuagint are of equal importance as free paraphrases: both represent fragments of the religious notions of the translator concerned.” 34 In her extensive research on the Greek editions of Esther and their relationship to the Hebrew text, Kristin de Troyer discerned a different view of the city in the former in comparison with the latter. She writes: the LXX translator located “the square of the city in the middle of the city; the author of Hebrew Esther, however, had located his open square in front of the palace.” And, she continues, it makes a difference to the story: “In the Hebrew text, not all the people see Mordecai parading on the royal horse, whereas in the Greek text, Mordecai is in the middle of the city, so that everyone can see him.” The relevance of this example for our essay lies in the fact that “the LXX has a Greek city in mind, whereas MT seems to have an ancient oriental city in mind.” 35 Something similar may have been in the mind of the translator of LXX Genesis, when he locates the site of Abraham’s negotiations for the Cave of Machpelah in “the city” (equivalent perhaps to the city center), where MT has the city gate (Gen 23:10). As I have observed at several places in this essay, there is a demonstrable and deep dependence by the translator of LXX Joshua on the Greek Pentateuch. I conclude with one further example that may provide an additional pointer to Alexandrian influence on the text. Throughout the Pentateuch and Joshua, in both the Hebrew and in the Greek, there are numerous references to altars. For the most part, these are licit altars within the context of the biblical narrative. On occasion, however, these altars are illicit or inappropriate for making offerings to the God of Israel.

Interpretive Tradition (ed. Craig C. Broyles and Craig C. Evans; 2 vols.; VTSup 70; Leiden: Brill, 1998) 2:531–46. 34. Ibid., 542, 545. 35. Kristin De Troyer, personal communication, May 2004.

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The MT uses the same word for both types of altars. The Greek translators, on the other hand, introduce a new word, thusiastérion, to distinguish the licit altars from others, for which the term bomos is regularly used. In her magisterial discussion and analysis of this and other cultic terminology, Suzanne Daniel sought to locate the origin of this distinction in the need to clarify the status of the altar in such key incidents as the Golden Calf of Exodus 32. 36 Although there is much to commend in Daniel’s efforts, this sort of explanation leads, at least for me, to another question: if the writers of the Hebrew Bible did not feel it was necessary to make this distinction in terminology, why did the LXX translators (or at least some of them) do so? It is my contention, as yet to be worked out fully, that these translators were deeply concerned about an issue or a complex of issues concerning “altars” that was of importance, perhaps burning importance, for the Jews of Alexandria at their time. Translators are men (and today also women) of their time. There are many ways in which they reflect their involvement in the life around them. When the text being rendered is understood as Sacred Writ, there are additional concerns to make the text comprehensible and relevant while at the same time not losing its older and timeless elements. Throughout this essay, we have looked at examples that show the LXX translators as actively involved members of their Alexandrian Jewish community, whose background and needs they knew well. Although we may not be happy with every decision they made, we can nonetheless sympathize with, and on occasion even applaud, their efforts to produce a text in and for the city.

36. Suzanne Daniel, Recherches sur le vocabulaire du culte dans la Septante (Paris: Klincksieck, 1966) 16–32, 363–75.

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The City and the Philosopher in Ancient Greece Laura W. Grams University of Nebraska at Omaha

Socrates’ unique devotion to Athens, which eventually cost him his life, is the most striking example of philosophical concern for the polis. Although Socrates is sometimes portrayed as an outsider whose methods of questioning posed a threat to the established political order, he was fully engaged in preserving Athens by tending to the philosophical health of its citizenry. He also inspired two different kinds of relationship between the philosopher and the city among the philosophers who took him as an exemplar, including Plato, Aristotle, some of the Cynics, and the Stoics. 1 Some conducted their activities in the heart of the public space by reproaching citizens in order to make them more virtuous, while others demonstrated their concern for the polis by working out the best possible constitutions and laws. The city-state took its position as a center of authority in Greece around the 8th century b.c.e. Physical isolation due to geography and other factors led to the emergence of political centers within relatively small physical territories, including both a concentrated population area and lands in the countryside. For example, Athens was located in Attica, the largest of these territories, which by the 5th century b.c.e. covered around 2,500 sq km and included a few hundred thousand people. 2 Kinship bonds remained strong and citizens were well-versed in each other’s family histories; however, the city-state was organized on the basis of political citizenship rather 1. The conclusions of this essay are limited by its focus on Athens and on Socrates and his philosophical descendants. Others, such as the Pythagoreans and Epicureans, seemed to retreat from the city in pursuit of their own visions of the best community. 2. Thomas R. Martin, An Overview of Classical Greek History from Mycenae to Alexander (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996); J. D. Bury and Russell Meiggs, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great (4th ed.; London: Macmillan, 1975) 237.

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than family affiliation. 3 This was particularly true in Athens after Solon reformed the excessive power of the aristocracy by forgiving debts and founding democratic institutions based on citizenship, and when Cleisthenes divided Attica into local demes and then artificially composed new “tribes” by joining several geographically dispersed demes. Socrates was an Athenian citizen, and by his own account never left the city to travel (Crito, 52B). He faithfully discharged his duties of military service and political participation but never took part in public political discourse or legal proceedings until his own indictment and trial. Despite his lack of engagement in the public debates of his time or leadership in the city, Socrates says of himself in Plato’s Gorgias, “I believe that I’m one of a few Athenians—so as not to say I’m the only one, but the only one among our contemporaries—to take up the true political craft and practice the true politics” (521D). 4 In other words, none of the other citizens who regularly participate or make speeches in the assembly and the law courts is practicing the techne appropriate to the polis. Why does Socrates make this bold assertion? “Because,” he says, “the speeches I make on each occasion do not aim at gratification but at what’s best. They don’t aim at what’s most pleasant” (521D–E). Presumably, the others who speak in public forums do not aim at what is best, nor are they concerned to improve the members of the audience and the city itself. By contrast, Socrates claims that the goal of those who “take up the business of the polis” is to “attempt to care for the polis and its citizens with the aim of making the citizens themselves as good as possible” (513E). Socrates cares especially for the education and improvement of the young, and his interest in their intellectual potential is focused exclusively on the men from his own city. For example, in the Theaetetus he asks the mathematician Theodorus if he has come across any young men worthy of notice, and Theodorus recommends Theaetetus due to his sharp intellect and balanced character (143E–144B). Although Theodorus himself is from Cyrene, Socrates specifies that he is not interested in the mathematical or philosophical pursuits of the young people there because he “loves Athens better than Cyrene” and therefore takes a keener interest in the talented youth of his own city (143D). This interest also carries with it a responsibility, because Socrates looks after the progress of the young men of his own polis and is particularly keen to examine all who incline toward philosophy. 3. Bury and Meiggs, ibid. 4. Translations are taken from Plato, Complete Works (ed. John M. Cooper; Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997).

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In the Apology, Socrates elevates his responsibilities toward the city of Athens to a divinely ordained position: “I was attached to this city by the god—though it seems a ridiculous thing to say—as upon a great and noble horse which was somewhat sluggish because of its size and needed to be stirred up by a kind of gadfly” (30E). Socrates warns that the Athenians will not easily find another such gift from the gods, someone who without concern for his own affairs will devote himself wholly to questioning them and reproaching them for not living virtuously. Obviously, the Athenians of the jury do not agree with this assessment when they convict Socrates and then by an even greater margin sentence him to death, but Socrates is sure that his contribution has been of such high value as to merit free meals at the public expense, like an Olympic champion (36E). The “gadfly” metaphor, on the other hand, could be taken to imply that Socrates is an outsider in his own city whose only purpose is to prod and irritate that “noble horse.” Socrates admits that he has avoided certain aspects of the city’s life: for example, he reminds the jurors that this is his first speech before a law court, at the age of 70 (17D). Although he has conducted many of his philosophical conversations in the middle of the most public of spaces, the agora, he has never been involved in a trial or made speeches before the public assembly or ekklesia. Socrates acknowledges that “it may seem strange” that he questions people privately even though he does not attempt to “advise the city” in the assembly (31C). He claims that his “divine sign” prevents him from participating in such matters and adds that any “man who really fights for justice must lead a private, not a public, life if he is to survive for even a short time,” because “no man will survive who genuinely opposes you or any other crowd and prevents the occurrence of many unjust and illegal happenings in the city” (31D–32A). The Gorgias reinforces this view of the potential precariousness of the city, when Socrates says that he would indeed be a “fool” if he did not “suppose that anything might happen to anybody in this city” (521C). Does this warning mean that the philosopher should avoid engaging in the political affairs of the city? Socrates’ remarks about the dangers of life in the city are primarily an indictment of the erratic “justice” of the mob rather than an indication that he rejects public duties on principle. The Apology reveals that Socrates faithfully discharged his compulsory service on the Council, during which he publicly opposed injustice at great personal risk when he voted against an illegal decision to try ten generals as a group rather than as individuals (32B). During the reign of the Thirty tyrants, when the Athenian democracy had been overturned by an oligarchy, he refused to be complicit in their regime by bringing Leon of Salamis to

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be executed (32C–D). Socrates explains that he could have been executed for this inaction, but luckily the regime of the Thirty collapsed not long afterward (32E). From the Symposium, we also learn of his courageous military service, when Alcibiades insists that his own decoration for bravery should have been awarded to Socrates, who saved his life during the campaign (220E). As a result, we must conclude that Socrates was indeed devoted to his polis and fulfilled all of his responsibilities to it, regardless of the dangers involved. In the Republic, Socrates explains that “a city whose prospective rulers are least eager to rule must of necessity be most free from civil war, whereas a city with the opposite kind of rulers is governed in the opposite way” (520D). By this criterion, Socrates would be the best sort of ruler: one who lacks the desire for power but who nevertheless does not shirk his duties. In addition, his passive avoidance of some public offices does not amount to a rejection of or retreat from the polis. Instead, by privately questioning and admonishing its citizens, Socrates is able to care for Athens in a way that other mortal legislators and judges could not. Granted, some citizens may have viewed his private conversations as a dangerous corruption rather than a benefit to the city. In the Euthyphro, the dramatic setting of which is immediately before Socrates goes to the court to meet the indictment against him, Plato juxtaposes Socrates’ concern for the city against the actions of those who brought the indictment. Socrates suggests that Meletus, one of his accusers, is caring for the city insofar as he can first get rid of people such as Socrates who “corrupt the young shoots” or plants and later “take care of the older ones and become a source of great blessings for the city” (3A). Whether this remark should be read ironically or not, Euthyphro emphatically responds that Meletus seems to be “harming the very heart of the city by attempting to wrong you” (3A). Although Socrates chooses not to participate in certain public institutions, if we believe his claim in the Gorgias that he is the only true politician among the Athenians, then his philosophical activities indeed lie at the very heart of the city’s life. Unfortunately, Socrates correctly predicted that these activities carried a great risk. In spite of this, he continued to philosophize in Athens and refused to leave even when doing so might have saved his own life. In the Apology, he briefly considers and rejects the possibility of accepting banishment from the city as a penalty (37C–E). 5 He also refuses to consider 5. Banishment and ostracism were not unusual penalties in Greek cities at this time.

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the possibility of giving up philosophizing but says he will admonish people specifically by saying, “you are an Athenian, a citizen of the greatest city with the greatest reputation for both wisdom and power” and on that basis will ask whether they are not ashamed to neglect the affairs of their souls (29D–E). The Crito clearly indicates that Socrates could have escaped prison into exile with the help of his friends, but speaking on behalf of the Laws of Athens, Socrates argues that it would be unjust for him to leave the city. If he was willing to refuse injustice on other occasions, and if his own impending execution was unjust, then why was Socrates so content with Athens as to consent to being put to death? Socrates, speaking in the role of the Laws, gives evidence of his apparent contentment when he argues that: We have convincing proofs that we and the city were congenial to you. You would not have dwelt here most consistently of all the Athenians if the city had not been exceedingly pleasing to you. You have never left the city, even to see a festival, nor for any other reason except military service; you have never gone to stay in any other city, as people do; you have had no desire to know another city or other laws; we and our city satisfied you. (52B)

Not only did Socrates refuse to leave Athens when doing so might save his life, but he had never before seen fit to leave his city. Why was Athens so pleasing to Socrates that he never left it? One answer may be found in Socrates’ encomium of Athens in the Menexenus, which he claims was delivered to him by the courtesan Aspasia (236B). Since the purpose of the speech is to praise the Athenians who died in battle, it begins by arguing that “a polity molds its people; a goodly one molds good men, the opposite bad”; thus, it is necessary to “show that our ancestors were molded in a goodly polity” (238C). Athens is good precisely because: The reason we have this polity is our equality in birth. The other cities have been put together from people of diverse origins and unequal condition, so that their polities also are unequal, tyrannies and oligarchies. Some of their inhabitants look on the others as slaves, while the latter look on the former as masters. We and our fellow-citizens, all brothers sprung from one mother, do not think it right to be each other’s slaves or masters. Equality of birth in the natural order makes us seek equality of rights in the legal and defer to each other only in the name of reputation for goodness and wisdom. (238E)

Because their city is good due to the equality of its citizens, the Athenians themselves are supposedly able to perform better and more heroic deeds

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(239A). Freedom in this vision results from each citizen’s equal share in the common life of the city. These words are taken from Aspasia’s speech, however; does Socrates necessarily agree with her account? Her description of the Athenians shares at least one common element with the story that Socrates tells in the Republic about the various metals the god mixed into the citizens— gold, silver, bronze, and iron (414B–415A). The guardians must believe that the city’s land is their “mother and nurse,” while the other citizens are “their earthborn brothers,” even though their souls have different natures (414E). Although the citizens eventually will be sorted into a hierarchy of classes and functions based on the proportions of the metals in their souls, they are nevertheless born equally from the earth as siblings and therefore must care for one another and the city. In this way, even though the strict meritocracy of the ideal city in the Republic seems incompatible with democratic ideals in some respects, it is based on the conviction that citizens enjoy equality of birth because they are kindred children of the same mother. The guardians of the city should not be thought of as mastering the other citizens but as serving them by agreeing (however reluctantly) to fulfill the ruling function for which they are best suited and trained. Similarly, each citizen serves the city according to her or his best capacities and equally deserves to be cared for by the other citizens in return. Socrates alludes to this metaphorical sense of equal kinship among citizens again in the Apology, when he tells the jurors that he will continue to reproach everyone he meets but “more so the citizens because you are more kindred to me” (30A). His commitment to serving them in his characteristic manner is also significant given the relative fragility of the Athenian democracy, which suffered under intense pressures during the Peloponnesian War and was overthrown by the oligarchy with the aid of the Spartans. While some others fled the city or joined in the crimes of the Thirty, Socrates remained in Athens and continued caring for the city in his usual way, asking questions about justice and virtue and avoiding the commission of any injustice, without regard for his own fate at the hands of the political authorities. His steadfast commitment to Athens during this period may have contributed to suspicions about whether he truly supported the newly-restored democracy, in the last few years leading up to his death, even though his commitment was clearly not to the Thirty who happened to hold power but to his method of caring for the moral health of the citizens by cross-examining them. We see a different aspect of Socrates’ concern for the polis in dialogues such as the Republic and Timaeus, which depict him not as a gadfly who re-

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proaches the citizens but as a seeker after the ideal constitution (in the Republic) who speculates about how the best city might fare when interacting with others (in the Timaeus). It is difficult to judge the extent to which this interest in crafting a utopian vision originated with Socrates and was developed further by Plato or was Plato’s unique contribution put into the words of the character Socrates. However, because Plato uses characters other than Socrates (such as the Eleatic Visitor in the Statesman and the Athenian in the Laws) to present diverse political arguments, it seems more likely that he is developing a tradition of interest in the best constitution that he learned from Socrates, rather than simply using Socrates as a mouthpiece. In the Statesman, Plato seeks a definition of the best possible leader and along the way ranks the possible kinds of constitution. In the Laws, he attempts to construct a complete system of laws for a city, based on a discussion between representatives of three important citystates: Athens, Crete, and Sparta. Plato’s concerns are not restricted to the most theoretical aspects of constitution-building, however. He also considers details of the physical construction of the city, just as in the Gorgias he emphasizes the importance of engineers in saving the city by building its walls and physical structures (512B–C). The success or failure of the walls themselves is hardly a trivial issue for contemporaries of Plato looking back on Sparta’s siege of Athens, when for several years the Athenians sought protection behind the long walls of their city, which extended all the way to the Piraeus, thus allowing food to be imported. If we accept the validity of the testimony in the Seventh Letter, Plato did not limit himself to speculating about the best constitutions but tried to achieve some part of his political vision in Syracuse. This project began around 388 b.c.e., when Plato paid a visit to the court of Dionysius the elder, who wanted him to educate his son. The younger Dionysius had an interest in philosophy, and perhaps Plato and his native Syracusan friend Dion thought it possible to realize the rule of a true “philosopher-king” by encouraging Dionysius to love virtue and wisdom. Apparently Plato tried and failed to dissuade Dionysius from ruling and behaving as a tyrant, but according to the Seventh Letter, Plato maintains that the purpose of seeking political power is to create “the best and most just constitution and system of laws” (351C). Although the authenticity of the letter is questioned, the possibility remains open that Plato attempted to educate Dionysius in hopes of creating a good ruler and a good city. He may also have been interested in the potential contribution of philosophical education to the success of his own city, Athens, which had suffered a disastrous defeat after sending an expedition to Syracuse when Plato was a young man. The Athenians had been persuaded to undertake this venture by

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Alcibiades, whom Socrates had tried and arguably failed to educate through his usual philosophical questioning. Plato’s efforts to identify the best type of constitution were continued by Aristotle, who famously argued in the Politics that the human being is “by nature a political animal” (1253a3). 6 The good for all humans is necessarily tied to the good of the polis, because the rational capacities of humans make them capable of perceiving good and bad and just and unjust, and “it is community in these that produces a household and a city” (1253a16–19). The city “exists by nature” because it comes into being as smaller villages gather together in order to survive and then “remains in being for the sake of living well” (1252b30). The art of politics accordingly studies the good in the entire community or city, and ethics is a branch of this broader art because it is concerned with finding the good for individuals. 7 The political craft is not accomplished by a Socratic gadfly but by a lawgiver who creates a just constitution. Concern for the health of the polis thus translates into concern for obtaining the right constitution. The political question is: what sort of constitution will best achieve the end of happiness for the citizens? Unlike Plato or Socrates in the Republic, however, Aristotle argues that the city is not naturally a unity and would not even benefit from being fully unified. It is composed of different kinds of people, which is necessary if it is to be maximally self-sufficient. However, the “reciprocal equality” of these citizens “preserves” the city, because although some might be better suited to rule than others, “it is just for all to take part in ruling—whether it is a benefit or a burden” (1261a31–b2). Later in the Politics, Aristotle explains that the unqualified definition of a citizen is “one who shares in judging and ruling” (1275a23–24). It is not merely that all should participate, but the very idea of what it is to be a citizen and a political creature is to exercise one’s judgment concerning the governance of the city. Having defined the nature of citizenship in this manner, Aristotle is able to locate the type of constitution that best preserves the possibility of citizen participation: namely, democracy, and specifically direct democracy rather than the representative variety (1275b5–9). The best city would be thought of as a self-sufficient group of citizens who have achieved the appropriate capacities for sharing in “deliberative and judicial rule” (1275b19–22). Although the city is supposed to be self-sufficient, it does 6. Translations of Aristotle’s Politics are taken from Aristotle: Introductory Readings (trans. Terence Irwin and Gail Fine; Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996). 7. See Nicomachean Ethics 1.2 (1094b).

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not aim solely at that end, but also at a happy existence for its people. In other words, the city tries to make “living well” possible for its citizens, who have been drawn together in friendship and who constitute a city on this ground, rather than because of their geographic proximity or even their common efforts at self-defense (1280b). The interest Plato and Aristotle share in constitution building and in the authority of laws is quite opposed to the radical rejection of conventional law espoused by the Cynics and early Stoics. However, each group takes up an aspect of the Socratic art of true politics: Plato and Aristotle in their effort to find the best constitution for the city, which they believe goes hand in hand with making its citizens as good as possible, and the Cynics and the Stoics by aiming to make the citizens better through admonishment. The Cynics, like Socrates, perform their philosophy in the heart of the polis as the routine of their daily lives: for example, Diogenes lives in a barrel in the middle of Athens, and Crates goes door to door dispensing advice and begging. Aside from Plato’s possible adventures in Syracuse, he and Aristotle prefer to philosophize in the private environs of their schools (the Academy and Lyceum, respectively) rather than in a public or political forum. It may seem strange to identify the Cynics in any way with Socrates’ vigorous interest in the well-being of his city, because they denied the legitimacy of conventional laws and customs and apparently rejected the idea of living as citizens of a particular polis. In addition, some Cynics took the hero Heracles, who was a rustic character, as a moral exemplar due to his simple, self-sufficient manner of living and his lack of any of the delicate refinements more typical of urban dwellers. At the same time, the bestknown Cynics were attached to cities: they maintained their existence by begging from the citizens, and they exercised their philosophical powers on citizens, who became targets of invective or part of the audience. The Cynics were known for their witty and frank sayings designed to expose vanity and vice in others and to champion the “shortcut to virtue” of the Cynic lifestyle. Although it is possible to imagine a philosopher pursuing the simple and self-sufficient Cynic existence without becoming a public spectacle in the city, to the extent that exhorting others to choose a life of virtue and living an exemplary life were part of the Cynic way the Cynic philosopher apparently needed to participate in a community. Diogenes the “Dog,” who may have come to Athens after having been exiled from his native Sinope as punishment for defacing the currency, supposedly indicated the public buildings where he usually begged and resided in his barrel and said that “the Athenians had provided him

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with places to live in” (6.22). 8 His motto, “deface the currency,” carries the metaphorical meaning of challenging prevailing conventions and political authorities, whether or not it is based on a true story about his own banishment for a counterfeiting crime. Diogenes Laertius also reports that Diogenes “was loved by the Athenians”; thus, when a boy broke Diogenes’ barrel, the Athenians apparently gave him a replacement (6.43), even though he spent his days railing against them for their lack of virtue. The Cynics carried on one aspect of the Socratic tradition when they confronted others with the aim of helping them to live well and pursue philosophy. However, even though they conducted this activity in the public areas of the city, it is not obvious that they valued the city itself in the way that Socrates did. When Diogenes was asked where he came from, he famously declared that he was a kosmopolites, or ‘citizen of the world’ (6.63). This claim implies rejection of conventional political authority; however, it does not require rejecting the true art of politics described by Socrates, which aimed at improving the city. In another passage, Diogenes Laertius reports that Diogenes “would ridicule good birth and fame and all such distinctions, calling them showy ornaments of vice. The only true commonwealth was, he said, that which is as wide as the universe” (6.72). Some commentators interpret this as “negative cosmopolitanism,” which seeks freedom from the restrictions imposed by conventional political structures; for instance, Fouad Kalouche argues that, in declaring their cosmopolitanism, “the Cynics wanted to break away from the polis.” 9 John Moles, on the other hand, defends the view that Cynic cosmopolitanism was a positive declaration of the possibility of true community among people who live virtuously; in addition, he claims that the Cynics were not misanthropes, as some have charged, but were instead trying to care for the people they admonished. 10 In asserting his cosmopolitanism, Diogenes rejects the social hierarchy of the city, which depends on distinctions in wealth and family status, but he does not necessarily reject the possibility of any other kind of community. Rather, the aphorism suggests that a “true commonwealth” based 8. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers (vol. 2; trans. R. D. Hicks; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1925; repr. 1995) section 6. 9. F. Kalouche, “The Cynic Way of Living,” Ancient Philosophy 23 (2003) 181– 94 (quotation, p. 190). 10. J. L. Moles, “Cynic Cosmopolitanism,” in The Cynics: The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and Its Legacy (ed. R. Bracht Branham and Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996) 105–20.

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on the shared pursuit of wisdom and virtue remains desirable. Lines from Crates’ poem “Pera” also allude to this sort of virtuous philosophical community: There is a city Pera in the midst of wine-dark vapour, Fair, fruitful, not wealthy, but owing nothing, Into which sails neither fool nor parasite, Nor glutton, slave of sensual appetite, But thyme it bears, garlic, and figs and loaves, For which things’ sake men fight not with each other, Nor stand to arms for money or for fame. (Diog. Laert. 6.85)

Pera is the Cynic term for a wallet, which is significant because the Cynics declined to keep any possessions beyond what could be easily carried on their bodies. Citizenship in this philosophical polis is thus presumably earned by mastering desires for sensual pleasure, money, and fame and being content with a simple, self-sufficient life. Although the Cynics rejected conventional political authority as an unjust restriction on freedom and an obstacle to the pursuit of virtue, they did not need to turn away from the community. After giving up his wealth and status to adopt the Cynic life, Crates remained in the polis, going from door to door and admonishing the citizens to live virtuously. Diogenes Laertius reports that the same was true of Hipparchia, who married Crates and took up his pursuits, going around with him in public (6.97). By attempting to care for the citizens in this way, and by holding out the possibility of a true polis based on virtue, the Cynics carried on the Socratic tradition of engaging in the political art. Aristotle’s argument that no human being can truly be self-sufficient apart from the city because humans are naturally social animals could apply to the Cynics in this respect. Aristotle concludes that “anyone who is incapable of membership in a community or who has no need of it because he is self-sufficient, is no part of a city, and so is either a beast or a god” (Politics 1253a). The “Dog-philosophers” might have embraced this assessment of their lifestyle, given that they observed a greater inclination to virtuous living in the natural tendencies of beasts than in the corrupt desires of humans. At the same time, they considered themselves friends of the gods; on this basis, Diogenes argued that all things belong to the wise, because “all things belong to the gods,” who are friends of the wise, and “friends hold things in common” (Diog. Laert. 6.37). The Stoics adopted this tradition from the Cynics, given their belief that most laws and cities on earth do not deserve to be called laws or cities

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because the universe itself is the only true city and community of the wise, shared by both humans and gods. 11 In other words, the true versions of community and law are given by nature. Crates’ pupil Zeno of Citium, who inaugurated the Stoic tradition but was also influenced by Cynic values, presented a version of the ideal city in his Republic. Although reports about its content were written by hostile commentators and are thus difficult to interpret, it apparently advanced the radical proposals that public buildings and coinage should be abolished, men and women should adopt the same dress, wives and children should be held in common, and only the good and wise should truly be considered citizens. 12 In this way, Zeno and other early Stoics develop the Cynic idea of cosmopolitanism by describing the community of the wise that should be maintained by the laws. For the Stoics, according to Malcolm Schofield, although the law does not “derive its authority from society,” nevertheless “what it dictates are principally social or communal norms.” 13 In this variety of ways, Greek philosophers attempted to “take up the business of the polis” in the Socratic tradition. Some rejected conventional authority but were concerned to improve the virtue of the citizens, while others attempted to determine the best possible constitution. In doing so, they carried out the legacy of philosophical concern for the city that was fully manifested in the life of Socrates. The intimate connection between the philosopher and the city he would never leave was a testimony to his dedication to helping others live as well as possible. 14

11. Malcolm Schofield, The Stoic Idea of the City (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) 143. 12. See H. C. Baldry, “Zeno’s Ideal State,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 79 (1959) 3–15. 13. Schofield, The Stoic Idea of the City, 71. 14. I appreciate the very helpful comments I received on this project from Monika Bernett. I am also grateful for guidance and suggestions from Rami Arav, Jerry Cederblom, Cody Gilmore, Halla Kim, and Andrew Newman.

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Urbanism in Galilee: A Study of Kinneret, Hazor, Dan, and Tzer in the Iron Age John T. Greene Michigan State University

Prolegomena Civitas, polis, kome, cite, ville—these are terms with which many in the West will be familiar when referring to the concept city. Scholars who study the Middle East will be familiar with the terms ºir, kiriyah, and medinah. However, as any polyglot, linguist, or etymologist can appreciate, instead of settling the dust surrounding attempts to describe and define city, these terms open a hornet’s nest of challenges with regard to meaning. The conference theme employed a more-neutral term, town, and a more general concept, urbanism, in its desire to explore the reason that significant numbers of people came together and remained together in what became significant centers of circumscribed human interaction, especially in the Upper Galilee region. Beginning with familiar terms, we may work backward to what one understands as a typical or general city in the ancient Near East. The Greek terms polis, kome, and civitas were conceived of as city-states. A city -state’s limits were set by the number of (free) citizens who, as a governing body, could assemble in the agora or designated place (such as a market place/ center; compare Nehemiah 8, where Ezra assembles responsible heads of households and the family members accompanying them at the Water Gate in Jerusalem). What appears not to have played an important role in distinguishing the polis and civitas was size; only the whole body politic made either important.

Author’s note: The excavations of Kinneret are mostly unknown to (American and/ or British) English readers. In this essay, I have translated and distilled the most recent interim report of Prof. Volkmar Fritz and his colleague Stefan Muenger, “Vorbericht über die Zweite Phase der Ausgrabungen in Kinneret (Tell el-ºOremeh) am See Gennesaret, 1994–1999,” ZDPV 118 (2002) 2–32.

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When Bethsaida was changed to the polis Julias, its inhabitants (and this does not mean that the demographics did not change dramatically) were the recipients of numerous perks (including citizenship and attending privileges, which may have included relief or reduction of taxes, protection by a competent military force, and perhaps no need for walls around the polis). The appearance of polis-status-related architecture ( Julias’s temple, columns, etc.) bespeaks acknowledgment of the change of status. After Gaul was conquered by Rome, both Gallic states and tribes were called civitates. Later, only chief towns in the subsequent administrative districts into which Gaul was divided received this designation. By medieval times, there was a sharp distinction made between the civitas/city and the burgi or boroughs. Both church politics and economics helped determine this bifurcation, especially for towns that had enjoyed the status of episcopal sees. With all this, we are somewhat familiar. Civitas, as a title, has also been applied to the concept of an invisible city. The neo-Platonist Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in North Africa, authored a famous work the purpose of which was to clarify why Rome, the (supposed) eternal, physical city, could have suffered the massive destruction dealt by Alaric and his Visigothic hordes in 410 c.e., when they burned it to the ground. Augustine’s work, appearing in 424/5, is entitled De Civitate Dei ‘On the City of God’. It referred to and provided argument for an invisible, paradigmatic, nonphysical, heavenly city without end that embraced all of the ideals and ideas understood as and essential to the term Rome. However cities are/were defined ultimately, a fine distinction has been made throughout time between the people living in them and the people living outside them. The word ‘pagan’ (paganus) comes readily to mind. Meaning ‘villager’, ‘farmer’, or ‘rural dweller’, paganus came to mean the person(s) who did not subscribe to the Weltanschauung of the residents of the city, especially where religion was concerned. Thus, the concept town is distinguished from other forms of human group settlement not so much by size as by other factors. For Fustel de Coulange, author of La cité antique, the ancient city was primarily a religious community. All institutions found their points of confluence in the religion practiced in a given city. Cities were cities of God, so to speak (Fustel de Coulange 1980). A. R. Radcliffe-Brown in Frankfort’s Birth of Civilization did not agree with de Coulange’s cause-and-effect relationship between religion and all other institutions in the city. He did acknowledge, however, that a working relationship existed between religion and other urban institutions. But the place occupied by religion in cities would not

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allow itself to be diminished. For example, Gideon Sjoberg in The Preindustrial City: Past and Present maintained that religious observances (holidays, customs, etc.) were the glue that allowed disparate groups to be integrated (Sjoberg 1965). This arrangement recalls the tribal league or amphictyony whose members were cemented together by fidelity to one common deity. However, Sjoberg’s amphictyony occupied much less space and was contained (usually) within city walls. Some, such as Henry Sumner Maine in his Ancient Law, held that two principles, (1) kinship and (2) territoriality, the combination of which brought about the evolution of law, made cities possible (Maine 1930). Territoriality necessitated contractual relations among dwellers in a city. Tracing this contractual trajectory of development, one understands why the great law codes of the ancient Near East could and did develop and why monarchs such as Ur-Nammu, Lipit-Ishtar, Bilalama (that is, the Eshnunna Code), and Hammurabi proudly affixed their names to these documents. However, laws and cities are not a necessary and inseparable couple; one exists without the other. One need only think of the accounts (Exodus, Deuteronomy) with rural areas as backdrop where law codes were also promulgated (namely, the Sinai Law and Covenant). Yet we know that laws, deities, and codes were latecomers as factors that brought significant numbers of people together in a given urban area. Urbanism appears to have developed out of a tendency—a tendency for people with a similar cause (agriculture, production, trade, defense, or religion, etc.) to cast their lots together for their mutual benefit. Thus, in considering the issue of urbanism and its growth, one must consider the campfire site that was used for an extended period of time that became ever more extended as the site attracted ever more users. One needs to ascertain also why the campsite was founded at a particular spot, who would have found it prudent to stay, and how architecture played a role in determining the growth of the locus into an ever-growing settlement, as well as how the settlement grew into a village, the village into a town, the town into a city, the city into a city-state, and the city-state into the capital city of a princedom, kingdom, or empire. Jarmo and Jericho are hailed as two of the oldest cities in world history. Their “titles” evidence almost constant congregation by large numbers of people at the same locus. These cities were the product of the process outlined above. Notwithstanding this, there were periods when no one occupied the locus. These were followed, however, by periods of resettlement after a hiatus either brief or long. James Mellart in his Earliest Civilizations of the Near East reminds the reader concerning Jericho that “the

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new radiocarbon dates for the Pre-Pottery B (Neolithic) period at Jericho, 6968–6918 b.c., show that there was no long gap between the desertion of the old town and the re-occupation by the newcomers” (Mellart 1965: 45). Cities either continued or were destroyed, or they were crippled to the point at which all the reasons for their existence ceased to be evident to the population. Although most permanent sites would have been established near land and water resources and important roads—the basic requirements for continuous settlements—we must differentiate between the ongoing campsite, the modest unfortified agricultural village, the fortified village, the walled town, and walled fortified cities occupying 20 or more acres; we must take into account the consequence of changes in the socioeconomic structure and the consequential new pattern of settlement at any given site. Cities appear to reach two major high points in their existence: (1) they become beacons during the early phase of their development and existence, and (2) some gain a modicum of “immortality” and continue into very modern (even postmodern) times. Jericho, Jerusalem, Tyre, Damascus, Alexandria, and Rome come readily to mind. Others, some of them almost forgotten until archaeologists generate fresh thought concerning them, have become in recent years the subject of renewed interest and scrutiny. This is the case with et-Tell and three of the cities enshrined within its 22-acre mound: Julias, Bethsaida, and Tzer. Others will essay directly concerning urban developments at et-Tell. Here, I propose to discuss the developmental and comparative aspects of three cities that were near neighbors of et-Tell’s Iron Age city (or cities): Kinneret, Hazor, and Dan. The object is to shed as much light as possible (comparatively) on urban developments at Tzer and their significance for the theme of the book, as well as our research.

Kinneret (Tell el-ºOremeh), Guarded Trade/Military Routes (Area: 9+ Hectares) Although the Sea of Gennesaret before the Greek and Roman periods was known as the Sea of Kinneret, containing on its shores a powerful and thriving city, the exact location of this city remained unknown for quite some time. At the beginning of the previous century, archaeologists sought this city on the southern coast of the sea. Since 1922, Kinneret has been identified with Tell el-ºOremeh. Kinneret’s development sheds light on Tzer/Tzed’s history by being another of the cities that ringed the Sea of Galilee mentioned in Josh 19:35. Known by archaeologists as Tell el-ºOremeh, the hill/mound enshrining

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ancient Kinneret is located on the northwestern shore of the sea on a natural rock. With its western, southern, and eastern sides fairly steep, only on the north side is there a continuum with the extending Galilee. Kinneret is built on an excellent defensive position and has ample sources of water nearby; both account for its long existence. During the third and second millennia b.c.e., not only was the summit of the mound occupied, the eastern and southern slopes were settled as well. Impeding research on the tell’s southern side today is a modern pump station; its presence impedes research on the southeastern side as well. However, through surface finds and probes, much of the tell’s southern and eastern histories may be cobbled together. The Deutscher Verein vom Heiligen Lande (The German Society/Association of the Holy Land) applied for and received permission to excavate Tell el-ºOremeh in 1886. Today it is still under excavation, which is being carried out by the German Evangelical Institute for Archaeology of the Holy Land in Jerusalem.

Identification Not until the beginning of the 1920s did both Gustav Dalman (1921) and William Foxwell Albright (1923), independently of each other, identify Tell el-ºOremeh with Kinneret. Prior to this time, Kinneret had been sought on the southwestern end of the Sea of Galilee at Khirbet el Kerak. The Ugaritans (by the name of the god k-n-r) as well as the Egyptians knew of and mentioned Kinneret in texts dating at least as late as the 15th century b.c.e. (i.e., Thutmosis III [1479–1425 b.c.e.]—k-n-n-r-t—[no. 34 on a list on the Temple of Karnak]). Petersburg Papyrus 1116A from the 18th Dynasty also mentions k-n-n-r-t along with other Canaanite cities. After these three references, especially the two from Egypt, Kinneret is never again mentioned by these sources. Oddly, in the more-famous cuneiform tablets from Tell el-Amarna, in the 14th century b.c.e., Kinneret is never mentioned. Artifactual evidence from Egypt exists in the form of a fragment of a stele that mentions a victory over Egypt’s main rival, the Upper Tigris/Euphrates Kingdom of Mitanni (Albright and Rowe 1928), by either Thutmosis III (1479–1425 b.c.e.) or his son and immediate successor, Amenophis II (1428–1397 b.c.e.). Volkmar Fritz, director of excavations, advances the thesis that Amenophis conducted more campaigns against Mitanni than did his father; he would therefore have been the author of the stele and probably used Kinneret as a military base from which he conducted campaigns in Syria–Palestine (Fritz 1990). Additional artifactual evidence takes the form of a scarab inscribed with the name Teje, the consort of

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Amenophis III (1388–1351 b.c.e.). It dates to the Late Kingdom. We must remind ourselves, however, that both artifacts were discovered on the surface and cannot be identified with data from a specific stratigraphy at Tell el-ºOremeh and that the scarab dates to a later period. In the Bible, Kinneret is mentioned in the numbering of the cities of the tribe of Naphtali in Josh 19:35. If this reference stands the test of time, however, it can only refer to the 8th century b.c.e. The purpose of the list (at that time) is also not quite clear. The city name Kinneret is, at any rate, older than the layer in Josh 19:35. From Num 34:11; Deut 3:17; Josh 12:3, and 13:27, which mention the sea, and Josh 11:2 and 1 Kgs 15:20, which mention the attached southern plain, we learn that the sea and the plain were named after the city and not vice versa. After Hellenistic times, the name Kinneret existed in the form Gennesaret, as the city is called in Mark 6:53, Luke 5:1, and Matt 14:34, for instance, although the settlement history of the tell ends abruptly at the end of the 8th century b.c.e. At that time, a city not acknowledged thus far (and perhaps after the city was captured) that was located south of Tell elºOremeh in the plain had this name. That entity is identical with today’s el-Guwer or with ºAin et-Tine.

History of Research From 1917 onward, P. Karge conducted investigations of the preBronze periods. Soundings in 1932 (Koeppel) led to an all-out investigation of the northeastern portion of the summit. The Second World War interrupted this work, however. Results were published by W. Darsow in a 1940 interim report. Not until 1963 did G. Edelstein (1964) conduct area studies around the mound and, above all, the canal that ran along its eastern side which, coming from water from the so-called “Sevensource” (Heptapegon), flowed into a no-longer-existing bathhouse located south of the tell. Portions of the canal are still evident throughout the area. Moreover, Edelstein unearthed several graves on the eastern outcropping, but he did not determine the mound’s stratigraphy (Fritz and Muenger 2002). Phase I: 1982–1985 As a project of the University of Mainz (Fritz 1990), Tell el-ºOremeh was examined in five areas. The conclusion was that the Iron II city had been restricted to the summit. This city (Stratum II) was surrounded by a defensive wall and was guarded on the north and west by strong defensive towers. According to Fritz, it is most likely that the Assyrian conqueror Tiglath-pileser III either crippled or destroyed both Kinneret (Stratum II)

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and Hazor (Stratum VA) during his western campaign of 734–732 b.c.e. (see the list in 2 Kgs 15:29, although the name is missing from the fragmentary inscriptions of the Assyrian kings [Tadmor 1994: 79–83, 279–82], just as is the name Tzer, a city enshrined in et-Tell). Phase I also revealed a post–Stratum II occupation level (Stratum I). This stratum, however, boasts no long-term occupation. Traces of human use of an economic nature, pottery shards and architectural features, are evident. Fritz surmises that the site was abandoned by 700 b.c.e. (Fritz 1997).

Phase II: 1994–1999 In 1994, The German Evangelical Institute for Archaeology of the Holy Land began excavating Tell el-ºOremeh and has continued to this writing. Work has concentrated on the eastern side of the tell as it descends in the direction of the sea. The defenses on the northern and eastern rim of the mound as well as various residential buildings (one on top of the other) in the lower portion of the eastern slope have been the focus of the excavation efforts. Since this phase began, two epochs have been revealed, which left behind two different defense systems: (1) occupation at the end of the Middle Bronze II period, which survived into Late Bronze I; and (2) an Iron I settlement. Direct continuity from the previous to the latter period is unfortunately not possible. The city wall during Late Bronze I and Iron I encompassed an area of approximately 9 hectares (1 hectare = 2.471 acres). Under the Middle-Bronze-Age stratum lie several settlement remains from the Early Bronze I–II periods that until now have not been systematically examined. Because of the uneven nature of the tell’s settlement pattern, the stratigraphy has been cobbled together from the evidence of the various areas excavated. Thus, in the 8th century b.c.e., Stratum II contained a city on the summit of Tell el-ºOremeh that, according to Fritz and others was either totally destroyed or severely crippled by Tiglath-pileser III’s forces. Although severe damage was done to the upper city of Stratum II, a post-732 b.c.e., 8th-century stratum (Stratum I) reveals postsettlement occupation on the southwestern portion of the summit. We know today that the location was settled already in Early Bronze Age I–II (3150–2650 b.c.e.) and remained settled (although at times sparsely) until the early Hellenistic period (332– 152 b.c.e.). Iron II Kinneret, located as it was on the northwestern shore of the sea, had the same function geographically as did the Iron II city enshrined in et-Tell, located as it was on the northeastern shore of the sea: to guard and secure trade routes running northward and southward along the upper

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western and upper eastern shores of the sea, and the east–west trade and defense routes that connected the two walled cities along the sea’s northern shore. Tiglath-pileser III had as much reason to destroy Kinneret as he did Tzer. Neither city could he have left untouched because of the strategic role it played in thwarting his reasons for being in the region (Greene 2004). Because Professor Fritz argued that Kinneret was destroyed in 734 (“Seine Zerstoerung kann warscheinlich der Eroberung des Landes durch den assyrischen Koenig Tiglatpileser III um 734 zugeschrieben werden” [Fritz 1987: 42–49]), it is possible that this occurred during his southward movement through the land, as testified in 2 Kgs 15:29. I have stated elsewhere (Greene 2004), however, that another itinerary for this monarch is both possible and plausible and that Kinneret was probably not destroyed until 732 b.c.e., at the same time as Tzer. Kinneret and Tzer, guardians of the northwestern and northeastern corners of the Sea of Galilee and the important trade and military routes aside which they sat, met the same fate in the same year. As of the present state of research, however, no evidence of a religious/cultic, defensive/architectural, or epigraphic nature connects the demise of the two cities.

Hazor (Tell el-Qedah) Guarded Trade/Military Route (Area: 200 Acres) Tell el-ºOremeh’s evidence from Stratum II, like the evidence from etTel’s Iron Age IIB level, makes it almost certain that its ruins are the result of Tiglath-pileser III’s second western campaign (in either 734 or 732 b.c.e.). Yet Kinneret, like Tzer, does not appear as a named city in the sometimes-fragmentary annals of this monarch/conqueror. Cities in the region of the Galilee that do appear in 2 Kgs 15:29’s list as Kinneret’s near neighbors conquered are Ijon, Abel (Beth-maacah), Janoah, Kedesh, and Hazor. These were known to have been conquered by the Neo-Assyrian, whose records do mention the deportation of captives from Galilee and Gilead. There is a sense, then, in which the researcher can demonstrate— as do criminologists—motive, means, and opportunity in explaining that et-Tel was destroyed during this same period—especially considering the reference to captives from Gilead. Guarding the military and trade route on the West Jordan side of the middle Hulah Valley as Hazor did, I have no doubt that Hazor’s Iron IIB ruins encased in Tell el-Qedah were the handiwork of Tiglath-pileser III’s southward advance through Phoenicia (Tyre and Sidon) and the Kingdom of Israel on his way to disabuse both Philistia and Edom of their need to chip away at the Kingdom of Judah’s holdings and territory and to chas-

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tise the female-led Arabian rulers south and southeast of the Dead Sea (Glueck 1940). Hazor’s importance here commences in the Middle Bronze IIA period (ca. 1900–1550), when a marked resurgence in the sedentary patterns in Palestine is once again evident after a hiatus following Middle Bronze I. Here Hazor keeps company with Megiddo, Shechem, Lachish, and Tell Beit Mirsim, to name only a few. During the Middle Bronze IIB phase (1750–1650 b.c.e.), as archaeological evidence indicates, the Hyksos established a major center at Hazor. It is marked by defense structures of earthen ramparts known as pisés de terre, on top of which were built brick walls. Middle Bronze IIC witnessed yet another improvement in Hazor’s fortifications: a huge wall termed a “Cyclopean.” Gezer and Shechem boasted them also during this period. This cyclopean wall was later further buttressed by a glacis/ramp laid up against the wall at a 30–45° angle. These glacis appear at Megiddo and Jericho, as well as at (Tel) Dan. These fortifications made Hazor “the most outstanding city in Palestine during the Middle and Late Bronze periods” (Schoville l982: 371). Keith Schoville writes: “After the rampart was built, Hazor rivaled the greatest cities of the Near East in size and commercial importance, with a population estimated at forty-thousand people” (Schoville 1982: 372). The city maintained this size and importance until it was destroyed in the 13th century b.c.e. I am referring here to what is termed the “Lower City.” The Israeli archaeologist Amihai Mazar mirrors Schoville’s sentiments when he writes of Hazor: The foundation of the Lower City at Hazor around 1800 b.c.e. was one of the most important phenomena of this period (Middle Bronze Age IIB–C, 1650–1550 b.c.e.); Hazor is a superb example of grand-scale town planning. Its total area [Upper and Lower City], almost 200 acres, was unrivaled in the history of Palestine, and it was to remain the largest in the country until the thirteenth century b.c.e. Hazor’s special status is reflected in the biblical words concerning this city: “Beforetime the head of all these kingdoms” ( Josh. 11,10). (Mazar 1990: 197)

Hazor shares this Upper and Lower City morphology with Tzer. The famous excavator of Hazor (Tell el-Qedah), Yigael Yadin, proposed that there was sufficient evidence to explain the claim in the book of Joshua that Hazor fell in the face of the latter’s onslaught in the latter half of the 13th century b.c.e. To be sure, destruction layers are evident. What troubles numerous archaeologists, however, is that there is no corresponding destruction evidence at the same level (that is, period) at either Jericho or Ai. Thus, the destruction that is evident could be explained by internal struggle, by regional rivalries, or even by Egyptian backlash.

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According to Professor Yadin during the time he directed excavations at Hazor, an estimated 1/400th of biblical Hazor had been excavated and that the complete excavation of this site alone at a normal pace would require 800 years. We may attest at Bethsaida a similar picture. We have excavated to date less than 4% of its area. Whatever we write must ultimately be tempered by this fact. The Middle Bronze II destruction levels at Canaanite Hazor serve as a precursor to the destruction levels evident in the Iron IIB period. Regardless of who is identified as the destroyer of the “Lower City” at Hazor ( Josh 11:10–13 and Judges 4–5), this larger portion of the city was never used again. Evidence of squatting (argued by many as evidence of an Israelite presence) is visible in upper layers above the ruins of this “Lower City.” 1 Kgs 9:15ff. holds that Solomon built (that is, built and/or rebuilt through fortification) Jerusalem, Megiddo, Gezer, and Hazor—so-called “Solomonic, six-chambered gates” being pointed to for the latter three. Although Solomonic Hazor thrived during the period of the United Monarchy, further excavations there demonstrate that Ahab’s 9th-century city differed greatly from Solomon’s. Both monarchs contributed to the existence of the city that thrived during the second half of the 8th century: Solomon’s had been an administrative center; Ahab built a fortress on the citadel, as had the rulers of Tzer. The account of the fall of Hazor appears in 2 Kgs 15:29. Evidence at Hazor suggests that the city planners had been quite busy altering the defenses against Assyrian siege machines and methods; all, of course, to no avail (Stratum V). Above a layer of poorly built structures (Stratum IV), Hazor boasts again significant structures in the form of either an Assyrian or a Babylonian fortress on the southwestern side of the citadel (Stratum III). This fortress was later used by the Persian conquerors (Stratum II) and even rebuilt in Hasmonean times (Stratum I [ Jonathan versus Demetrius of Syria, 1 Maccabees 11]). Although the city was destroyed, the site retained both raisons d’etre mentioned above: guarding military and caravan routes leading from the northern Galilee to Damascus and points northeast, or from the northern Galilee to all points west and southwest of the Jordan waterway system. As unsure as researchers may be concerning Joshua as the destroyer of the late-13th-century city, they are certain that they have identified Tiglath-pileser III as the destroyer of the latter-period city. Concerning comparative-religious issues: at Hazor from the Middle Bronze IIC and later levels, an important group of statuettes and steles was discovered from the 14th and 13th centuries representing male dei-

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ties as well as hands stretched toward a moon symbol. This group recalls the numerous steles discovered at Tzer, among them the major moon-god stele at the city gate and the cult surrounding it.

(Tel) Dan/Laish/Tell el Qadi (Area: 25 Acres) At the time of the famous King Zimri-Lim of the Upper Euphrates city Mari (ca. 1759 b.c.e.), Laish (biblical Dan) was mentioned along with Hazor in documents recording the shipment and delivery of tin (used for making bronze), thus confirming Dan’s antiquity. (Tel) Dan, located at the headwaters of the Jordan River, and like Hazor, located in the Hulah Valley, was destined to be a place of almost continual habitation. It served as the northern border town of ancient Palestine and the starting point of the 300-mile southern expanse that culminated in Elath. Between Beersheba and Elath lay some 150 miles (half of the 300) of pure desert wilderness and many temporary or permenant settlements. Located near important waterways and roads and providing security for caravans moving along the route astride which it sat, Dan kept company with Hazor, Kinneret, and Tzer. During Middle Bronze Age IIC–III (1550 b.c.e.), Dan was a walled city and one of the main important cities in the Upper Galilee. The excavation of Tel Dan has been under the direction of Avraham Biran from 1966 to the present. I had the pleasure of meeting him when he and an entourage from Dan came to see our Iron Age IIB city-gate destruction evidence and to compare its morphology with the city gate at Dan. The Iron Age II city-gate complex at Dan lies outside 10-meter-high and 10-meter-thick ramparts and glacis of Middle Bronze Age IIA Dan, a form that it shared with Hazor, Dor, and Shechem, to name only a few. In many ways, Dan’s gate is similar to the Tzer city-gate complex. According to A. Mazar: “The gate at Dan was ascribed by its excavator . . . to the time of the Divided Monarchy, and there is no reason to dispute this dating” (Mazar 1990: 399). But prior to this magnificent specimen of an Iron Age gate, the ruins of Dan also boast a unique, Middle Bronze Age IIB gate. It contained brick arches (to be compared with the arches built later by the Romans) at the entranceway, but this structure appears to have been considered insufficient for effective defense of the city, becuase it was covered in a later phase by ramped earth, outside of which is the Iron Age gate already mentioned. In the Late Bronze Age, Dan along with numerous cities that had thrived during the Middle Bronze Age either fell into decline or became impoverished. Dan may even have ceased for a time as a city and become

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an Egyptian stronghold as the Egyptians continued their pursuit of and determination to expel the Hyksos from their former territorial holdings. We must remember that Kinneret at Tell el-ºOremeh may have served a similar function as a stronghold for Egypt. By the early Iron Age I period, Dan was once again a thriving city. Philistine pottery of local Palestinian origin has been found at Dan that reached there either by trade or during military invasions. Evidence of Israelite settlement is also apparent. “The settlement of the tribe of Dan,” writes Mazar, “was identified all over the entire area of the mound (some twenty-five acres). . . . The migration of the Danites from central Palestine is evidenced by the appearance of the large storage jars denoted CollaredRim jars or pithoi, which were uncommon in central Palestine but characteristic to the Galilee” (Mazar 1990: 335, 347). This settlement corresponds with the appearance of sites throughout the central hill country of Palestine and the Upper Transjordan. From the 10th century onward, Dan was one of the Upper Galilean cities that was continually occupied until its destruction. Signs of its prosperity are the numerous storage pits and silos dug into the ground. Because of the two grain silos at the city gate, we know that Dan, like Tzer, produced cereal crops in abundance. This suggests that Dan bartered its excess grain for other commodities from the Israelites who inhabited the hill country to its south or with its Phoenician neighbors to the west. However, when the average reader of the Bible encounters a reference to Dan, s/he tends to remember the gold bull figures set up at Dan and Bethel as national cultic centers by Jeroboam I, king of Israel ca. 922 b.c.e. (1 Kgs 12:29), as foils against continued Israelite attendance at the Jerusalem temple. This practice was challenged by the prophet Amos of Tekoa, when he visited the southernmost of these two shrines at Bethel (Amos 7:11ff.). Dan’s ritual center, according to Mazar, “is the only structure mentioned in the Bible that has been positively identified in archaeological excavations” (Mazar 1990: 92). This ritual complex is the only actual example of an Israelite royal center. Dan and its religious significance, although destroyed in the Assyrian conquest of Galilee in 732 b.c.e., was nevertheless rebuilt and reused during the Hellenistic period. A post-332 b.c.e. dedication inscription reads: “to the God who is at Dan” (Mazar 1990: 495). Tzer shows a reuse phase, although brief, after the city was rendered defenseless. The clearest evidence is in the “Bit Hilani” grand hall area. The Neo-Assyrian threat to Israel, and thus to Dan, was first felt during the reign of Ahab of Israel (9th century b.c.e.). Although there were sev-

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eral attempts by the rulers of the small western states—which included Israel—to ally against this ominous threat and turn it back (they succeeded in a similar attempt at the Battle of Qarqar in 853 b.c.e. against Shalmaneser III), Jehu, according to Shalmaneser’s Black Obelisk, capitulated and submitted to his overlordship. Although the following century brought political stability and prosperity to Israel and Judah (under Jeroboam II and Uzziah/Azariah, respectively), Assyria returned to the region during the second half of the 8th century. In 732 b.c.e., Tiglath-pileser III conquered the entire Galilee and exiled most of its inhabitants. Dan’s inhabitants were subjected to this common fate. The extensive changes in the defense system of Dan that were begun in the 9th century b.c.e. proved to be insufficient during Tiglath-pileser III’s late-8th-century onslaught. Two main occupation levels have been defined at Dan from the time of the United Monarchy (ca. 1000–922 b.c.e. [Levels III–II]) onward. Like Tzer, Dan boasted a well-planned city with impressive, well-built defensive fortifications, public buildings, and streets paved with cobblestones. Chief among its structures were its city gate and cultic center. The cultic center at Dan was larger and more complex in layout and cultic objects than what one finds at Tzer’s ruins, however. An access ramp on Tzer’s eastern side is similar to the ramp at Dan that also led to both outer and inner gates. These gates were built into solid (as opposed to casemate) walls—a practice, it seems, from the 9th century on. Although Dan shares two four-chambergate morphologies with Beer-sheba, Megiddo Stratum III, and Tzer during the Iron II period, the architects of Tzer’s and Beer-sheba’s defensive city gates appear to have been inspired by a similar blueprint paradigm. Mazar is my best informant concerning the numerous similarities between the uses of the gate areas at both Dan and Tzer, and we may include his description of the uses of Hazor’s six-chambered gate here as well: gates played an important role in the daily life of the city: as a market (2 Kings 7:1), a place of judgment by elders (Deut. 21:19, 22:15; Amos 5:12; Ruth 4:1–11), and a general assembly area where rulers made appearances and prophets spoke (1 Kgs. 22:10; Isa. 29:21; Amos 5:10; Jer. 38:7; 2 Chr. 32:6). Cult practices were also carried out at the city gates. (Mazar 1990: 469)

At Dan there is a suspected gate cultic center (that could have been used for other purposes; see 2 Kgs 23:8; an ashlar installation had a canopy supported on four stone column bases), but the center at Tzer, with its horned deity cult, is unmistakable and uncontested (Bernett and Keel 1998). Tzer’s cultic center recalls the centers at Ashtaroth and Karnaim, some 25 miles to the east of Tzer, and the earlier moon-god veneration center at Hazor. When one views the reconstructions of the city gates at

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both Dan and Tzer, one is struck by their similarity (Mazar 1990: fig. 11.4, 470). Civil activities probably took place in a piazza adjacent to the city gate (an architectural feature in existence at Tzer also) or between the outer gate and the piazza of the inner gate (also a feature at Tzer). Both possibilities exist at Tzer, as does the possibility that trade was conducted there, as evidenced by room for benches on the east and north sides of the southern tower in the inner city gate.

Conclusions The most frequently used word for ‘city’ in the Hebrew Bible, ºir, appears some 1,090 times (Frick 1977: 25). The biblical writers were convinced that cities were important. The fate of well-known (from both Bible and archaeology) cities such as Kinneret, Hazor, and Dan was shared, from the results of our excavations at et-Tell, by Tzer as well. Why? One portion of the answer is that all four of the Galilean cities (actually, Tzer was a “near-Galilean” city) had in common the fact that they sat astride most of the important trade and military routes along the northern shore of Lake Kinneret (Kinneret and Tzer) or guarded the entrance to the Hulah Valley from the extreme north of this region southward into the central and lower Hulah Valley and trade destinations southward. In other words, what may have gotten past Dan and Hazor moving southward would probably have been stopped by either Kinneret on the western side of the Hulah/Jordan Valley or by Tzer on the eastern side of the same two combined valleys and waterways. Just as Dan and Hazor would have sandwiched undesirables between them and protected those needing to be guarded, so would have Kinneret and Tzer along the northern rim of Lake Kinneret and the important route located between them that led farther eastward toward routes through the Golan and points northward and southward along the eastern side of the lake. In a sense, although each was separated from the other by significant distances and locations, with these four cities we have the equivalent of four “Times Squares,” all located north of the Sea of Galilee (and all that this portended). Kinneret and Tzer along with Dan form an almost isosceles-to-right triangle, with the former two at either end of the base (or forming the shorter side of a right triangle). Hazor is a sort of interstitial city between Kinneret and Dan along the western side of the Jordan/Hulah Valley (and forming the longer of two sides of a right triangle). There is no corresponding city along the eastern side of this valley. The isosceles triangle is thus west-side “heavy.” The “hypotenuse” stretches from Tzer to Dan along the eastern side of the Jordan/Hulah Valley.

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The location of each city was apparently important to the Egyptian temporary overlords as well. Egyptian occupation to greater or lesser degrees is evident at all four cities. Even though material-cultural remains are more impressive at Kinneret, Hazor, and Dan, the meager “horde” from Tzer boasts the Pateikos faience figurine from Egypt—found in the Bit Hilani. It is, according to R. Arav, “the second most common Egyptian amulet found outside of Egypt” (Arav 2004: 31). Less clearly significant are two clay figurines showing a female wearing the Egyptian Hathor headdress. Only the head of one is available, characterized by its oversized eyes. The other, also known from Jordan, stands and holds what may have been a tambourine in what is now a missing hand. However, all three could either have been made locally or could have been imported. Fortunately for Tzer, it boasts no Middle Bronze Age and Late Bronze Age remains, and no one seeks early Israelite evidence there in the Iron I stratum. However, Kinneret, Hazor, and Dan struggled with issues in the Israelite kingdom. Tzer struggled to maintain its own independence or to function within a Geshurite system (eventually as Geshur’s chief or capital city) or to maintain prosperity on the edge of both Israel and Aram– Damascus—depending on which direction the political winds of fortune blew (Arav 2004). One may without reservation state that, because of their locations and significance, these four cities were doomed once Assyria resumed its campaigns in the west. But no tactician, whether local or foreign, could have ignored them. What may be debated is whether Tiglath-pileser III would have found it prudent to attack the cities on the western side of the Hulah Valley and the Jordan (the long side of my “right triangle”) as he moved southward or whether they were forced to succumb during his return trip northward. Elsewhere (Greene 2004), I suggest a strategy that involved two main Assyrian columns moving northward along both sides of the Jordan. Thus, I suggest that all four cities fell in the year 732 b.c.e. It was not strategically necessary for Tiglath-pileser III to reduce them on his Mediterranean coastal campaign southward; they could not have been ignored as he campaigned northward on his return trip to Assyria. Kinneret, Hazor, Tzer, and Dan, the four main “pearls of the Upper Galilee,” shared a developmental history in common. Living up to the expectations and demands of their locations meant that succeeding, flourishing, and becoming beacons of progress and growth risked their being marked for eventual aggression by conquerors who were determined to control the ingress and egress routes they guarded.

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Works Consulted Albright, William Foxwell, and Rowe, Alan 1928 A Royal Stele of the New Empire from Galilee. JEA 14: 282. Arav, Rami 2004 Toward a Comprehensive History of Geshur. Pp. 1–37 in vol. 3 of Bethsaida: A City by the North Shore of the Sea of Galilee, ed. Rami Arav and Richard Freund. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press. Bernett, Monika, and Keel, Othmar 1998 Mond, Stier und Kultam Stadttor: Die Stele von Betsaida (et-Tell). OBO 161. Fribourg: Academic Press / Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Edelstein, G. 1964 Tel Kinrot. Óadashot Arkheªologiyot 11: 9–12. [Hebrew] Frick, Frank S. 1977 The City in Ancient Israel. SBLDS 36. Missoula, MT: Scholars Press. Fritz, Volkmar 1978 Kinneret und Ginnosar: Voruntersuchung für eine Ausgrabung auf dem Tell el ºOreme am See Genezareth. ZDPV 94: 32–45. 1987 Conquest or Settlement?: The Early Iron Age in Palestine. BA 50: 84– 100. 1990 Die Stadt im Alten Israel. Munich: Beck. Fritz, Volkmar, and Muenger, Stefan 2002 Vorbericht über die Zweite Phase der Ausgrabungen in Kinneret (Tell elºOremeh) am See Gennesaret, 1994–1998. ZDPV 118: 2–32. Fustel de Coulanges, Numa Denis 1980 The Ancient City: A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. [trans. of La Cité antique] Glueck, Nelson 1940 The Other Side of the Jordan. New Haven, CT: American Schools of Oriental Research. Greene, John T. 2004 Tiglath-Pileser III’s War against the City of Tzer. Pp. 63–82 in vol. 3 of Bethsaida: A City by the North Shore of the Sea of Galilee, ed. Rami Arav and Richard Freund. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press. Irvine, S. A. 1994 The Southern Border of Syria Reconstructed. CBQ 56: 21–41. Maine, Henry Sumner 1930 Ancient Law: Its Connection with the Early History of Society and Its Relation to Modern Ideas. London: John Murray. Mazar, Amihai 1990 Archaeology of the Land of the Bible: 10,000–586 b.c.e. ABRL. New York: Doubleday. Mellart, James 1965 Earliest Civilizations of the Near East. New York: McGraw-Hill.

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Naªaman, Nadav 1995 Rezin of Damascus and the Land of Gilead. ZDPV 111: 107–8. Schoville, Keith 1982 Biblical Archaeology in Focus. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker. Sjoberg, Gideon 1965 The Preindustrial City: Past and Present. New York: Free Press. Tadmor, Hayim 1994 The Inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser III King of Assyria: Critical Edition, with Introduction, Translations and Commentary. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

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The Fortified City of Bethsaida: The Case of an Iron Age Capital City Rami Arav University of Nebraska at Omaha

The city of Bethsaida, situated near the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, was the capital of the biblical Kingdom of Geshur during the period called Iron Age II and thrived for about 250 years, until it was destroyed during the military campaign of Tiglath-pileser III in 732 b.c.e. Naturally, all through this period the city witnessed modifications, remodeling, and renovations. Buildings were constructed and collapsed, were leveled and rebuilt. Floors accumulated as the ground level of the inhabited areas mounted up through the years. This survey attempts to address the issues discussed in the essays in this book that deal with biblical texts pertaining to the concept of cities. This essay does not underline the stratigraphical changes of Bethsaida, nor does it provide evidence for the stratigraphical changes. 1 I am attempting an approach that integrates the changes, views the city as a whole, and emphasizes the social aspect as it is revealed by the architecture that obtained throughout the life-span of the city. The archaeological changes, however significant, do not change the observation that life at Bethsaida was life in a thriving urban center during the entire Iron Age II period. In order to comprehend the full meaning of urbanism at Bethsaida, we must create a thorough environmental reconstruction. To facilitate a thorough environmental reconstruction of the town and its landscape, we must study the geographical setting, because the topography of this area has been altered over the course of time. I will begin with a brief survey of the geography and geology and will proceed to explore the fauna and flora of the region before dealing with the human geography. 1. The Iron Age strata at Bethsaida are denoted Stratum VI and V. Each stratum is subdivided into two layers. Stratum Date VIB 10th century b.c.e. VIA end of 10th century to ca. 850 b.c.e. VB ca. 850 b.c.e. to early 8th century b.c.e. VA early 8th century b.c.e. to 732 b.c.e.

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Geology and Geographical Background The Sea of Galilee is located in a geological rift, one of the largest of its kind. It extends from northern Syria to Lake Victoria in East Africa and is also known as the Syro-African Rift or the Great Rift Valley. This rift separates two different plates that move in opposite directions. The western plate is a part of the African plate, and it moves toward the south, while the eastern plate is known as the Arabian plate and moves toward the north. 2 The collision between the two rifts created the large, unusual depression known as the Jordan Valley, which extends to 450 meters below sea level at its lowest point, at the Dead Sea. The Sea of Galilee (Hebrew, Yam Kinneret) and the Dead Sea are remnants of a larger body of water that extended as far north as the Sea of Galilee and covered the area of the Jordan Valley down south to the Arabah steppe. This body of water, known in the literature as “Melanopsis Lake,” shrank to the size of the lakes today, leaving soft lime sedimentary deposits known as the “Lisan formation.” Fragments of this formation were discovered to the north of the Sea of Galilee in the close vicinity of Bethsaida. The southern Golan, where Bethsaida is situated (fig. 1), is a slanting basalt plateau that descends steeply in a short distance to the level of the sea. This slope created very deep, short gorges known also as messil that channel the water runoff and spring waters of the plateau to the Sea of Galilee. The northern shore of the lake is dominated today by the estuaries of the Jordan River, the Yahudia and the Meshushim streams. These are also the main sources of fresh water flowing into the Sea of Galilee. The Jordan River is the largest of these gorges and descends from sea level to 210 meters below in a relatively short distance of 15 kilometers. This means that the Jordan River in this area is flowing rapidly, and during the winter and spring seasons it carries a considerable amount of water and silt to the lake, which contributes to the advance of the northern shoreline southward. Today, on the northern end of the Sea of Galilee there is an alluvial plain, resulting from the embedded silt, that extends in a crescent shape to a distance of 6 kilometers from the Jordan River to the southeast. Interestingly enough, this plain does not cover the estuary of the Jordan symmetrically on both sides to create a classic delta but extends toward the east of the Jordan River rather than toward the west.

2. For the latest research on the geology and geography of the Bethsaida region, see Shroder et al. 1999.

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Fig. 1. A map of Galilee and the Golan road network in the Iron Age (drawn by Christina Etzrodt).

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Land Use The Golan Heights is a basalt plateau coated with a thick layer of lava. Boulders and stones cover the northern areas, but an eroded landscape constitutes the southern end where the rich soil runs off. This countryside is etched by short, deepening gorges that run steeply to the basin of the Sea of Galilee. Alongside the short riverbeds and in the southern plateau, cultivation of fields was possible. This area has an average annual rainfall of about 400 millimeters, which is sufficient for cultivation of wheat and barley, coupled with natural fertilizing by herds grazing after the harvest season; it undoubtedly yielded rich crops of grain that may have reached up to one metric ton per hectare. In the areas around the Bethsaida plain, there are low fieldstone fences marking ancient field divisions and terraces, indicating extensive use of the land. Farther north and northeast of Bethsaida, the terrain turns more rugged and would more adequately fit pasture and grazing. Remnants of an oak forest together with fragments of oak-wood remains found at the dig testify that the uncultivated areas were covered in the past with a thick oak woodland.

Reconstruction of the Shoreline When Bethsaida was founded in the 10th century b.c.e., 3 it was built on a basalt extension that descended gradually from the plateau that forms the Golan Heights. The hill during this period was adjacent to the seashore. Today a large alluvial plain occupies this area. Geological and geomorphological investigations headed by J. F. Shroder (Shroder et al. 1999) indicate very clearly that the plain of Bethsaida was different in the past. 4 It was created (and is still in the process of expansion) from silt carried in by the Jordan River and the streams that run into the lake. Due to catastrophic geological events along the slopes of the Jordan River Valley, this process was intensified a few times in the past. Severe earthquakes shook the steep slopes of the Jordan River Valley and caused the land to slide

3. The date of the foundation of the city is derived from pottery analysis of stratum VIB, which features red slip and burnish ware parallel to Hazor Stratum X and other 10th-century sites, and on C14 dating of wood beams incorporated in the original structure. The calibrated C14 date suggests a mid-11th- to early-10thcentury b.c.e. date, which would not contradict a 10th-century b.c.e. dating for the construction of the earliest stratum. A thorough report will be published in Bethsaida, vol. 4. 4. See additional bibliography in Shroder et al. 1999.

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and block the stream of the Jordan River. As a result, a small lake was created behind the dam. Shortly after this, the lake flooded, carrying with it the dam and thousands of tons of silt, which it deposited on the banks of the river. When the river had returned to its normal flow, a plain had emerged out of the water and caused the shoreline to recede to the south. Three major events of this sort have been discerned in the history of the lake. In the course of this development, a lagoon was formed at the estuaries of the river and the streams. During the 4th century c.e., most of the lagoons dried up as a result of the last geological catastrophe, leaving the shoreline as far as 2 kilometers away from the town. 5 A similar phenomenon was common to many port cities, such as Priene, Milete, Ephesus, and Ostia, which are today situated a few miles from the shoreline. Similar large-scale events occurred near the cities in the estuary of the Euphrates and Tigris in Mesopotamia (Saggs 2001: 2–3).

Flora: Natural and Cultivated The picture of flora at Bethsaida in ancient times has been retrieved from an analysis of pollen remains and carbonized vegetation discovered at various levels of the city (Schoenwetter and Geyer 2000; and Geyer 2001). 6 It reveals that the Tabor oak was the type of tree that dominated the landscape of Bethsaida, remnants of which still grow on the slopes descending to the plain. Twenty different kinds of flora were found in the pollen analysis. Olive groves, fig trees, and palm trees constituted the cultivated landscape and apparently provided a livelihood for the inhabitants of Bethsaida through the ages. Below the trees, there was thick low grass that covered the area, undoubtedly nutritious food for the animals in this region. Barley and emmer wheat were largely cultivated in the fields and on the terraces.

Fauna: Wild Animals and Domestic Animals Animal bones from the various levels of the site indicate that the wild animals in the vicinity of Bethsaida were deer, fallow deer, boars, and wolves. Deer constituted the largest group of wild animals, while boars and wolves were the second and the third largest, respectively. Fallow deer, a large type of deer, has long been extinct here and was apparently 5. Due to fluctuation of the lake, the distance varies constantly. It was 2 kilometers in the 1986 updated map of the Department of Survey of Israel. 6. The remains of carbonized vegetation were analyzed by N. Lipshitz at Tel Aviv University and will be published in Bethsaida, vol. 4.

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quite a rare species in antiquity. Boars are still roaming about in this area. Wolves were also found and still inhabit the region. The domesticated animals included sheep, goats, cows, pigs, and fish. Unlike many other investigated sites, this site’s largest group of domestic animal was cows. Next were sheep and goats. Many other sites reveal the opposite picture, in which sheep and goats dominated the animal herds, and cows were not very common. Pigs were present at Bethsaida but constituted a very small percentage. Fish also made up a small part of the daily diet, but due to difficulties in retrieving fish bones in archaeology, their small percentage probably does not reflect their actual consumption. The presence of herds of (predominantly) cows is a clear indicator that the Geshurites of the 10th century b.c.e., when the city was founded, were not nomadic clans on the Golan, herding sheep and goats, but were quite a sedentary population of farmers engaged in raising cows and pigs. 7 It is interesting to note that horse bones were not discovered in large quantity in the excavations. This does not mean that horses were absent from the Bethsaida landscape but that horses were not consumed and, if they died inside the city, their bodies were carried outside.

A View of the Region The region surrounding the Sea of Galilee has been for time immemorial an ideal place to live. The weather is moderate, with temperatures that never descend below freezing. Summers are warm but not unendurably hot, and nice breezes from the Mediterranean Sea in summer afternoons cool the air and turn it pleasant toward sunset. A large body of fresh water provided drinking, fishing, irrigating, and transportation, which made this place idyllic. Indeed, since the late Stone Age, when the lake was reduced to the approximate form it has today, there has been almost constant occupation around the lake (Fassbeck et al. 2003). Large, thriving cities occupied the area all through the ages. Toward the end of the Neolithic period, the sixth millennium b.c.e., a region at the southern tip of the lake, between the lake and the Yarmuq River, flourished in what is dubbed “The Yarmuq or Shaºar HaGolan Culture” (Garfinkel and Miller 2002) and a unique culture dating to the following Chalcolithic period (4500 to 3200 b.c.e.), on the Golan Plateau overlooking the lake (Epstein 1998). Cities were founded around the Sea of Galilee as early as the first urbanization period, during the Early Bronze Age (32nd century b.c.e.). 7. Pigs, as an indicator of a sedentary population, were suggested by Hesse (1990).

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They have also been discovered at the sites of Gamla, Mitham Leviah (Kochavi 1996), and Tell Beth-yerah. 8 Shards of pottery of this period were also discovered under the Iron Age city of Bethsaida, but no architecture has been found thus far. These cities were most likely in contact with other Early Bronze Age cities situated on the Golan Plateau. 9 The Early Bronze Age cities came to an abrupt end at the end of the third millennium b.c.e., and for reasons unknown the cities on the east side of the lake were not rebuilt during the next urbanization period, the Middle Bronze Age (20th to mid-16th centuries b.c.e.). During this period of urbanization, towns were rebuilt only on the west side of the lake. Two Middle Bronze Age cities on the west side have been discovered, Tel Kinorot and Ginosar. 10 Sometime later, during the Late Bronze Age, new settlements were founded on the east side of the sea. 11 During the third urbanization period, the Iron Age, there was a massive growth of urban centers in this region. After a short gap in occupation, apparently at the end of the 11th century, towns and settlements were founded at Bethsaida, Tel Hadar, Ein Gev (Kochavi 1996), Tel Dover, and Tel Raqat. 12 Not too many Iron Age sites have been discovered on the Golan Plateau, and this perhaps explains why the capital of the Kingdom of Geshur was situated near the western edge of the kingdom rather than in the middle of it.

Road Network There may have been a road network connecting Bethsaida to the settlements around it, but very little has been preserved from the Iron Age. The road that leads to the 10th-century city gate of Bethsaida was surveyed for several hundred meters outside the city gate toward the northeast. It was 4 meters wide and meanders through terraces and cultivated fields in the vicinity of the city (fig. 2).

8. The latest report on Beth-yerah is Greenberg and Paz 2004. See also Kochavi 1996. 9. M. Kochavi in various publications has emphasized the continuity of the Early Bronze Age cities and the Iron Age cities, even though there is a gap of about 1,000 years, all through the Middle Bronze Age. See Kochavi 1989; 1994; 1996. 10. Fritz and Muenger 2002 (with additional bibliography on Tel Kinorot). 11. For southern Golan sites, see Epstein 1993. Tel Hadar was founded at this time to the north; see Kochavi 1989; 1994; 1996. 12. Tel Dover, identified with biblical Lo Davar, was partly excavated but has not yet been published. Tel Kuneitra, north of Tiberias, was identified with Raqat but never excavated.

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Fig. 2. An aerial photograph of Bethsaida (photograph by Paul Bauman).

Absence of archaeological evidence for ancient roads does not mean lack of a road system or means of communication but only a lack of clear physical remains. The reconstruction of the interaction between various cities during the Early Bronze Age suggested by Kochavi (1996) is reasonable and is probably accurate for the later periods.

The Layout of the City The Topography of the City’s Environs In addition to the proximity of the lake to the city of Bethsaida, there are two springs at the foot of Bethsaida, one each at the southeastern and southwestern corners of the town. Both springs are perennial and can supply a population of 10,000 people. The hill that was selected for the construction of the city was originally a basalt extension that descends southward from the basalt plateau that forms the Golan Plateau. On the east side of the hill, there is a gorge that begins as a shallow depression, almost parallel to the northern end of the hill, deepens rapidly toward the south, and creates a steep ravine along-

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Fig. 3. A topographical map of Bethsaida (drawn by Christina Etzrodt).

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side the east face of the hill. The south side of the hill descends gradually toward the Bethsaida plain, which was covered with water until the 3rd century c.e. (fig. 3). Archaeological surveys and excavations at Bethsaida indicate that the city was built as a capital city right from the foundation. Thus, Bethsaida did not develop from a rural settlement into an urban center but was built from the onset as a major urban center with monumental buildings to house the capital city of the kingdom. The meticulous display of elements such as the city gate on top of a series of terraces, the palace next to the gate, and the upper city indicate that there was careful planning. Geophysical research has shown that the hillock where the city was constructed was originally rugged and strewn with large basalt boulders and stones, perhaps similar to the hill seen on the east of Bethsaida today. Instead of removing the boulders to prepare the area for construction, which was perhaps too difficult and very costly given the technological means of the 10th century b.c.e., the founders preferred to fill the areas between the boulders with dirt and to lay the foundation for the buildings on this fill. In order to do this and provide enough space for the city structures, terraces were built on top of each other.

The Road Leading to the City A 4-meter-wide road approaches the city and ascends gradually to the city gate complex. The width of the road allows for a wheeled vehicle to maneuver and perhaps even for two carts to pass each other. The existence of wheeled vehicles in this region is another important indication of law and order in the kingdom. 13 Bernard Lewis has observed in a reference to the 19th-century Middle East that carts are a hallmark of law and order: “A cart is large and, for a peasant, relatively costly. It is difficult to conceal and easy to requisition. At a time and place where neither law nor custom restricted the powers of even local authorities, visible and mobile assets were poor investments” (Lewis 2003: 175–76, 192). However, unlike on Roman roads, no wheel marks are discernible on the pavement of the Bethsaida road, and we assume that wheels were wrapped with leather strips or were disassembled before entrance to the city.

13. This is contrary to some scholars, who claim that there were no kingdoms in the 10th century b.c.e. in this region and therefore the United Monarchy of David and Solomon is but a myth (Naªaman 2002; Finkelstein and Silberman 2001: 128–35).

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The Terraces and the Upper and Lower Cities Four successive terraces were discerned on the east side of the hill. The elevation of the lowest and longest terrace is about 175 meters below sea level. It runs along the eastern valley. The second terrace was constructed a few meters above this, at about 170 meters below sea level. The third terrace supported the road into the city and ascends very gradually toward the city gate. This was not the last terrace. Another terrace was built above the road, and the outer city wall was on it. Although there is no firm evidence of a division within the city, it seems reasonable to assume that the town was divided into two different sections, the upper and lower cities. The only evidence for this division is a section of a wall, perhaps a retaining wall, of unknown thickness, that is preserved to about 2 meters high and extends to the city wall, under the Four-Chamber city gate, and therefore dates prior to the mid-9th century b.c.e. This wall may support the upper wall fill, then it turns west and seems to create a tower overlooking the lower city. Additional excavation in this section will certainly clarify this point. In addition to this, the topography of the mound as visible today encourages us in theorizing an upper and lower city. If this is correct, then the upper city could have functioned as an internal citadel consisting of the palace and perhaps other monumental structures, such as a temple. The upper city, or the citadel, was located on the northeast part of the mound and extended over an area of 0.7 hectares. The lower city is about ten times larger than the upper city. The main gate was located at the east side of the city and apparently led directly to the upper city. A storage house built on top of the partition wall suggests that the size of the upper city was expanded about a century after the city was founded to include the large, Four-Chamber city gate and the storage house adjacent to it. A Preplanned City A thorough study of the location of the city in light of its various functions clearly supports the supposition that the city was preplanned. Thus, is reasonable to assume that prior to the foundation of the city a group of professionals surveyed the area and selected the hill where the city would be located. As for almost all ancient cities that share similar histories of foundation, it is virtually impossible to trace back the process of decisionmaking regarding the selection of the site. Considerations such as fresh water, defensible location, and military strategy, reasons that are often presupposed by scholars, may explain the result of the process but not the process itself. At least they do not appear in the writing of the 1st-century

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b.c.e. Roman architect Vitruvius, whose work On Architecture (De architectura, books I–X) is one of the few records from antiquity dealing with considerations for selecting a site for a city. 14 In De Architectura I 4–7, Vitruvius states that healthy air and the consent of the gods are the most important considerations. 15 Vitruvius suggested observing bird and animal behavior and consulting with the gods by sacrifice and divination prior to decision-making. Although there is a gap of a millennium between Vitruvius and the foundation of Bethsaida, it is still safe to speculate that a similar process of decision-making, such as divination and observation of nature, took place at Bethsaida. Indeed this is the only explanation for preferring the hill on which Bethsaida was built over a similar hill next to it. The plans for the city also included, presumably, the location of the road approaching the city. Segments were surveyed where the road descends from the Golan at the northeastern corner of the city, and it is possible that it connected Bethsaida to Damascus. When the city was founded in the 10th century, a stretch of a few hundred meters was paved with beaten clay. This clay road was probably slippery in winter and dusty in the dry summer season, and perhaps this was the reason that it was paved with nice cobble stones, carefully laid, in about the 9th century. This road was made so well that it lasted without repair until the Roman period. The approach to the city may have been designed for military purposes. The road reached the city wall at the northeast corner and continued alongside the walls for over 100 meters, allowing defenders situated on the top of the walls to scrutinize people arriving at the city. An approaching warrior would have had to expose his unshielded right arm to the defenders— a clear advantage for the defenders. The city gate complex was founded on a series of terraces and fills situated at about 20 meters above the ravine. The elevated terraces and fills were strong enough to support the weight of the gate, which was presumably a few thousand metric tons. The fact that it is still there and was not washed down to the ravine in spite of 3,000 years of erosion, weather, and lack of maintenance is remarkable and is indicative of the extraordinary

14. Fourth-century b.c.e. Greek philosophers emphasized the ideal, social, and political composition of the city together with idyllic physical aspects (Plato, Politeia, book II; Aristotle, Politika, book VII). Later on, the Roman architect Vitruvius combined Hellenistic contemplations with Roman traditions in his writings. 15. Vitruvius, On Architecture, vol. 1 (books I–V), ed. M. H. Morgan; vol. 2 (books VI–X), ed. Frank Granger (LCL; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1931–34).

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achievement of the founders of the city. The reason for this placement of the gate was apparently to withstand the most forceful military power of this period—namely, the battering ram. This device depicted frequently in Assyrian reliefs looks oddly enough like a modern tank. It maneuvered on four to six wheels, and under a thick coat of leather or fabric there was a wood device with a turret in front that carried the battering ram, made of a heavy log, sometimes with a ram’s head on the end—hence the name battering ram. This device was probably maneuvered by 15 to 25 people pushing it, battering the gates and walls, extinguishing fire torches thrown at them, and storming the walls from the top of the turret. Because the doors of the two Bethsaida gates, the outer and the inner gates, were placed at right angles to each other, an attack would have been a complicated military maneuver. It required an approach from the road to the outer city gate and, upon reaching the gate’s courtyard, turning at a right angle in a rather short distance, to batter the inner gate. The location of the Bethsaida city gate about 20 meters above the ravine precluded constructing a rampart in order to obtain a direct assault on the door the inner gate. Unlike Lachish, where remains of the Assyrian assault rampart were excavated, no remains of a rampart have been found at Bethsaida. 16

The City Walls The fortification system of Bethsaida included two city walls, an inner wall surrounded by an outer wall that defined the entire city (fig. 4). The two walls were simultaneously constructed and formed part of the city’s defense system. Evidence for the two walls was found in all locations where the city walls have been excavated, such as the section at the northern city wall and at the city gate. The two walls were built of stone with sun-dried mud bricks to an estimated different elevation. The outer city wall was discovered at an elevation of about 1.5 meters and the remnants of the inner city wall were preserved to about 2.5 meters. Most likely, sundried mud bricks were used for the upper sections of the walls. The amount of stone found in the collapsed walls indicates that most of it was constructed of stone. The width of the outer city wall was not even, nor was it exactly parallel to the inner city wall. Its width varies between 1.5 and 2.5 meters and therefore could not support a wall higher than 6 meters. An open and paved area of 3.5 to 6 meters separated the outer wall from the inner city wall. The latter was mostly 6 meters wide, and every few meters buttresses and towers were added on opposite sides of the 16. Lachish was conquered by the Assyrian king Sennacherib some 30 years after the conquest of Bethsaida by Tiglath-pileser III. See Ussishkin 1992: 861.

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Fig. 4. Ground plan of the gate area and the bit-hilani palace at Bethsaida (drawn by Christina Etzrodt).

wall, creating a remarkable width of 8 meters. The inner and outer city walls, including the gate complex, were all coated with plaster and washed in white. Undoubtedly, the inner city wall loomed above the outer city wall and created the spectacular impression of a formidable fortress (fig. 5). A spectator from the outside could see behind the relatively low outer city wall to the towering inner city wall and would assumed that it was rather thick. Together with the majestic city gate complex, bastions, and towers, it created the impression of an impregnable fortress. 17 The psychological 17. Although overlooked by many scholars (Isserlin 2001: 137), two city walls were a rather common feature in cities of the southern Levant. Clues such as pavement outside the city walls and remnants of low, thin walls have sometimes been disregarded. However, these features were excavated in Dan, Megiddo Stratum IVB–VA, Gezer, Lachish III, Beer-sheva V, Tell en-Naßbeh, Tel Batash. The two-citywall system was perhaps developed in Mesopotamia. This can be seen for example in Nineveh and Babylon.

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Fig. 5. A reconstruction of the gate complex at Bethsaida (prepared by Uri Arav). effect of thwarting aggressive intentions by foes and impressing friends is known from antiquity and, unquestionably, was well employed.

The City Gate Complex Situated over the entire fortification system was a city gate complex (fig. 4). This complex consisted of several elements that together created the impression of a very strong city. It included an outer city gate that was relatively simple and appeared lower than the other structures. Behind the outer city gate was the courtyard, which was the real heart of the city. A thick wall connected the outer city wall and a bastion, which was situated as a watchtower at the corner of the gate. Looming over the entire structure was the inner city gate, which was the main structure of the complex. It consisted of two large towers, four large chambers, a storehouse behind it, and a small tower at its northern corner. Based on Assyrian reliefs, we may theorize that the entire complex together with the city walls was surmounted with a battlement. To a visitor of the city in Iron Age II who walked up the paved road to the city, observed the double walls, and then looked ever higher, to the

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gate complex situated on top of the sequence of terraces, the sight would have been overwhelming (fig. 5).

The Outer City Gate and the Courtyard The outer city gate was a simple, almost square structure of about 7 x 8 meters. It was situated at the end of the paved road. A threshold of 4 meters built of massive stones, of which only one is preserved, was installed about one meter inside the entrance of the gate. The threshold creates a small step, suggesting that wheeled vehicles had difficulty entering the city. There were probably double doors that, when opened, went into two niches in the opposite walls. A short walk of about 7 meters led to the other side of the gate, to an open courtyard. Two dressed stone steles 1.3 meters high were placed opposite each other on both sides of the entrance to the courtyard. Two steles flanked the entrance of the inner city gate, and two more were placed on the back side of the inner city gate, inside the city. Together with the stele on top of the stepped high place, the total number of steles was seven (Arav 2004a: 29–34). The courtyard was over 150 meters square and was nicely paved. The inside of the courtyard was open-air, but the view was limited to the sky due to the tall walls, towers, and gates on all sides. To the east was a 15-meter city wall connecting the outer city gate to the bastion. Alongside this wall was a bench, possibly the seat for the elders of the city. Benches were also discovered along the other walls, amounting to 25 meters of benches, indicating that this establishment was an important function of civil life as early as the 10th century b.c.e. Two meters of debris and floors separate the earliest pavement from the latest one and testify to the extensive use and centrality of the gate and courtyard throughout its 250-year life-span. In addition to the seats for the elders of the city, there were also five high places of different types located at the gate complex (Arav 2004a: 17–29). Two were located in the courtyard, two in the vicinity, and one at the back of the inner city gate. It seems that they were organized symmetrically, with one of each type in the northern and southern wings of the inner city gate. We have named two of the high places “stepped high places.” One is located in a niche in the northern tower of the inner city gate and one at the back of the southern tower. Two other high places have been named “direct access high places” and are located similarly, one in the niche of the southern tower and the other behind the northern tower. The fifth high place is the largest, called here “the sacrificial high place,” and is located behind the inner gate, inside the city.

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The Bastion A strong lookout tower (6 x 6 meters) was situated at the southeastern end of the gate complex, at the back of the courtyard. It was built of massive basalt boulders, weighing a few hundred kilograms each, that were meticulously fit together. Except for one corner that was preserved to about 2 meters, the bastion was completely destroyed during the military campaign of Tiglath-pileser III in 732 b.c.e. Apparently, the complete destruction of the tower was deliberate and aimed at preventing its reconstruction. The bastion also seems to have been the only section of the gate that was built solely for military reasons. The height of the bastion can only be estimated, and most likely it rose to about 10–15 meters— enough to overlook the entire gate complex. It provided a good view of and control over not only any who entered the city but also (and perhaps not less important) the throng gathering below, in the heart of the city, the courtyard. The Inner City Gate Looming over the entire gate complex was the inner city gate. This type of gate was common in the southern Levant and has been dubbed the “Four-Chamber” city gate. 18 For the purpose of better understanding the complexity of the inner city gate, I have divided the description below into two phases: the earlier, the “Lower Inner City Gate” (LICG), and the later, the “Upper Inner City Gate” (UICG). Unlike the other elements of the outer city gate, the inner city gate took different shapes during each period of construction. The shape of the LICG is not apparent. However, the UICG has been fully exposed and was constructed as a Four-Chamber city gate. Thus far, only a few segments of the floors and walls of the LICG have been discovered, and the fact that a granary is located under the western end of the UICG suggests that the LICG was rather small and different from the UICG. The latter was extremely large and constitutes, thus far, the largest of all city gates known to us (17 m x 37 m). It was built of very large, coarsely-hewn boulders, nicely fit together. Small stones were put in the spaces between the boulders to secure the stability of the structure. Two steles flanked the entrance. In the passageway at the end of each pier between the chambers, a wooden beam was placed on top of the first three courses of stone, similar to the description of the temple of Solomon in Jerusalem (“He built the inner court with three courses of dressed stone to 18. Mazar 1990: 467–69.

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one course of cedar beams,” 1 Kgs 6:36) 19 and similar to construction in the cities of Dan and Megiddo. Two large towers (10 x 6 m), each with a deep niche, flanked the entrance to the inner city gate. As in the rest of the gate, they were constructed with massive boulders. A conspicuous threshold made of several nicely dressed stones was placed between the towers. The stone in the middle of the threshold was larger and shaped to function as a doorstop for the double doors at the entrance. The doors were made of local oak. Carbonized segments were found on the floor. A drop of about 25 centimeters separated the threshold from the pavement of the passageway inside the gate and probably made it difficult for wheeled vehicles to enter. 20 The passageway is 4 meters wide and was carefully paved with basalt cobble stones, which are still flat and smooth from years of wear by pedestrians. The inner city gate was preserved to an unusual height of 3 meters, which may have been almost the original height of the first floor. Remains of the second floor were discovered on top of the first floor and suggest that, contrary to common opinion, the inner gate was at least two stories high. This means that the towers in front were at least three stories. How high was the inner city gate? If each floor was 3 meters high, and if the width of the floors and the battlement walls are added to the computation, the height of the inner gate was between 10 and 15 meters. Four large chambers (10 m x 3.5 m) opened onto a passageway that led from the threshold to the exit. A shallow threshold separates the passageway from the chambers. Scholars have suggested that the chambers were occupied by guards, who would scrutinize the pedestrians and ensure the safety of the city. 21 The evidence from Bethsaida suggests that the chambers were not for military purposes, however, nor was there room to install guards in them. Instead, the chambers of Bethsaida testify that, from the time they were constructed, they were designated as granaries. Three of the four chambers were found to contain grain. More than one metric ton of barley was found in Chamber 3. Probes in the other chambers provided evidence that the chambers were used for granaries for an extended period of time. Chamber 4, situated in the northeast, contained a large 19. All translations are from the nrsv unless otherwise stated. 20. The archaeologists of Ekron suggest that wheeled vehicles parked outside the city in a specially guarded compound (Gitin 2005: 48). This interpretation may also apply to the city of Dan, in which similar extramural structures were discovered. A. Biran, the excavator of Dan, suggested identifying it with the biblical term ˙ußôt, meaning ‘external places’, usually for a market. 21. Isserlin (2001: 137) follows the common view.

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number of vessels of various sizes and types, such as large storage jars, jugs, bowls, plates, cooking bowls, and craters. It is reasonable to believe that the chamber was designated for storing offering vessels, on the following grounds: There were no cooking pots, and not all ware was of high quality. Traces of repairing and cementing were observed on many plates and jars, which would mean that these vessels were not used for eating. One jug contained a dedicatory inscription, apparently to the moon-god. 22 Two steles of roughly dressed stones flanked the exit of the inner city gate. The presence of the steles, seven in all, was intended to provide a divine bond for the structure and security for the gate and the city.

City Gate Installations Similar to other gates in biblical cities, the gate at Bethsaida served as the heart of civil affairs for the city. This institution is mentioned often in the Bible; unlike Greco-Roman cities, in which a piazza at the physical center of the city served as the heart of commercial and civil affairs, the center of the biblical city was the gate. The city gate was the seat of government for the city dignitaries, as in the verse praising the woman of valor, whose husband is “known at the city gates” (Prov 31:23). It was the commercial center, where transactions were made. Abraham purchased the Cave of Machpelah at the city gate of Hebron (Gen 23:10). A detailed, vivid depiction of city-gate affairs is found in the book of Ruth (4:1–12), which describes how Boaz purchased/redeemed Naomi’s property and also acquired his wife, Ruth the Moabite, in the transaction. The elders of the city were seated at the gate and authorized this contract. They formed a hierarchy of jurisdiction, judged the people in various legal matters, and could authorize capital punishment. They were also authorized to make political decisions. When Gideon, the judge, with his 300 warriors chased after Zebah and Zalmunna, the kings of Midian, and asked the elders of the city of Succoth to provide his army with food, the elders replied: “Do you already have in your possession the hands of Zebah and Zalmunna, that we should give bread to your army?” ( Judg 8:6). This was a political decision that they probably regretted, because on his way back, “he took thorns of the wilderness and briers and with them he trampled the people of Succoth” ( Judg 8:16–17). The elders of the city must have been seated on benches 22. This inscription has been published several times (Arav 2004a: 34–35, and see bibliography there). It is Hebrew or Aramaic and reads: ‘to the name of’. An ankh-like symbol follows the inscription, suggesting that it was offered to the moon-god.

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often found in city gates. Twenty-five meters of benches were found in the city gate of Bethsaida and testify that this establishment was as early as the 10th century b.c.e. This means that there were about 25 elders in this city of about 2,000 people. 23 The city gate also played an important social-economic role. Once every three years, it was the place were the inhabitants were supposed to place their tithes for the Levites, proselytes, orphans, and widows (Deut 14:28–29). The Bible forbade sacrificing for Passover in the city gate but permitted eating newborn sheep, goats, or cattle that had been born deformed and were excluded from sacrificing in Jerusalem (Deut 15:19–23). It was a place where news were disseminated. In the courtyard between “the two gates” (!) in the city of Mahanaim in Transjordan, David sat and waited for the messenger to come from the battlefield to announce that his beloved son Absalom was dead (2 Sam 18:24). Additionally, the city gate played a significant role in the religious life of the people. Some scholars maintain that the city gate served as a forerunner for the synagogue. 24 In Jerusalem, in the street next to the Water Gate, Ezra assembled the people, stood on a wooden platform, read, and interpreted the Bible (Neh 8:5–8). In the great monotheistic reformation carried out by Josiah (7th century b.c.e.), “he brought all the priests out of the towns of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests had made offerings, from Geba to Beer-sheba; he broke down the high places of the gates that were at the entrance of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, which were on the left at the gate of the city” (2 Kgs 23:8). It is no wonder that, because of the remarkable state of preservation of the city gate of Bethsaida, it testifies to a variety of social and commercial activities. In the following sections, I will concentrate on the various activities in evidence at the gate of Bethsaida.

Religious Life Although most official religious life of the city undoubtedly took place at the temple, places of official worship were also located in the city gate. The Bethsaida city gate manifests five high places of three different types. Two of each type were placed in the southern and northern wings, respectively, of the inner gate, and one large high place was built behind the in23. Isserlin thinks that the courtyards of the Israelite cities were too small to host the elders (Isserlin 2001: 120–21) and they were probably housed in buildings in the vicinity of the gate. Bethsaida’s example does not support this assumption. 24. See Levine 2000: 19–41; and Runesson 2001: 87–97.

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Fig. 6. The stepped high place at Bethsaida (drawn by Douglas Andersen).

ner city gate. There are two high places that I call “stepped high places.” One is located in the niche of the northern tower of the inner city gate and one at the back of the southern tower. Two other high places fall in the category of “direct access high place” and are also located symmetrically, one in the niche of the southern tower and the other behind the northern tower. The fifth high place, identified as a “sacrificial high place,” is located behind the inner gate, inside the city.

The Stepped High Place The high place at the niche of the northern tower consists of two steps leading to an elevated platform (fig. 6; Arav 1999: 128–36; 2004a: 19–20). In the middle of the platform, there is a basalt basin, and behind the basin a decorated stele was posted (fig. 7). Two perforated cups were found inside the basin; their purpose is still obscure. They were presumably dipped in the basin filled with liquid and then elevated to allow the liquid (such as water, milk, wine, or oil) to shower out of the perforations. 25 The decorated stele was interpreted by M. Bernett and O. Keel as suggesting a bull with very large horns, representative of the moon-god, on top of a nonfigurative design that was interpreted as a Luwian hieroglyph meaning a stele (Bernett and Keel 1998: 42). Without an inscription or

25. I wish to thank Ziony Zevit for discussing this issue with me. See Zevit 2003: 149–53.

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Fig. 7. The decorated stele at Bethsaida (photograph of the Bethsaida Excavations Project).

other information, we cannot determine the name of this deity. Unquestionably, the moon-god was one of the most prominent deities of the Geshurites, and this should not be surprising: he was worshiped in the cities of Ur and Haran and perhaps was venerated as the national deity by the Geshurites. Two similar steles were discovered in southern Syria, about 30–40 kilometers east of Bethsaida. One was discovered at Tell Ashri and the other at Awas, near the town of Salhad (Bernett and Keel 1998: 8–21). The second stepped high place consists of three low steps leading to a low, rather symbolic platform. No finds were discovered at this high place. The fact that it is parallel to the northern high place and the fact that the steps and podium face a wall indicate that the installation served as a high place.

The Direct Access High Place Opposite the stepped high place at the northern tower niche, there was another type of high place. This high place consists of a high shelf, built about 90 centimeters above the ground (similar to the elevation of the northern stepped high place). Next to the shelf, there is a bench and a

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Fig. 8. The “direct access high place” at Bethsaida (photograph of the Bethsaida Excavations Project).

non-iconic stele that flanked the entrance. The shelf is certainly too high to be a bench, because the other benches are about 20 centimeters above the ground (fig. 8). No cultic object was found on or near the shelf. The analogy with the high place at the opposite niche is almost the only clue that it was a high place. Because there were neither steps nor ramparts to the shelf, we have dubbed it the “direct access high place,” where a worshiper could access the high place directly, without climbing steps or a rampart. 26 A similar but smaller high place was found in the corner between the northern tower and the city wall. This high place consisted of a shelf, about 50 centimeters high, constructed with undressed fieldstones and filled with dirt. Plaster and white-wash covered the entire device. This high place contained no finds. 27

26. Bernett and Keel 1998: 45–74; Haettner Blomquist 1999: 57–131. 27. For further discussion on this topic, see Arav 2004: 20–23.

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Fig. 9. The “sacrificial high place” at Bethsaida (photograph of the Bethsaida Excavations Project).

The Sacrificial High Place A third type of high place was built at the back of the inner city gate, adjacent to the southern wing (fig. 9). It is the largest high place discovered thus far at Bethsaida and consists of a cobble-stone podium elevated only about 40 centimeters above the surrounding floors. A sloped, cobblestone rampart approaches the podium. Two lower, compact, large shelves of dirt flanked the podium on both sides. The objects found on the altar included burnt bones, a broken basin with high corners, large flat slabs of stone similar to other altars, 28 and a large boulder with unclear incisions that may represent a bull. At the northern end of the high place, there is a rather deep pit. The pit was packed with ashes and bones, and it seems clear that the bones and the leftovers of the sacrificial meals were thrown into this pit. Analysis of the animal bones in the pit revealed cows, sheep, goats, and a small percentage of fallow deer. 29 28. See, for example, Tel-Mudayneh in Moab (Daviau and Dion 2002: 42). 29. See forthcoming research by Fisher, in vol. 4 of the Bethsaida series. For further discussion on this issue, see also in Arav 2004a: 20–23.

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Fig. 10. A group of Iron Age figurines from Bethsaida (photograph by Christine Delante).

Figurines Several figurines and statuettes perhaps representing official and unofficial religions were discovered at Bethsaida. None of the figurines was discovered intact, making the identification of the deities difficult (fig. 10). One of the clay figurines shows the head of a male wearing an Atef crown, which is a tall, flat crown with a feather on each side and a large knob at the top of the crown (Arav 1995: 17–18; fig. 17). This crown is known from the Ammonite culture and has been identified with either the Ammonite king or the Ammonite chief deity, Milkom. Did the Geshurites also worship Milkom, and did they have a different name for this deity, or did the Geshurites use the same features for an entirely different deity? At the current state of the investigation, it is difficult to know the answer. Another clay figurine from Bethsaida is of a female with hairdress in the style of the Egyptian goddess Hathor. Only the head is preserved, so it is difficult to identify the deity. The figurine has large, pronounced eyes, which are indicative of local production rather than being imported from Egypt.

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A different clay figurine shows another female with Hathor hairstyle, who is standing and is holding something in her hand, although the object is unfortunately not preserved. Based on a similar but intact figurine found in Transjordan, we assume that she was holding a tambourine or a similar object (sun-disk?) in her hand. A small statuette was found in the palace that was clearly not an official deity. It has been identified as the Egyptian dwarf deity Pataikos (Arav and Bernett 1997; 2000: 54). 30 The collection, although random as most archaeological finds are, portrays the eclectic nature of the Geshurite religion and testifies to syncretism and correlations with neighboring cultures such as Ammon, Egypt, Phoenicia, and northern Syria.

Economy, Storehouses, and Granaries Apparently the city gate played a significant economic role in addition to its judicial, religious, and social roles. As noted above, three chambers of the UICG were used for grain storage. Chamber 3 contained barley, and chambers 1 and 2 contained wheat. Thick layers of grain were found on top of each other, testifying that grain storage was the main purpose for the construction of the chambers. Despite their size, the chambers were not sufficient to store the large quantity of grain that had accumulated in the capital city, so another storehouse was added at the southwestern side of the gate. Large jars also placed in storage there were found empty, suggesting that they were designated for liquids. What quantitative data can be deduced from the size and volume of the storage capacity? In the absence of documents pertaining to collection and distribution of grain at Bethsaida, we are left with attempts to calculate the amount of grain that could be stored in the three granaries, speculate patterns of collection and distribution, and estimate the economic value of the city gate. The volume of the three storage chambers has been figured at 315.000 m3. The amount of grain that can be stored in this space is 250 metric tons. Considering the technology available prior to the modern period, we figure that the total amount of land needed to yield this amount would have been approximately 300–500 hectares. If we assume that the grain stored in the chambers derived from taxes, and if the tax levied was a tithe, then the annual yield of Bethsaida farmers was 30. A palace in Neo-Hittite/Aramean style was discovered in the early stages of the dig. Its construction dates to the 10th century b.c.e., and it was never completely destroyed. The western wing was in use until the Hellenistic period.

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about 2,500 metric tons, which was harvested from about 5,000 hectares, which amounts to about 40% of the entire Geshurite territory. In the period prior to modern agriculture, a unit of 12.5 hectares was considered the average allotment that could be ploughed by two oxen and an individual worker in one year. An allotment such as this would yield about 5–6.5 metric tons of grain annually. If these figures are close to ancient reality, then there were about 400 allotments in the Geshurite countryside, ploughed by 800 oxen. This indicates that the agricultural capacity of the Geshurites may have been quite remarkable. The daily consumption of one person is about 1 kg of wheat per day. This amount contains the necessary 3,000 calories per day needed for the survival of one individual. Assuming that the grain stored in the granaries was not used for seed, then we may suppose that that the amount of grain stored in Bethsaida could feed a population of about 680 people each year. The size of the site is about 8 hectares, and it would be sufficient to provide housing for 2,000 people. This means that a little more than onethird of the population of the city could be supported by the grain stored at the gate. Who were these beneficiaries? The fact that the grain stored at the gate is located near the palace implies that the collection and distribution of this grain was done under the close supervision of the authorities and supports the theory that the authorities who controlled food production and its distribution were courtiers and the military. 31

The Palace Towering over the entire town was the palace of the rulers (figs. 4, 11). In order to visit the palace, one would have had to enter the city gate complex, then turn right, and go through a 2-meter-wide entrance flanked by a narrow turret located at the northwestern corner of the inner city gate and by a massive wall probably enclosing the palatial complex. At this point, one would have arrived at a large, meticulously paved plaza. In the corner between the city wall and the northern section of the gate, there was another group of small basalt steles and a large, flat, horizontal stone, evidently for placing offerings.

31. An example of royal beneficiaries is known from the palace of Fara (the site of ancient Shuruppak in Mesopotamia). Among the beneficiaries listed there were 144 cupbearers and 65 cooks.

spread one pica short

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Fig. 11. An aerial photograph of the bit-hilani palace at Bethsaida (photograph by Paul Bauman).

A large palace (30 m x 15 m) in the bit-hilani style was situated at the north end of the plaza. 32 This style of palace was well known in northern Syria and Mesopotamia already in the Late Bronze Age (14th century b.c.e.) and had distinct characteristics: (1) it was a palace built close to the city gate and the city wall; (2) it was a broad, rectangular structure with an entrance in the longer wall; (3) there were no interior open courtyards or patios, which was a compact design, yet, due to the absence of light and 32. The building has already been published, together with its pottery. Only one sealed locus was found (Locus 638) and it revealed special 10th-century features; see Arav and Bernett 2000: 47–81 and bibliography.

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air sources, rather difficult to expand. When expansion was required, new, similar buildings were added in the vicinity of the existing building. The result was a cluster of houses arranged around a large, open courtyard, somewhat like the Topkapi palace of the Ottoman Sultans in Istanbul. Several bit-hilanis were built in the city of Zinjirli/Samªal in southern Turkey, one of the largest compounds of bit-hilanis discovered. 33 (4) A wide entrance, sometimes but not necessarily decorated with columns, 34 led to a broad vestibule that, when colonnaded, would look like a porch; (5) the vestibule led to the main chamber of the building, which was a broad room, interpreted by many as the throne room. The throne itself was, in some structures, speculated to be at the farther end of the room. The main room was surrounded by smaller rooms, sometimes interpreted as service rooms. All these features were present in the bit-hilani of Bethsaida.

Conclusion In order to understand an Iron Age city, one must begin by attempting to reconstruct the landscape, that is, the geology and geography, proceeding to fauna and flora, and ending with the layout of the city and the small finds. Bethsaida research is approaching the stage where reliable reconstruction of this sort of landscape is possible. Geological and geomorphological research asserts that the Sea of Galilee was larger during the Iron Age than it is today, and the city was in fact built near the seashore. Oak forests covered large areas around the city and provided good timber for construction material. Sufficient rainfall ensured that rich grass provided a good livelihood for wild animals that roamed the plateau and for a rich yield of crops and plenty of pasture. A road, measuring 4 meters wide, testifies that wheeled vehicles were a conventional means of transportation during this period and implies that law and order was maintained in the kingdom, providing safety for travelers and their possessions. Unquestionably, security bolstered the trade and commerce necessary for a thriving kingdom. Bethsaida was a town in Iron Age II that fits what the Bible and the Assyrian records call “a fortified city.” It is a city that was meticulously preplanned, robustly fortified, and extremely difficult to storm and capture. 33. See Landsberger 1948. 34. The necessity of columns is a misinterpretation based on an Assyrian inscription. Most buildings identified as bit-hilanis did not contain columns. See Arav and Bernett 2000: 79.

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The fortifications included an elaborate system of defense, such as glacis, two city walls in which a narrower, lower wall preceded a wider, higher wall. This certainly played a significant psychological role. The location of the gate above a steep ravine and on top of a series of terraces made a military assault on the city a tremendously complicated operation. The variety of installations in the enormous city gate complex turned the gate from being just a simple opening in the city wall, typical of the previous periods, into a city center and the most important civil structure of the town. No more was it just an opening to enter and exit the city but a place where citizens interacted and conducted most of their daily business. It was the heart of commercial life, where most transactions were carried out; it was the place where the collection and distribution of supplies, food, and charities took place; it was the seat of the elders of the city, the forerunner of synagogues and senates in later periods. With a variety of high places, it also served as a religious center for pedestrians to worship, upon leaving or entering the city. It is noteworthy, however, that the heart of the city was not in the physical center of the town but at the periphery of it. Perhaps the citizens felt more secure doing business near the edge of the city rather then deep inside the physical center, away from a short retreat to the countryside. The palace, looming above the city, represented the apex of the urban hierarchy. It was close enough to the city gate to control and monitor its activities, close enough for the ruler to retreat home quickly after arriving, yet it was isolated from the public by walls, a gate, and a turret. The spacious plaza in front of the palace was certainly not typical of the dense neighborhoods inside the town. It is not surprising, therefore, that the nonegalitarian appearance of the city created discomfort among the population that could be transformed into discontent, bitterness, and resentment. Therefore, it is no wonder that dissonant echoes of these sentiments are reflected in the Bible. The biblical description of the age of David and Solomon is summed up vividly in 1 Kgs 4:20: “Judah and Israel were as numerous as the sand by the sea; they ate and drank and were happy.” Traditionally this has been viewed as “the golden age” of the biblical period. 35 However, it seems that this was not the only golden age. The Bible (1 Sam 8:11–22) preserves the deficiencies of kingship and alludes, perhaps, to a better “golden age” that existed prior to the establishment of kings. These verses, which summarize the “rights of the kings,” contain harsh predictions for the common 35. See Finkelstein and Silberman 2001: 123–45.

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people under a king. This admonition may also be understood as a yearning for a different type of “golden age.” It would perhaps not be too far from the truth to say that, while today we admire the remains of these majestic towns, the fortified city of Bethsaida may be seen as an omnipresent symbol of excessive power.

Bibliography Arav, R. 1995

Bethsaida Excavations: Preliminary Report, 1987–1992. Pp 3–63 in vol. 1 of Bethsaida: A City by the Northern Shore of the Sea of Galilee. The Bethsaida Excavations Project Reports and Contextual Studies, ed. R. Arav and R. A. Freund. 3 vols. Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press. 1999 Bethsaida Preliminary Report, 1994–1996. Pp. 3–113 in vol. 2 of Bethsaida: A City by the North Shore of the Sea of Galilee. The Bethsaida Excavations Project Reports and Contextual Studies, ed. R. Arav and R. A. Freund. 3 vols. Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press. 2004a Toward a Comprehensive History of Geshur. Pp. 1–48 in vol. 3 of Bethsaida: A City by the North Shore of the Sea of Galilee. The Bethsaida Excavations Project Reports and Contextual Studies, ed. R. Arav and R. A. Freund. 3 vols. Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press. 2004b The Elders of the City—How Old Is This Establishment? The Case of Bethsaida. Pp. 208–9 in Abstracts 2004. Annual Meetings AAR/SBL San Antonio, Texas, November 20–23. Arav, R., and Bernett, M. 1997 An Egyptian Figurine of Pataikos at Bethsaida. IEJ 47: 198–213. 2000 The bit hilani at Bethsaida: Its Place in Aramaean/Neo-Hittite and Israelite Palace Architecture in Iron Age II. IEJ 50: 47–81. Arav, R., and Freund, R. A., eds. 1995–2004 Bethsaida: A City by the Northern Shore of the Sea of Galilee. The Bethsaida Excavations Project Reports and Contextual Studies, ed. R. Arav and R. A. Freund. 3 vols. Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press. Bernett, M., and Keel, O. 1998 Mond, Stier und Kult am Stadttor: Die Stele von Betsaida (et-Tell). Freiburg: Universitätsverlag / Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Daviau, P. M., and Dion, P.-E. 2002 Moab Comes to Life. BAR 28/1: 38–49, 63. Epstein, C. 1993 The Cities of the Land of Ga-ru Geshur Mentioned in EA 256 Reconsidered. Pp. 83–90 in Studies in the Archaeology and History of Ancient Israel in Honor of Moshe Dothan, ed. M. Heltzer, A. Segal, and D. Kaufman. Haifa: Haifa University Press. [Hebrew] 1998 The Chalcolithic Culture of the Golan. Israel Antiquities Reports 4. Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority.

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Fassbeck, G., et al., eds. 2003 Leben am See Gennesaret. Mainz: von Zabern. Finkelstein, I., and Silberman, N. A. 2001 The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. New York: Free Press. Fisher, T. 2005 The Bones Finds from Bethsaida. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Forthcoming Bethsaida: A City by the North Shore of the Sea of Galilee. The Bethsaida Excavations Project Reports and Contextual Studies, vol. 4. Fritz, V., and Muenger, S. 2002 Vorbericht über die zweite Phase der Ausgrabungen in Kinneret (Tell elºOreme) am See Gennesaret, 1994–1999. ZDPV 118: 3–32. Garfinkel, J., and Miller, M. 2002 Shaºar Hagolan: Neolithic Art in Context. Oxford: Oxbow. Geyer, P. S. 2001 Evidence of Flax Cultivation from the Temple–Granary Complex et-Tell (Bethsaida/Julias). IEJ 51: 231–34. Gitin, S. 2005 Excavating Ekron. BAR 31/6: 40–56, 66. Greenberg, R., and Paz, S. 2004 An EB IA–EBIII Stratigraphic Sequence from the 1946 Excavations at Tel Beth Yerah. IEJ 54: 1–23. Haettner Blomquist, T. 1999 Gates and Gods: Cults in the City Gates of Iron Age Palestine. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. Hesse, B. 1990 Pig Lovers and Pig Haters: Patterns of Palestinian Pork Production. Journal of Ethnobiology 10: 195–225. Isserlin, B. S. J. 2001 The Israelites. Minneapolis: Fortress. Kochavi, M. 1989 The Land of Geshur Project: Regional Archaeology of the Southern Golan (1987–1988 Seasons). IEJ 39: 1–17. 1994 The Land of Geshur Project, 1993. IEJ 44: 136–41. 1996 The Land of Geshur: History of a Region in the Biblical Period. ErIsr 25 (Aviram volume): 184–201. [Hebrew] Landsberger, B. 1948 Sam’al. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi. Levine, I. L. 2000 The Ancient Synagogues: The First Thousand Years. New Haven: Yale University Press. Lewis, B. 2003 What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response. London: Phoenix.

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London, G., and Shuster, R. 1999 Bethsaida Iron Age Ceramics. Pp. 175–224 in vol. 2 of Bethsaida: A City by the North Shore of the Sea of Galilee. The Bethsaida Excavations Project Reports and Contextual Studies, ed. R. Arav and R. A. Freund. 3 vols. Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press. Mazar A. 1990 Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 10,000–586 bce. ABRL. New York: Doubleday. Meier, C. 1982 Caesar, trans. D. McLintock. London: Fontana. Naªaman, N. 2002 In Search of Reality behind the Account of David’s Wars with Israel’s Neighbors. IEJ 52: 200–224. Runesson, A. 2001 The Origins of the Synagogue: A Socio-Historical Study. ConBNT 37. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. Saggs, H. W. F. 2001 The Babylonians: A Survey of the Ancient Civilisation of the Tigris Euphrates Valleys. London: British Museum Press. Schoenwetter, J., and Geyer, P. S. 2000 Implications of Archaeological Palynology at Bethsaida, Israel. Journal of Field Archaeology 27/1 (2000): 63–73. Shroder, J. F., et al. 1999 Catastrophic Geomorphic Processes and the Bethsaida Archaeology, Israel. Pp. 115–73 in vol. 2 of Bethsaida: A City by the North Shore of the Sea of Galilee. The Bethsaida Excavations Project Reports and Contextual Studies, ed. R. Arav and R. A. Freund. 3 vols. Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press. Tadmor, H. 1994 The Inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser III, King of Assyria: Critical Edition with Introductions, Translations and Commentary. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Science and Humanities. Ussishkin, D. 1992 Lachish. Pp. 897–911 in vol. 3 of NEAEHL. Zevit, Z. 2003 Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches. London: Continuum.

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Jerusalem between the Hasmoneans and Herod the Great Dan Bahat University of St. Michael College, Toronto

The historical-geographical study of the city of Jerusalem has gone through major changes during the past few decades. Extensive excavations carried out on Second-Temple-Period sites in the country, such as Jerusalem, Jericho, Masada, 1 and others have yielded a great deal of valuable information on this period. For the first time, archaeological remains from the Hasmonean period (2nd century b.c.e.–40 b.c.e.) can be distinguished from remains from the Herodian-Dynasty period (40 b.c.e.–70 c.e.) and scholars can assess and evaluate the development of the city on purely archeological grounds. Similar developments may also be discerned through critical analysis of the available historical sources describing the city during the Second Temple Period. New interpretations of the Mishnah’s description of the Temple Mount and the description of Josephus suggest that the Temple Mount underwent significant changes between these two periods. In 1995, G. J. Wightman attempted to outline the developments on the Temple Mount in the Hellenistic period. 2 He analyzed the masonry of the 1. For Jerusalem see H. Geva, ed., Jewish Quarter Excavations in the Old City of Jerusalem, vol. 1 ( Jerusalem, 2000; henceforth JQ 1); ibid., vol. 2 ( Jerusalem, 2003; here JQ 2); R. Amiran and A. Eitan, “Excavations in the Courtyard of the Citadel, Jerusalem, 1968–1969,” IEJ 20 (1970) 9–17; H. Geva, “Excavations in the Citadel of Jerusalem, 1979–1980,” IEJ 33 (1983) 55–71; M. Broshi, “Recent Excavations along the Walls of Jerusalem,” Qadmoniot 9 (1976) 75–78 [Hebrew]; D. Bahat, Touching the Stones of Our Heritage ( Jerusalem, 2002; henceforth, the Tunnels). For Jericho, see E. Netzer, Hasmonean and Herodian Palaces at Jericho, vol. 1 ( Jerusalem, 2001); R. Ben-Nathan, The Pottery ( Jerusalem, 2002). For Masada, see E. Netzer, Masada III: The Buildings, Stratigraphy and Architecture ( Jerusalem, 1991). 2. G. J. Wightman, “Ben Sira 50:2 and the Hellenistic Temple Enclosure in Jerusalem,” in Trade, Contact, and the Movement of Peoples in the East Mediterranean: Studies in Honour of J. B. Hennessy (ed. S. Burkee and J.-P. Descoeudres; Mediterranean Archeology Supplement 3; Sydney, 1995) 275–83.

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eastern retaining wall, which is the oldest of the four retaining walls, and suggested that this wall dates to the days of Simon, the son of Johanan (the Second), or his son, Onias (the Third, beginning of the 2nd century b.c.e.). He also suggested associating the reconstruction of the Temple Mount’s walls with Judas Maccabeus (about the middle of the 2nd century b.c.e.; 1 Macc 4:36–61). It is highly unlikely that any further attempts were made to enlarge the Temple Mount by Judas’s brothers or by the later Hasmonean kings. The apocryphal book of the Wisdom of Ben Sira ( Jesus Ben Sirach) and The Letter of Aristeas, 3 also referred to by Wightman, imply a similar order of events regarding the Temple Mount. 4 Two systems are recognized as being constructed under “Simon the high priest, the son of Onias”: (1) the massive walls of the mount (Sir 50:1–2) and (2) the water supply to the temple (Sir 50:3). These undertakings are also described by Aristeas. These architectural improvements are analogous with other Hellenistic precincts erected throughout the Hellenistic world. 5 The literary sources describing the Temple Mount ( Josephus and the Mishnah) seem at first glance to present a contradictory picture. However, careful scrutiny reveals that the two descriptions depict two different periods and situations. Josephus seems to describe the features of the Temple Mount as seen today—that is, he basically describes the Herodian modification, which remains unchanged grosso modo to the present day. 6 The description of the Mishnah differs entirely from Josephus’s description in the number of gates, size of the Mount, and a few other details. 7 This descrip3. The Letter of Aristeas: With an Introduction and Notes by H. St. J. Thackery (London, 1904) 20–21, 83–91. The letter is usually dated to the middle of the 2nd century b.c.e. (see V. Tcherikover, “Aristeas,” EncJud 1:454 [Heb.]). Many of the descriptions in the Letter are earlier and told as histories, such as the translation of the Septuagint during the reign of Ptolemais II (282–246 b.c.e.); such an early date may also apply to the construction of the retaining walls of the Temple Mount, thus creating the platform on which the temple stood. The book of Ben Sira is dated to the same time; but a later date, such as “after the Maccabean Period,” has also been suggested, despite the fact that the texts reflect an early period. 4. Wightman suggested that, when Ben Sira speaks about the reinforcement of the Temple Mount, he is referring to Simon II, the son of Onias, based on the Septuagint. The Hebrew text mentions Simon, the son of Yohanan, who may be the Simon who lived in the 3rd century b.c.e. 5. A good example is Pergamon. The precinct of Athens in Pergamon was constructed in about 200; see A. W. Lawrence, Greek Architecture (Harmondsworth, 1957) 277. Pergamon was one of the main centers of the Near East that may have served as a good example. 6. J.W. 5.184–89; Ant. 15.380–425. 7. M. Mid. 1:2, 2:1, 2:3, 1:3, 4:7, 4:6, 2:5.

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Fig. 1. Hasmonean Jerusalem (drawing by Christina Etzrodt, after D. Bahat, Carta’s Historical Atlas of Jerusalem [Jerusalem: Carta, 1994]).

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tion, therefore, must represent an earlier, pre-Herodian Mount, probably the one constructed in the beginning of the 2nd century b.c.e., as suggested above. 8 The archeological excavations along the western retaining wall of the Temple Mount have unearthed some pre-Herodian elements that may shed light on the pre-Herodian size of the Mount and help to clarify the enormous Herodian construction there. 9 Are the period differences represented in the Temple Mount also discernible in other locations? In 1934, and again in 1947–48, C. N. Johns excavated a large part of the Citadel of Jerusalem. 10 In his work, he managed to distinguish two (or even three) phases of the Second Temple Period. 11 The excavations were resumed in 1968–69, 12 and again two strata were discovered: the Hasmonean stratum VI, and the Herodian stratum V–IV. Excavations at the site were resumed during 1979 and 1980, 13 and again, as in previous excavations, two strata of the Second Temple Period were discovered—Hasmonean and Herodian. 14 In order to date the Hasmonean remains unearthed in the Citadel more precisely, one must assess the remains of the SecondTemple-Period city wall known as the “First Wall.” It is obvious that the fortifications discovered at the Citadel are connected to the “First Wall” described by Josephus. 15 The date suggested for the construction of this wall varies from Antiochus III (about 175 b.c.e.) to the Maccabean Jonathan (152–142 b.c.e.). For the purposes of this essay, both suggestions may be accepted because this wall was built piecemeal, as indicated by the construction pattern of the wall. 16 8. See Y. Magen, “The Gates of the Temple Mount according to Josephus and the Mishna,” Cathedra 14 (1980) 41–53. The suggestion that the two descriptions refer to different Temple Mounts is known from as early as the 19th century, but today, the archeological evidence can also be used in dating analysis, to account for the difference between the two structures. 9. For the pre-Herodian remains, see my Tunnels, 114–19. 10. C. N. Johns, “The Citadel, Jerusalem,” QDAP 14 (1950) 121–90. 11. Ibid., 121: (1) Early Hellenistic to Early Hasmonean, (2) Late Hasmonean, (3) Herodian. See also pp. 127–48, where a more-detailed description of the finds appears. I tend to see here only two periods: the Hasmonean and the Herodian. 12. Amiran and Eitan, “Excavations in the Courtyard of the Citadel.” 13. Geva, “Excavations in the Citadel of Jerusalem.” 14. Ibid., 58–61 and 61–64. 15. J.W. 5.142–45. See B. Mazar and H. Eshel, “Who built the First Wall of Jerusalem?” IEJ 48 (1998) 265–68. 16. H. Geva, “The ‘First Wall’ of Jerusalem during the Second Temple Period: An Architectural-Chronological Note,” ErIsr 18 (Avigad volume; 1985) 21–39 [Hebrew; English summary, p. 65*].

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Herod’s Palace

Fig. 2. Jerusalem under the Herodian Dynasty (drawing by Christina Etzrodt, after D. Bahat, Carta’s Historical Atlas of Jerusalem).

The remains of the “First Wall” in the Citadel are impressive and include three towers, which were incorporated into it. All the Citadel excavators agree that the towers were built during Hasmonean rule. Each of the towers underwent some changes during the reign of Herod. The northeastern tower was replaced by a much larger, more massive tower, dubbed the “Tower of David” beginning in the 5th century c.e. Its construction

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required the dismantling of a small section of the wall that was later restored by masonry imitating Hasmonean masonry. The outer face of a segment of the wall between David’s Tower and the middle tower was reinforced by Herod, who also strengthened the rest of the wall. The reason for this remodeling was that, near this wall, Herod had his palace built. The middle of the three towers was also reinforced by Herod, and the Hasmonean tower was enclosed by additional walls from two sides (west and south), enhancing its dimensions considerably. The southern tower was also thoroughly modified by Herod. In addition to this, Herod filled the largest of the Hasmonean towers with large stones and built a smaller tower on top of it. 17 In summary, as noted by the archaeologists of the Citadel, three different phases can be discerned at the Citadel: two Hasmonean phases, representing long periods of construction of the wall; and one phase during the time of Herod. 18 South of the Citadel, another long segment of the wall containing towers has been excavated. 19 The area served as a stone quarry, dated by a few archaeologists to the First Temple Period and by others to the Hellenistic period. In the Hasmonean period, the “First Wall” was constructed here. It was built over an ancient quarry, parts of which may have been in use during the First Temple Period. The builders of the wall used scarps created by the quarry workers for a kind of moat so that battering the base of the wall was futile. The wall, 4.5 meters wide, served as a foundation for the 16th-century c.e. Ottoman city wall, and many stones can still be seen under the Ottoman wall. The towers that were incorporated into the wall may be the towers mentioned by Josephus along with 60 other towers. 20 When Herod built his palace in this area of the city, he reinforced the wall by adding another 2.5–3.5-meter-wide wall in front of the Hasmonean wall, thus creating an 8-meter-wide city wall. Herod replanned the western part of the city because of building his royal palace there. The palace is meticulously described by Josephus, who never missed an opportunity to write about the lavish dimensions and beauty of this structure. 21 Excavations carried out in the area where the 17. See plans in ibid., n. 16. 18. Idem, “Excavations in the Citadel of Jerusalem,” phase I, pp. 28–32; phase II, pp. 32–34; phase III, pp. 34–35. See also R. Sivan and G. Solar, “Discoveries in the Jerusalem Citadel,” Qadmoniot 68 (1984) 111–17, esp. p. 115 [Hebrew]. 19. M. Broshi, “Recent Excavations along the Walls of Jerusalem,” Qadmoniot 34–35 (1976) 75–77 [Hebrew]. 20. J.W. 5.158. 21. J.W. 5.176–183.

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palace once stood revealed nothing but remains of some walls, perhaps because the site served for the construction of the palace of the Crusader kings in the 12th century c.e. The only remains of Herod’s palace discernible indicate that Herod built his palace on an artificial, raised platform that contained dirt fills and in some areas was 8 meters high. This platform was bolstered by retaining walls and inner-casement walls, some of which have been uncovered. 22 The raised level of the palace necessitated raising some other structures in the vicinity of the palace. This is most observable in the city wall, as mentioned above. Herod enhanced the wall’s breadth by adding an outer wall abutting the Hasmonean city wall; thus, it also served as a retaining wall for the palace fills. This is also obvious in the Citadel. Here, the Hasmonean layer was filled with earth, and the Hasmonean houses served as casemate walls to hold the fill. On top of this, Herod had houses and a street built with a new alignment. 23 In the Citadel, even the smallest segments of the Hasmonean city wall were buried under the new structures built on the fills. It appears that Herod’s builders removed the roofs of the previous houses and crammed them full of dirt in order to match the level of the palace lying farther south. A probe east of David’s Tower carried out in the 19th century observed the same phenomenon of fills in “decapitated” pre-Herodian houses. 24 This means that Herod raised the level of his city in this entire area. Josephus named the entire hill the “Upper Market” or, in many places, “the City.” The palace extended as far as the present southern city wall and into the area south of it known today as Mount Zion. The excavations in the palace area show similarities with the area surrounding the Citadel. 25 The site was settled in the 1st century b.c.e., that is, in Herod’s time (37–4 b.c.e.) or shortly before he seized power. Two phases of Herod’s period were found. The first period featured construction, and the second, repair and modification, probably necessitated by the earthquake of 31 b.c.e. Because the area of the palace was not settled during the First Temple Period, it is reasonable to assume that the expansion of the city 22. D. Bahat and M. Broshi, “Excavations in the Armenian Garden,” Qadmoniot 19–20 (1972) 102–3. 23. Amiran and Eitan, “Excavations in the Courtyard of the Citadel, Jerusalem,” 13; and see fig. 3 here for the differences between the two periods in plan and alignment. 24. S. Merrill, “Recent Discoveries at Jerusalem,” PEFQS (1886) 21–23, Merrill’s area A. 25. M. Broshi, “Excavations in the House of Caiaphas, Mount Zion,” Qadmoniot 19–20 (1972) 104–6.

spread one pica long

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occurred during the last days of the Hasmonean kings or early in the reign of Herod. In the wake of the excavations carried out in the eastern part of the Upper City (the present Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem), some important chronological conclusions may be drawn. The conclusions demonstrate that this area was settled after the First Temple Period only in about 150 b.c.e.—or more precisely, just before or after the Hasmonean revolt against the Seleucids. 26 As already mentioned, this settlement included the construction of the “First Wall.” While evaluating the excavations in the Upper City, H. Geva determined that, prior to the foundation of the Upper City, the center of the city was still on the hill of the City of David. This is different from the period of Herod. However, in the excavations of the Jewish Quarter, the remains of the Hasmonean period were unfortunately scant, perhaps due to the later extensive Herodian constructions (including street pavements) that destroyed many of the earlier structures. 27 In the First Wall, no remains from the time of Herod or modifications to it were discovered. However, because only segments alongside the walls have been published thus far, it is difficult to assess the Herodian contribution to the development of the urban fortifications. Future publications dealing with the interior of the “Upper City” will show that the real changes to the urban texture during Herod’s reign were not in the habitations and modification of the First Wall. 28 The situation within the city walls in the Upper City is different from the history of the city wall itself. Here, the area became densely populated under Herod. Many private homes have been unearthed; some of them were wealthy private mansions that contained built-in ritual baths, lavish mosaic floors, and wall frescoes—all of which are witnesses to the prosperity of the city under Herod. 29 Another way to assess the expansion of the city under Herod is to study the northern sections of the city. The only remains dating to the time of Herod were discovered during archaeological excavations in the area of the Damascus Gate. 30 From Josephus’s description, we learn that the northern part of the city was surrounded by the “Second Wall.” There is 26. JQ 1, 24; JQ 2, 526–527. 27. JQ 1, 24. 28. JQ 2, 532–34. 29. Ibid., 534–35; JQ 1, 24–27. There is no detailed description here, but see N. Avigad, Discovering Jerusalem (Nashville, 1983) 81–122. 30. M. Magen, “Excavations at the Damascus Gate 1979–1984,” Qadmoniot 68 (1984) 117–20, esp. p. 117 [Hebrew].

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Fig. 3. Ground plan of the Citadel of Jerusalem (drawing by Christina Etzrodt, after D. Bahat, Carta’s Historical Atlas of Jerusalem). no agreement about the alignment of this wall. 31 Some suggest that the remains in area X-2 in the excavations of the Jewish Quarter are from the Gate of “Genneth,” described by Josephus as the starting point of the Second Wall. Some scholars locate this gate near the present-day Jaffa Gate. 32 31. R. Amiran, “The First and Second Walls of Jerusalem Reconsidered in the Light of the New Wall,” IEJ 21 (1971) 166–67. See also stratum 5 in area X-2 in JQ 1, 232–34; and the historical conclusion in JQ 2, 534–35. 32. JQ 2, 532.

spread one pica long

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Some remains at the Damascus Gate may also be interpreted as belonging to the Herodian city gate. Actually, there is no indication that the remains can be associated with the Second Wall, but it is highly likely that the wall and the gate were built by Herod. 33 If this interpretation is correct, it will contribute toward our understanding of the prosperity and expansion of the city during Herod’s reign. Some of the best-preserved monuments of the Second Temple Period in Jerusalem are the sepulchral monuments in the Kidron Valley, southeast of the Temple Mount. 34 One of them, the tomb of the priestly family of Hezir, has been dated to the 2nd century b.c.e. 35 However, a comparison of this structure with Herodian remains 36 reveals that this tomb also should be ascribed to the Herodian period. Above all, these monuments reflect prosperity and wealth. Now that all these monuments are no longer viewed as a legacy of the Hasmonean period but a creation of the Herodian period, it is easy to assess the growth of the city, not only in population, but also in quality of monuments. Thus, Jerusalem can be placed in line with other contemporary wealthy cities of the east. Jerusalem was the capital city of Herod and of the Jewish population alike. But, while it was a spiritual center for the Jews, it was an economic hub for Herod and a place in which to use his major construction talents. 37 He engaged in assiduous construction work, as was the Hellenistic fashion both in his country and abroad (such as in Damascus, Antioch, Kos, Rhodes, and many other places), and Jerusalem benefited immensely from his reign. He organized games in the Hellenistic style in Jerusalem, 38 for which he built a theatre and a hippodrome that have not yet been 33. One of the reasons for disagreement is that Josephus said that Herod, while laying siege to Jerusalem after he returned from Samaria (where he married Mariamne) besieged the Temple Mount as Pompey did (that is, the Western Wall of the Temple Mount was still exposed to areas outside the city—there was no city wall to protect it). Then he laid siege to the northern wall of the city—probably the northern section of the First Wall. From this, one may conclude that there was no other wall in the city but the First Wall. See J.W. 1.345–46; Ant. 14.465–69. 34. N. Avigad, Ancient Monuments in the Kidron Valley ( Jerusalem, 1954) [Hebrew; English ed., Jerusalem, 1954]. 35. Ibid. 36. Bahat, Tunnels, 120. 37. For all his construction, see A. Shalit, King Herod: Portrait of a Ruler ( Jerusalem, 1964) 170–207 [Hebrew]; see also the English ed. Jerusalem is dealt with on pp. 189–206. Although many books have since been published, this book is still basic because it incorporates the historical documentation with the archaeological data. 38. Ant. 15.267–69.

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found. Most likely, he enjoyed the fame and the compliments from his guests rather than confronting the anger and resentment of the dissident Jewish population, which according to Jewish tradition detested this extravagance. Jerusalem under Herod attained glory and recognition within the realm of the Roman Empire. Contemporary and later historians acclaim its greatness. 39 Pre-Hasmonean and Hasmonean sources mention Jerusalem often but never refer to its exceptional grandeur or beauty. The temple drew the attention of many foreign visitors, 40 but it was only during the reign of Herod that Jerusalem emerged as a special city. Despite Jewish animosity toward Herod, Jewish sages praised the beauty of the city and the temple in an extraordinary fashion: “He who has not seen the Temple (of Herod) has not seen a beautiful building in his lifetime” (b. B. Bat. 4a); or, “out of ten cubits of beauty that descended upon the world, Jerusalem was bestowed nine, and one for the rest of the world” (b. Qidd. 49b); and many others of the like. Herod’s construction projects in Jerusalem are well attested in the literary sources, and are not new to modern scholars; 41 archaeology, however, presents an entirely new set of evidence in the series of residential dwellings in the Upper City that were never recorded or documented in ancient literary sources. In addition to this, the northern quarters of the city, which consisted of all the markets, storehouses, and workshops, must have been founded there during Herod’s reign because they are inside the Second Wall which, as suggested above, was built by Herod. 42 The mightiest fortification of the city was the Antonia Fortress, also built by Herod to replace the old Hasmonean fortress, the “Baris,” which was located north of the temple. What were Herod’s esthetic ideals? From where did he derive his role models and inspirations? It is believed that inspiration for his architecture came from the Greco-Roman world. Herod spent time in Rome during the

39. M. Stern, “ ‘Jerusalem, the Most Famous of the Cities of the East’ (Pliny, Natural History V,70),” in Jerusalem in the Second Temple Period (ed. A. Oppenheimer, U. Rappaport, and M. Stern; Jerusalem, 1980) 257–70 [Hebrew; English summary, p. xiv]. 40. Ibid., 264–66. 41. P. Richardson, Herod King of the Jews and Friend of the Romans (Columbia, 1996) 197, for a list of his works in Jerusalem. Richardson describes his water installations on p. 198, but it seems that some of the works attributed to Herod are actually Hasmonean. 42. J.W. 5.331.

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time of the great construction works of Augustus that transformed Rome from “a city of bricks to a city of marble.” He must certainly have been greatly inspired by this as far as size and magnitude were concerned, but his ground plan, with all the modifications and alterations, manifests cardinal Hasmonean features. The Temple Mount in the time of the Hasmoneans was indeed smaller than in the time of Herod. Herod added porticoes around the four walls of the platform confining the sacred enclosure. The eastern portico was the only one preserved in Herod’s days from the earlier Temple Mount and has been dubbed the “Portico of Solomon” 43 because it was once believed to have been constructed by Solomon. The pre-Herodian platform was quadrilateral, similar to the Herodian platform. The temple was situated slightly off the exact center of the enclosure and raised slightly above the immediate vicinity. While Herod contributed the royal portico and other installations to the Temple Mount, the principles of the sacred enclosure remained Hasmonean. The areas populated by the Herodian residential quarters were already inhabited in the Hasmonean period. However, the enhancement of the size of the city and the addition of the theatre, Hippodrome, and industrial and commercial quarters made the city of Herod a genuine Near Eastern metropolis, even in the writings of Roman historians. Naturally, the Temple Mount, the crown jewel of all Herod’s construction works, is cardinal to all assessments of his construction projects elsewhere. We owe the information about the changes in the Temple Mount during the first century b.c.e. to three major sources: Josephus’s detailed description of the temple during the Herodian period, the mishnaic depictions of the Temple Mount in the period prior to Herod, and the meticulous archaeological scrutiny carried out in Jerusalem since the 19th century. Thoroughly analyzing these sources and comparing them one with the other are our main tools for reconstructing the Temple Mount. The method of comparing archaeological data with literary sources is not new in scholarship. This is perhaps the best method to use in attempting to reconstruct the past. By arranging the two seemingly contradictory descriptions of the Temple Mount, the Mishnah, and Josephus in successive order, so that they are describing the same place in different times, we have managed not only to solve the problem of conflicting texts but also to reconstruct the situation prior to the construction projects of Herod. This analysis would not have been possible without the wealth of archaeological evidence available to scholarship. 43. J.W. 5.184–89; John 10:23; Acts 3:11, 5:12.

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Index of Authors

Aharoni, Y. 4 Albright, W. F. 69 Amiran, R. 117, 120, 123, 125 Arav, R. 23, 30, 64, 79, 98, 101, 103, 105–108, 110–111 Avigad, N. 124, 126 Bahat, D. 8, 23, 117, 119–121, 123, 125–126 Baldry, H. C. 64 Bapty, I. 1 Batey, R. A. 27 Benjamin, D. C. 18 Ben-Nathan, R. 117 Bernett, M. 64, 77, 103–105, 108, 110–111 Biran, A. 75, 100 Bollich, R. 23 Brayford, S. A. 47–48 Breytenbach, C. 30–31 Broshi, M. 117, 122–123 Bury, J. D. 53–54 Carroll, R. P. 14–15 Cederblom, J. 64 Chancey, M. 27, 30–31 Crawford, S. W. 23 Crossan, J. D. 23, 28 Dalman, G. 69 Daniel, S. 52 Darsow, W. 70 Daviau, P. M. 106 De Troyer, K. 51 Dever, W. G. 2–3, 12–13 DeVries, L. F. 29–31 Dines, J. M. 39 Dion, P.-E. 106 Dogniez, C. 39

Downing, F. G.

23

Edelstein, G. 70 Eitan, A. 117, 120, 123 Eliade, M. 11 Ellul, J. 11 Epstein, C. 88–89 Eshel, H. 120 Finkelstein, I. 92, 112 Fredrikson, P. 28 Freund, R. A. viii, 46 Freyne, S. 23–24, 29, 32 Frick, F. S. 11, 13–14, 18–19, 78 Fritz, V. 65, 69–72, 89 Fustel de Coulange, N. D. 66 Garfinkel, J. 88 Geva, H. 117, 120, 124 Geyer, P. S. 87 Gilmore, C. 64 Gitin, S. 100 Grams, L. W. 7 Greenberg, R. 89 Greene, J. T. 8, 72, 79 Greenspoon, L. 8, 39, 42, 48 Haettner Blomquist, T. Herzog, Z. 5, 8 Hesse, B. 88 Hiebert, R. J. V. 44 Holladay, J. S., Jr. 13 Horsley, R. 23, 28 Isserlin, B. S. J.

96, 100, 102

Jellicoe, S. 39 Jobes, K. H. 39, 46–47 Johns, C. N. 120

129

105

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Index of Authors

Kalouche, F. 62 Karge, P. 70 Keel, O. 77, 103–105 Kim, H. 64 Kochavi, M. 89–90 Koeppel, R. 70 Kooij, A. van der 50

Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. 66 Reed, J. L. 23, 26–28 Richardson, P. 26–27, 127 Roddy, N. 7 Rousseau, J. J. 30 Rowe, A. 69 Runesson, A. 102

Landsberger, B. 111 Lawrence, A. W. 118 Levine, I. L. 102 Lewis, B. 92 Lipshitz, N. 87

Saggs, H. W. F. 87 Schoenwetter, J. 87 Schofield, M. 64 Schoville, K. 73 Seeligmann, I. L. 48–51 Sellin, E. 2 Shalit, A. 126 Shroder, J. F. 84, 86 Silberman, N. A. 92, 112 Silva, M. 39, 46–47 Sivan, R. 122 Sjoberg, G. 67 Solar, G. 122 Stern, M. 127 Strange, J. F. 23, 27 Strathmann, H. 25

Magen, M. 124 Magen, Y. 120 Maine, H. S. 67 Marcos, N. F. 39 Martin, T. R. 53 Mazar, A. 4, 73, 75–78, 99 Mazar, B. 120 McLay, R. T. 42 Meiggs, R. 53–54 Mellart, J. 67–68 Merrill, S. 123 Meyers, E. M. 23 Miller, M. 88 Miller, R. D., II 13 Modrzejewski, J. M. 42 Moles, J. L. 62 Moxnes, H. 24 Muenger, S. 65, 70, 89 Naªaman, N. 92 Netzer, E. 117 Newman, A. 64 Orlinsky, H. M.

40

Paz, S. 89 Pearson, B. W. R. 50–51 Pixner, B. 25, 30–31 Porter, A. 30–31 Porter, S. E. 50–51

Tadmor, H. 71 Tarazi, P. N. 16 Tcherikover, V. 118 Tov, E. 39, 46 Troxel, R. L. 50 Ussishkin, D.

95

Wallis, G. 11 Watzinger, C. 2 Wevers, J. W. 43, 45–46 Wightman, G. J. 117–118 Williams, P. A. 7 Yadin, Y. Zevit, Z.

2, 73–74 103

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Index of Scripture Hebrew Bible / Old Testament Genesis 4:17 18 5:24 18 9:20 18 9:25 18 10:8–12 19 10:15–19 18 11:4 19 13 19 13:10–12 20 18 47 18:12 47–48 19:25 20 23:10 51, 101 24:22 39, 44 24:60 20 36:16 45 36:21 45 37:28 44 41:34 44 45:8 44 45:10 45 46:34 45

Deuteronomy (cont.) 15:19–23 102 21:19 77 22:15 77

2 Kings 7:1 77 15:29 71–72, 74 23:8 77, 102

Joshua 11:2 70 11:10 73 11:10–13 74 12:3 70 12:23 19 13:27 70 19:35 68, 70

2 Chronicles 32:6 77

Judges 4–5 74 8:6 101 8:16–17 101 Ruth 4:1–11 4:1–12

77 101

Exodus 1:11 21 32 52

1 Samuel 8:4–5 13 8:11–18 13 8:11–22 112

Numbers 34:11 70

2 Samuel 18:24 102

Deuteronomy 2:23 45 3:9 45 3:17 70 5 39 5:30 39, 43 9:21 43 11:10 46 14:28–29 102

1 Kings 4:20 112 6:36 100 9:15 74 12:29 76 15:20 70 20:42 17 22:10 77

131

Nehemiah 8 65 8:5–8 102 Proverbs 31:23 101 Isaiah 8 49 17:9–10 15 24–27 15 24:10 15 25:2–4 15 28 15 29:21 77 40:3 7 40:3–6 50 66:5 50 Jeremiah 1:18–19 16 23:17 15 27:9–10 15 38:7 77 Ezekiel 13:1–16 16 15

15

Hosea 8:14 14 13:10 14

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132 Amos 4:2–3 14 5:3 14

Index of Scripture Amos (cont.) 5:10 77 5:12 77

Amos (cont.) 6:8 14 7:11 76

New Testament Matthew 4:5 24 8:28–34 30 9:1 24 11:20 24 11:21–24 26 14:34 70 15:21–28 29 16:13–23 30 21:17 24 23:37 24 23:37–39 7, 33 27:53 24

Luke 2:4 24 4:31 24 5:1 70 8:26–39 30 9:10 24 9:18–22 30 10:13–15 26 13 36 13:31–33 33 13:34 24 13:34–35 7, 33 19:41 33

Mark 1:33 24 5:1–20 30 6:53 70 7:24–31 29 8:27–33 30

John 2:13 34 2:23 34 3:22 34 4:1–42 31 4:2 34 4:28–30 31

Deuterocanonical Works 1 Maccabees 4:36–61 118

Sirach 50:1–2 118 50:3 118

John (cont.) 5:1 34 5:2–18 34 6:1 27, 34 6:23 27 7:1–10 34 10:23 128 21:1 274 Acts 3:11 5:12

128 128

Hebrews 11:10 24 11:16 24 Revelation 11:2 24 20:9 24 21:2 24

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Index of Other Ancient Sources Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1.2 (1094b) 60 Politics 1252b30 60 1253a 63 1253a16–19 60 1253a3 60 1261a31–b2 60 1275a23–24 60 1275b19–22 60 1275b5–9 60 1280b 61 book VII 94 Augustine, City of God 15.1

Josephus, J.W. (cont.) 5.176–183 122 5.184–89 118, 128 5.331 127 Letter of Aristeas 40–41, 48

11

b. B. Bat. 4a 127 b. Qidd. 49b 127 Crates, “Pera,” in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 6.85 63 Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 6.37 63 6.43 62 6.63 62 6.72 62 6.97 63 Josephus Ant. 14.465–69 126 15.267–69 126 15.380–425 118 J.W. 1.345–46 126 5.142–45 120 5.158 122

m. Mid. 1:2 1:3 2:1 2:3 2:5 4:6 4:7

118 118 118 118 118 118 118

Petersburg Papyrus 1116A 69 Plato Gorgias 512B–C 59 Politeia, book II 94 Seventh Letter 351C 59 Shalmaneser III, Black Obelisk Socrates in Plato, Apology 17D 55 29D–E 57 30A 58 30E 55 31C 55 31D–32A 55 32B 55 32C–D 56 32E 56 36E 55 37C–E 56 in Plato, Crito 52B 54, 57 in Plato, Euthyphro 3A 56

133

77

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Index of Other Ancient Sources

Socrates (cont.) in Plato, Gorgias 513E 54 521C 55 521D 54 in Plato, Gorgias (cont.) 521D–E 54 in Plato, Menexenus 236B 57 238C 57 238E 57 239A 58 in Plato, Republic 414B–415A 58

Socrates, in Plato, Republic (cont.) 414E 58 520D 56 Socrates (cont.) in Plato, Symposium 220E 56 in Plato, Theaetetus 143D 54 143E–144B 54 Vitruvius De Architectura I 4–7 94 I–X 94