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The latest historical and archaeological discoveries

related to the biblical world

Discovery of a 2,000-year-old Greek seal sheds light on religious pluralism in ancient Jerusalem
The sun god, «a symbol of health and prosperity», was the only member of the pagan pantheon used by Jews during the Second Temple period, according to archaeologist Eli Shukron.
By AMANDA BORSCHEL-DAN. November 1, 2020.
The dark brown jasper seal was recently discovered as part of the Tzurim Valley National Park archaeological project, during the sifting of soil from the ongoing City of David excavations on the foundations of the Western Wall.
«The discovery of a rare 2,000-year-old signet ring engraved with the Greek sun god Apollo is further evidence of the presence of a pluralistic Jewish community in worship in ancient Jerusalem during the Second Temple period,» explained archaeologist Eli Shukron to the Times of Israel.
«It allows us to see a Jerusalem that was not just a kind of ultra-Orthodox city, but more pluralistic,» comments Mr. Shukron, who is convinced that the ring would have adorned the finger of a Jew. The fact that a Jew chose the symbol of a Greek god «shows the great variety of practices in Jerusalem.
Professor Shua Amorai-Stark, an expert in engraved gemstones, has made an assessment of the seal and noted that at the end of the Second Temple period, the sun god Apollo was considered one of the most popular and revered deities in the eastern Mediterranean regions. Among Apollo's spheres of influence, it's likely that Apollo's association with the sun and light (as well as with logic, reason, prophecy and healing) fascinated some Jews, given that the element of light versus darkness was very present in the Jewish worldview at that time,» he explained.

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A 2,700-year-old weight of two shekels found near the Oc wallcidental
This 23-gram limestone weight reveals the «very rare» work of a local craftsman probably unfamiliar with the Egyptian system used at the time of the First Temple.
By AMANDA BORSCHEL-DAN. October 18, 2020
A 2,700-year-old limestone stone weighing two shekels and featuring a unique inscription, which was discovered in the earth during excavations near the Western Wall, is said to be a «very rare» example of poor craftsmanship. The inscription on the stone, explains excavation co-director Dr. Barak Monnickendam-Givon, indicates that the craftsman was «unfamiliar with the international symbol» used for such stones and had therefore engraved «something close to it».
During the First Temple period, this 23-gram, coin-sized stone was part of a precise, internationally recognized system of weights and measures imported from Egypt and used in the land of Israel for worship, in the Temple, and in the marketplace.
This Egyptian system was based on units of eight, unlike the better-known decimal system, which is based on units of ten and often appears in the Bible, Monnickendam-Givon tells the Times of Israel. During the Iron Age, this Egyptian system was used in world trade, and its use in the land of Israel testifies to the fact that this fledgling monarchy saw itself as an international player.

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In Jerusalem, archaeologists uncover a palace from the First Temple period
By TIMES OF ISRAEL STAFF. 03/09/2020

Archaeologists have discovered majestic column capitals from a First Temple palace on Jerusalem's Armon Hanatziv promenade.
The identity of the owner of the sumptuous Jerusalem palace - which would have enjoyed a monumental view of the Old City and Temple - remains a mystery, but archaeologists have been able to date the finds to the time of the kings of Judea, thanks to the proto-Eolithic features of the soft limestone architecture.
The finds include three complete medium-sized stone capitals and objects from lavish window frames, the Israel Antiquities Authority said on Thursday.
The design of the column head will be remarkably familiar to Israelis - it represents the five-shekel coin of the modern State of Israel in homage to the time of the First Temple.
«This is a very exciting discovery,» said Yaakov Billig, an employee of the Israel Antiquities Authority. «This is the first time that scale models of the giant proto-Eolithic capitals have been discovered, of the type hitherto found in the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, where they were incorporated above the royal palace gates. The standard of workmanship on these capitals is the highest to date, and the level of preservation of the objects is rare.»
A column head found on the Armon Hanatziv promenade, dating from the First Temple period (Shai Halevi, Israel Antiquities Authority).
Experts believe the residence would have been built between the reigns of kings Hezekiah and Josiah, after the Assyrian siege on the city was lifted. The inhabitants of Jerusalem then ventured outside the Walled City of David and expanded the city, says Billig.
«This find, along with the palace found in the past at Ramat Rahel and the administrative center found on the slopes of Arnona attest to a rebirth of the city and the exit of the First Temple-era fortifications after the Assyrian siege,» which ended in 701 BC, he said.
«We find houses, mansions and administrative buildings in the unwalled areas outside the city and this attests to the relief felt by the city's inhabitants after the siege was lifted.»
The three columns and other remains of the building are on display at the City of David archaeological center. It is not known exactly when the archaeological excavations at Armon Hanatziv Promenade, a popular Jerusalem site, were carried out.
Whether the house belonged to a Judean king or a wealthy Jerusalemite, great care was taken to preserve the column heads. The Antiquities Authority states that two of the three columns had been carefully buried on the site, while the rest of the palace appears to have been destroyed during the Babylonian sack of Jerusalem in 586 BC.

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Artificial intelligence at the service of the Dead Sea Scrolls
Computers have analyzed details of the Isaiah scroll and identified different styles, indicating that two scribes were responsible for the documents.
By Stuart Winer - April 23, 2021 - The Times of Israel.

New research has revealed interesting clues to the authorship of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It has revealed that two scribes were apparently responsible for one of the most famous manuscripts, and not just one as previously assumed.
Exploiting the attention to detail inherent in computer-aided pattern recognition techniques and enhanced by artificial intelligence, researchers in biblical sciences and computer science at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands have analyzed the Great Isaiah Scroll, one of the first of a set of ancient scrolls discovered in the caves of the Qumran region, near the Dead Sea, in 1947.
The study focused on examining minute differences in the way the letters were written. It uncovered evidence for the existence of two distinct halves of the parchment, the break being in columns 27 to 29, written by two scribes apparently trying to harmonize their styles.
The fact that there were two scribes «sheds new light on the production of biblical manuscripts in ancient Judea», wrote the authors of the study.
The results of the study by Mladen Popovic, Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Judaism, Lambert Schomaker, Professor of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, and Maruf Dhali, PhD student in Artificial Intelligence, all from Groningen, were published on Wednesday in the archaeological journal PLOS ONE.
«By demonstrating that two main scribes, each displaying different writing patterns, were responsible for the great Isaiah scroll, this study sheds new light on the ancient culture of Bible scribes by providing tangible new evidence that ancient biblical texts were not copied by a single scribe, but that several scribes, while carefully reflecting the writing style of another scribe, could collaborate closely on a particular manuscript,» they said.
The Isaiah Scroll is a 7.34-metre-long manuscript containing almost the entire book of Isaiah, and has been dated to around 300-100 BC. Although debated, the accepted view is that the entire scroll was copied by a single scribe.
Over the decades, thousands of scroll fragments have been discovered in the Dead Sea region, the most recent in March this year, but the author - or authors - have not signed their work or left any clues as to their identity.
«The best way to identify scribes by name is to identify scribes by their handwriting,» says the study.
Traditional palaeography, the study of ancient writing methods, is challenged by the difficulty of identifying the difference between variations in the handwriting of a single scribe and that of a text written by others in a similar style.
«On the one hand, scribes may show a variety of individual letterforms in one or more manuscripts,» the study states. «On the other hand, different scribes may write in almost the same way, making it difficult to identify the individual scribe beyond general stylistic similarities.»
However, by training artificial neural networks to identify patterns in the way characters have been written, researchers could enable computers to compare a wide range of letters in a way that exceeds the capabilities of the human eye.
The researchers used digital images of the scrolls and were able to identify distinctive ink traces, unique to each scribe.
«This is important because old ink traces are directly linked to a person's muscle movements and are specific to that person,» they write.
By identifying individual scribes from differences in their handwriting, archaeologists may be able to reconstruct the links between fragments of other scrolls and better understand their origins. The same process could also be applied to other ancient manuscripts in the future.
«The change of hand of a scribe in a literary manuscript or the identification of one and the same scribe in several manuscripts can be used as evidence to understand various forms of scribal collaboration that would otherwise remain unknown to us,» says the study.