The History of the Judahite Bench Tomb

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Suriano
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Mortuary Practices ◽  
Iron Age Ii ◽  
Gradual Development ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Insight Into

The history of the Judahite bench tomb provides important insight into the meaning of mortuary practices, and by extension, death in the Hebrew Bible. The bench tomb appeared in Judah during Iron Age II. Although it included certain burial features that appear earlier in the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, such as burial benches, and the use of caves for extramural burials, the Judahite bench tomb uniquely incorporated these features into a specific plan that emulated domestic structures and facilitated multigenerational burials. During the seventh century, and continuing into the sixth, the bench tombs become popular in Jerusalem. The history of this type of burial shows a gradual development of cultural practices that were meant to control death and contain the dead. It is possible to observe within these cultural practices the tomb as a means of constructing identity for both the dead and the living.

Summary of Part IA Brief History of Death in Judah during the Iron Age

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Suriano
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
The State ◽  
Mortuary Practices ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Role ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Surrounding Landscape ◽  
Insight Into

The remains of Judahite mortuary practices provide invaluable insight into the historical role of the dead in the culture of the biblical writers. The events of the eighth and seventh centuries proved formative for the kingdom of Judah, and the development of the state during this period became intricately tied to mortuary practices. Burying the dead in a particular way became part of being Judahite. Collective interments served to identify ancestors and connect living communities to the surrounding landscape. These actions involved distinct notions of family and religion, and the use of mortuary culture to express these ideas impacted the area long after the Southern Kingdom was destroyed. I offer the following history based on the inscriptions and material culture that have been collected and reviewed up to this point....

Death as Transition in Judahite Mortuary Practices

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Suriano
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Final Stage ◽  
The Body ◽  
Mortuary Practices ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Insight Into

Death is transitional in the Hebrew Bible, but the challenge is in understanding how this transition worked. The ritual analysis of Judahite bench tombs reveals a dynamic concept of death that involved the transition of the dead body. The body would enter the tomb during primary burial; there it would receive provisions as it rested on a burial bench. Eventually the remains of the dead would be secondarily interred inside the tomb’s repository. This final stage, the repository, is marked by the collective burial of bones. The transition of the dead, therefore, involves the body in different conditions, first as an individual corpse and then as a collection of bones. The process of burial and reburial inside the bench tomb offers new insight into the idea that postmortem existence in the Hebrew Bible is predicated on the fate of the body.

Prolegomenon

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Suriano
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
The Body ◽  
Mortuary Practices ◽  
Biblical Literature ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Individual

The complicated imagery of death in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament has defied scholars because it does not involve an afterlife dichotomy of heaven and hell. The individual is not vetted after death, to be sent to punishment or paradise; instead postmortem experience is collective. This ideal afterlife is centered upon the tomb where the dead join their ancestors. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the afterlife in the Hebrew Bible according to its own terms. This can be done through the analysis of mortuary practices from Judah during the Iron Age. A review of the archaeology of mortuary practices, along with theoretical discussions of the body, will establish the framework for studying death in the Hebrew Bible. In biblical literature and ancient Judah postmortem existence was predicated upon the treatment of the body.

The northern Black Sea and North Caucasus

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valenina Mordvinceva ◽  
Sabine Reinhold
Keyword(s):  
Black Sea ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
The Black Sea ◽  
North Caucasus ◽  
The North ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
Northern Shore ◽  
Greek Colonization

This chapter surveys the Iron Age in the region extending from the western Black Sea to the North Caucasus. As in many parts of Europe, this was the first period in which written sources named peoples, places, and historical events. The Black Sea saw Greek colonization from the seventh century BC and its northern shore later became the homeland of the important Bosporan kingdom. For a long time, researchers sought to identify tribes named by authors such as Herodotus by archaeological means, but this ethno-deterministic perspective has come under critique. Publication of important new data from across the region now permits us to draw a more coherent picture of successive cultures and of interactions between different parts of this vast area, shedding new light both on local histories and on the role ‘The East’ played in the history of Iron Age Europe.

Dead Sea Levels during the Bronze and Iron Ages

Radiocarbon ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisa Joy Kagan ◽  
Dafna Langgut ◽  
Elisabetta Boaretto ◽  
Frank Herald Neumann ◽  
Mordechai Stein
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Lake Level ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Sea Levels ◽  
The Past ◽  
Organic Debris ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Dead

The history of lake-level changes at the Dead Sea during the Holocene was determined mainly by radiocarbon dating of terrestrial organic debris. This article reviews the various studies that have been devoted over the past 2 decades to defining the Dead Sea levels during the Bronze and Iron Ages (≃5.5 to 2.5 ka cal BP) and adds new data and interpretation. In particular, we focus on research efforts devoted to refining the chronology of the sedimentary sequence in the Ze'elim Gully, a key site of paleoclimate investigation in the European Research Council project titled Reconstructing Ancient Israel. The Bronze and Iron Ages are characterized by significant changes in human culture, reflected in archaeological records in which sharp settlement oscillations over relatively short periods of time are evident. During the Early Bronze, Intermediate Bronze, Middle Bronze, and Late Bronze Ages, the Dead Sea saw significant level fluctuations, reaching in the Middle Bronze an elevation of ≃370 m below mean sea level (bmsl), and declining in the Late Bronze to below 414 m bmsl. At the end of the Late Bronze Age and upon the transition to the Iron Age, the lake recovered slightly and rose to ≃408 m bmsl. This recovery reflected the resumption of freshwater activity in the Judean Hills, which was likely accompanied by more favorable hydrological-environmental conditions that seem to have facilitated the wave of Iron Age settlement in the region.

Iron Age II Israel

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Significant Degree ◽  
Legal Analysis ◽  
Iron Age Ii ◽  
The Right

This chapter draws on the evidence of archaeology and the Hebrew Bible to explore the phenomenon of slavery in Israel and Judah during the monarchical period. The first part of the chapter comprises a detailed legal analysis of the so-called ‘slave laws’ of the Torah. The rationale behind these laws was to prevent members of the Israelite ethnic group from falling into slavery; they aim to transform the enslaved Israelite into an indentured servant with various rights, including the right not to be sold. The second half of the chapter surveys the Hebrew Bible and shows how elites in Israel and Judah probably depended to a significant degree on slave labour for the cultivation of their estates.

Ecclesiastical Politics in the Regnum Chramni: Contextualising Baudonivia's Vita Radegundis, ch. 15

2017 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 474-492
Author(s):  
GREGORY HALFOND
Keyword(s):  
Seventh Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Insight Into

In her seventh-century vita of St Radegund, Baudonivia refers in passing to the attendance of a layman named Leo at an Aquitanian ecclesiastical council. This Leo may be identifiable with the ‘Leo of Poitiers’ named by Gregory of Tours as a partisan of Chramn, the rebellious son of King Chlothari(r. 511–61). If so, then Leo's attendance suggests that the council assembled during the brief period of alliance between Chramn and Childeberti, 555/8. This long-neglected council thus provides insight into one of the major events of a comparatively obscure decade in the history of the regnum Francorum.

Preliminary report on the 2012 and 2013 excavation seasons at Jiyeh (Porphyreon): work in sector D (residential Quarter)

2016 ◽  
Vol XXIV (1) ◽  
pp. 453-474
Author(s):  
Tomasz Waliszewski ◽  
Magdalena Antos ◽  
Piotr Jaworski ◽  
Piotr Makowski ◽  
Marcin Romaniuk ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Preliminary Report ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Domestic Architecture ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Important Data ◽  
Iron Age Ii ◽  
History Of ◽  
Residential Quarter

Archeological work in the 2012 and 2013 seasons in Jiyeh (Porphyreon), which lies on the Phoenician coast north of ancient Sidon, was focused on reconstructing the history of settlement on the site. At least three phases were identified and dated to the Iron Age II, the Persian– Hellenistic–Roman period and late antiquity. The early dating of the functioning of the Christian basilica to the 4th–5th century AD was also confirmed in trial pits. The complex and unusual sewage installation discharging rainwater from the roofs and streets of the 5th-century settlement contributed important data for studies of late antique domestic architecture in the region.

“To the God Who is in Dan”: The Archaeology and History of Biblical Dan

2009 ◽  
Vol 106 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-359
Author(s):  
John C.H. Laughlin
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Iron Age Ii ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Northern Kingdom ◽  
History Of ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
The City

This article consists of two foci. First, the archaeological history of Tel Dan as revealed by the longest running excavation ever conducted in Israel will be surveyed. Emphasis will be given to the major periods of known urbanization of the site: The Early Bronze Age; the Middle Bronze Age; and the Iron Age II. The materials dated to Iron Age II will be especially emphasized because they have the most significance for any attempt to understand the city of Dan during the biblical period. The second issue to be discussed is the thorny one of relating biblical texts to archaeological data or vice-versa. The Bible is not written as straightforward history, whatever that may be. Thus biblical texts cannot often be taken at face value in evaluating their historical content. It will be argued that is especially true of the mostly negative and hostile attitude seen towards the City of Dan in the Bible. It will be concluded that this view of Dan is due to the literary formation and editing of the texts as we now have them in the Bible. This hostility represents a Judean perspective which is very negative of the northern kingdom of Israel that was created after the death of Solomon.

Care for the Dead

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Suriano
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Dead Person ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Insight Into

In the Hebrew Bible an ideal fate ultimately involved the hope of joining a greater collective—the ancestors. But how was the individual accounted for in death? The importance of the individual dead, especially during their transition to the collective ancestors, can be traced in literary sources that discuss the dead, describe their nature, and offer dedications. These sources reveal the treatment of the dead, along with their care and provision. They also indicate that interaction with the dead was carefully regulated. In all of these sources it is possible to recognize the ways by which a dead person was individually identified. The study of these sources sheds light on the meaning of the word נפש‎, where it denotes a corpse. It also offers insight into the practice of feeding the dead inside the tomb. These and other actions, which constituted caring for the dead, affirmed aspects of postmortem selfhood.

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