First Letter from Nazareth
Today, Pentecost Sunday, is the third Sunday I’ve been in
Israel. I’ve not written until now because I’ve been busier than usual.
We’ve completed two weeks of good archaeology. The veterans
know what to do and the new volunteers—this year mostly undergraduate students
from four institutions—soon snap into place. With the instruction they receive
in the field, by now they are seasoned archaeologists who are asking good
questions about the method and the site. We’ve toured Sepphoris, the nearby
city built by Herod Antipas in the year 4 BCE; the synagogue of Beit Alpha that
was one of the first to be found with a mosaic floor depicting both biblical
scenes and the zodiac wheel; and Beit She‘arim, a village famous for over 20 catacombs
with 400 burials, and for the largest block of raw glass ever excavated. We’ve
also been to Caesarea, one of the cities Herod the Great built in honor of his
friend, Caesar Augustus. It later became the capital of the Roman province of Judea,
then the capital of Byzantine Palaestina Prima. The new visitor’s center, which
was under construction last year, is now completed and we got to see it the
first day it opened. It is within the barrel vaults that supported the temple
to Augustus, a Byzantine church, and a mosque and has some impressive features.
Several of the group, however, were disappointed that the film we saw ignores
all of the town’s history between Herod and Baron Von Rothschild. The visitor’s
center, after all, sits in the middle of Crusader ruins.
Yesterday we visited a 5th–6th century
synagogue in the Golan that our own Yeshu Dray and Ilana Gonen excavated and
reconstructed. Both were impressive feats that took over a decade to finish. The
reconstruction was possible because no one had robbed the stones, unlike the
synagogue we are excavating at Shikhin. From the Golan we traveled to Capernaum
and Magdala, nestled on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and baking in the
summer heat. These sites are known from many sources, including the canonical
gospels. They help archaeologists and historians to understand the Galilee and
its peoples over the course of many centuries, and to remember the history of our
own discipline in the region from the late 19th century to the
present.
At Shikhin, as I mentioned, things are progressing well. We
had the satisfaction of finding remnants of a wall where we projected it would be
based on where it wasn’t. Let me explain. In one of the first squares we dug in
2012, we uncovered a raised ridge of bedrock that was formed when quarriers cut
away stones to the north and south. We began to suspect that the synagogue builders
laid their wall foundation on it when we noticed a narrow threshold cut
directly into the raised bedrock, indicating that at this spot a door let out
of the synagogue proper and into an attached room. All of the stones of the
putative wall, however, were long gone. We then projected from that ridge of
bedrock several meters to the west, into an unexcavated portion of the field. We
hypothesized that we would find the wall beneath that soil, and we did. We are
on our way to establishing the outer dimensions of the building, and we hope to
get some material to confirm our dating of its construction to the early second
century.
Where our squares are uncovering evidence of oil lamp
production, we found our first complete stone mold for an oil lamp (well, it’s
missing one small bit). It is for making a style of lamp called “Northern Darom”
(“Northern Southern,” which works out better in Hebrew than it does in
English). It is decorated with an amphora and grape tendrils, bunches, and
leaves on the sides. It is also the most fragile mold we have found and began
to crack even as we marveled at it in the field. Thankfully, our conservator
Yeshu Dray was in the field that day and he took it to his workshop to begin
the conservation process.
Another startling find was what is called in the biz a “Rhodian
stamped amphora handle” bearing Greek writing. This is a first at Shikhin. The
stamp indicates the vintage of the wine that the amphora once contained: it was
bottled in the month of Panamos (June-ish) when Aristonos was priest of Helios
at Rhodes (around 167/165 BCE). We are currently in the same month 2185 years later.
I don’t know when the amphora was loaded on a ship or stacked on the wharf at
the port of Tyre, but it made its way to this little village, perhaps via the
markets at Sepphoris.
This morning I noticed that, without a 4 am wake-up knock on
the door, and maybe after a late night on the roof of the hotel, eyes are
blearier, at least in the faces of those who make it to breakfast. I am
appreciating time to think and write.
The hotel staff has mounted a photograph of my father on one
of the dining room’s walls. It overlooks the hotel guests as they eat together
and talk about their days’ activities. The pilgrims chat about their visits to
holy sites. The archaeologists recount memorable moments of the day. It is nice
to imagine that Dad is enjoying what he learns.
Pray for the peace of Israel.
James
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