Did this artifact belong to the biblical Judge Gideon?
Relic dating back to the time of the biblical Judges uncovered in southern Israel bearing one of names of the Judge Gideon.
For the first time: an inscription from the time of the biblical
Judges and relating to the Book of Judges has been recovered from
excavations at Khirbat er-Ra‘i, near Qiryat Gat. The rare inscription
bears the name ‘Jerubbaal’ in alphabetic script and dates from around
1,100 BCE. It was written in ink on a pottery vessel and found inside a
storage pit that was dug into the ground and lined with stones.
The site, which is located at the Shahariya forest of the KKL-JNF,
has been excavated every summer since 2015 and the current excavation
season is its seventh. The excavations are being conducted on behalf of
the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the
Israel Antiquities Authority, and Macquarie University in Sydney,
Australia, under the direction of Prof. Yossef Garfinkel, Sa‘ar Ganor,
Dr. Kyle Keimer and Dr. Gil Davies. The program is funded by Joseph B.
Silver and the Nathan and Lily Silver Foundation, the Roth Families
Sydney, Aron Levy, and the Roger and Susan Hartog Center for Archaeology
at the Hebrew University’s Institute of Archaeology.
The inscription was written in ink on a jug – a small personal
pottery vessel that holds approximately one liter, and may well have
contained a precious liquid such as oil, perfume or medicine.
Apparently, much like today, the vessel’s owner wrote his name on it to
assert his ownership.
The
inscription has been deciphered by epigraphic expert Christopher
Rolston of George Washington University, Washington DC. It clearly shows
the letters yod (broken at the top), resh, bet, ayin, lamed, and
remnants of other letters indicate that the original inscription was
longer.
Prof. Garfinkel and Ganor explain, “The name Jerubbaal is familiar
from biblical tradition in the Book of Judges as an alternative name for
the judge Gideon ben
Yoash. Gideon is first mentioned as combatting idolatry by breaking
the altar to Baal and cutting down the Asherah pole. In biblical
tradition, he is then remembered as triumphing over the Midianites, who
used to cross over the Jordan to plunder agricultural crops. According
to the Bible, Gideon organized a small army of 300 soldiers and attacked
the Midianites by night near Ma‘ayan Harod. In view of the geographical
distance between the Shephelah and the Jezreel Valley, this inscription
may refer to another Jerubbaal and not the Gideon of biblical
tradition, although the possibility cannot be ruled out that the jug
belonged to the judge Gideon. In any event, the name Jerubbaal was
evidently in common usage at the time of the biblical Judges.”
Inscriptions
from the period of the Judges are extremely rare and almost
unparalleled in Israeli archaeology. Only a handful of inscriptions
found in the past bear a number of unrelated letters. This is the first
time that the name Jerubbaal has ever been found outside the Bible in an
archaeological context – in a stratum dated to around 1,100 BCE, the
period of the Judges.
“As we know, there is considerable debate as to whether biblical
tradition reflects reality and whether it is faithful to historical
memories from the days of the Judges and the days of David,” say the
archaeologists. “The name Jerubbaal only appears in the Bible in the
period of the Judges, yet now it has also been discovered in an
archaeological context, in a stratum dating from this period. In a
similar manner, the name Ishbaal, which is only mentioned in the Bible
during the monarchy of King David, has been found in strata dated to
that period at the site of Khirbat Qeiyafa. The fact that identical
names are mentioned in the Bible and also found in inscriptions
recovered from archaeological excavations shows that memories were
preserved and passed down through the generations.”
The Jerubbaal inscription also contributes to our understanding of
the spread of alphabetic script in the transition from the Canaanite
period to the Israelite period. The alphabet was developed by the
Canaanites under Egyptian influence in around 1,800 BCE, during the
Middle Bronze Age. In the Late Bronze Age (1,550–1,150 BCE), only a few
such inscriptions are known of in Israel, most from Tel Lachish near
present-day Moshav Lachish. The Canaanite city of Lachish was probably
the center where the tradition of writing the alphabet was maintained
and preserved. Canaanite Lachish was destroyed in around 1,150 BCE and
remained abandoned for
about two centuries. Until now, there was considerable uncertainty as
to where the tradition of alphabetic script was preserved after the
fall of Lachish.
The newly-discovered inscription shows that the script was preserved
at Khirbat er-Ra‘i — roughly 4 km from Lachish and the largest site in
the area at the time of the Judges — during the transition from the
Canaanite to the Israelite and Judahite cultures. Additional
inscriptions, from the time of the monarchy (tenth century BCE onwards),
have been found in the Shephelah, including two from Khirbat Qeiyafa
and others from Tel es-Safi (Tel Tzafit) and Tel Bet Shemesh.
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